Building Community to Promote Civic Engagement: the Town Hall Meeting Program at California State University, Fullerton

Abstract

The Town Hall Meeting (THM) program at California State University, Fullerton has been annually incorporated into several Introduction to American Politics course sections since 2011, to improve academic performance and promote civic engagement among enrolled students. This article provides a detailed analysis of results from a 2017 quasi-experimental study of the program designed to overcome methodological challenges in earlier studies, using close-ended and open-ended surveys and institutional research data on student demographics and academic performance. The research finds that the THM program successfully increases students’ political knowledge, political efficacy, and interest in political engagement and that it does so through the critically important and mediating variable of students’ sense of a strong classroom community. This suggests that Introduction to American Government courses that build communal connections in the classroom can more successfully engage students politically.