Thanks to the support of Lumina Foundation, this fall Campus Compact is recruiting five member campuses to be selected as a Student Co-Design Team to incubate new models of student voice and shared leadership models within campuses, community engagement centers, and local campus-community partnerships. Each campus team will be awarded $5,000 in seed money to spend by May 2027 to fund their initiative, with the goal of creating or building upon a model that can be replicated across Campus Compact member campuses.
We know that student leadership and voice are central pillars to effective civic engagement work, campus culture, and community relationships, but we know too many barriers (time, money, support) prevent innovative ideas from staff and students about embedding student leadership and voice from coming to fruition. Campus Compact wants to change that.
Two years ago, Campus Compact launched recruitment for the Student Design Fellows cohort to create a strategic visioning process for student civic leadership that was led by students, for students. Building off that successful model and vision, Campus Compact is excited to announce an opportunity for campuses to launch similar student-voice initiatives on their campuses across the next two years.
Selected campuses will be provided a $5,000 implementation grant that can be used to incubate a new civic student voice initiative on campus (ex. student-led leadership board for a campus center or students on a community partner board, etc.), expand a successful existing student-voice partnership (ex. student government and faculty senate committee on civic participation, etc.), and/or do a research initiative centering student voice that will lead to tangible outcomes for campus and/or the community.
The five selected campuses will be provided with Campus Compact staff support (Director, Student Engagement) and will be required to attend monthly meetings with the other Co-Design Teams to share best practices, learn from each other’s challenges, and capture shared insights and themes to be shared with the rest of Campus Compact’s network. All teams will be required to send two members to present at Compact27, and $2,000 per team will be provided to cover registration, hotel, and flight expenses.
To apply, you can start your application here: https://campuscompact.tfaforms.net/121.
To participate, campuses must be active Campus Compact members to apply. Teams must be composed of at least an equal number of students and non-students (staff, faculty, administrators, or partners), with a maximum of six members per team.
All applications are due Friday, December 5th. Selections will be made by the end of January 2026.
First cohort meetings will begin in February 2026. All projects must be finalized by May 2027, with Compact27 presentations occurring that spring/summer.
Campus Compact aims to recruit a group of teams that vary in institutional type, size, geographic location, and student population served. All participating Compact member campuses are heavily encouraged to apply.
To learn more or ask questions, reach out to Will Brummett at [email protected].