ADP Civic Fellows

ADP Civic Fellows explore assessment, research and programmatic efforts that enact and support ADP’s mission and national work during one-year renewable terms. ADP invites applicants for this opportunity designed to give professionals/scholars in our network a national platform to develop their research and programmatic ideas that correlate with on-going ADP initiatives on a national scale​.

ADP Civic Fellows receive support from the ADP national office in the form of programmatic opportunities (e.g., webinars, conference presentations), publication opportunities (e.g., blog posts, monographs, reports and journal articles), leadership opportunities (e.g., serving on steering committee and/or appropriate initiative and/or network teams) and free registration to an appropriate AASCU event /conference. ADP Civic Fellows will be part of a cohort experience and will work closely with our national manager and steering committee to design and advance ADP national initiatives.

ADP Civic Fellows

Mike Caulfield

Mike Caulfield is the director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver. Caulfield was actively involved in ADP’s eCitizenship Initiative in 2009 and is the leader of the more recent Digital Polarization Initiative, otherwise known as DigiPo. Caulfield’s dedication to advancing online community learning and ensuring informed civic engagement brings life to DigiPo’s goals of building student web literacy and involving students in a cross-institutional project to fact-check, annotate, and provide context to news stories.

The Digital Polarization Initiative, Caulfield’s work as a Civic Fellow in partnership with ADP, hopes to eliminate the spread and normalization of “fake news,” the pervasiveness of online “callout culture,” state-sponsored hacking campaigns that breed distrust, and the impact of algorithmic behavior that prevents users from viewing online content from more than one perspective. It is Caulfield and ADP’s hope that students will learn not only to be more discerning of the information they trust but also how to help fix the problems in our current information environment.

Byron Craig

Byron Craig holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from Indiana University Bloomington. He is currently an assistant professor at Illinois State University in the School of Communication and serves as an affiliate faculty for the African American Studies program. His current research includes the rhetorical analysis of anti-Blackness and anti-racism, trauma, and social injustice through sites of memory.

In partnership with ADP, Craig is excited to be co-lead on a project that works on and researches, through rhetoric and public culture scholarship, how we might extend empathy to be constitutive of a more robust and participatory democracy that in turn opens spaces for a more just and equitable public culture.

David Hoffman

David Hoffman is director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and a faculty fellow in UMBC’s Honors College. He serves as Chair-Elect of the ADP Steering Committee and as a member of the National Advisory Board for Imagining America.

 As a member of the inaugural cohort of ADP Civic Scholars, Hoffman led the development of the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Theory of Change and now works with Center for Democracy and Civic Life colleague Romy Hübler and national partners to extend, amplify, and implement it.

Stephen Hunt

Stephen Hunt, professor and director of the School of Communication at Illinois State University, is an ADP Civic Fellow for the Extending Empathy Project. Hunt specializes in instructional communication, debate and communication pedagogy. His research reflects his interest in the pedagogy of civic and political engagement, critical thinking and analysis and the assessment of communication skills. Hunt’s dedication to training students and educating them about communication and speech will lend to his work with ADP, and his expertise will help improve ADP’s programming.

  In partnership with ADP, Hunt plans to co-lead a new project aimed at extending empathy. The goal of the project is to promote the emergence of a more equitable and democratic public where the ideas of diversity and inclusivity can flourish.

Romy Hübler

Romy Hübler is assistant director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life and an Honors College faculty fellow at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Hübler is UMBC’s institutional representative for the NASPA LEAD Initiative, campus liaison for ADP, a member of the 2020 Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement (CLDE) Meeting planning committee, and co-principal investigator on two Bringing Theory to Practice grants. Her recent publications include co-authored articles about the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Theory of Change and democratic teaching practices.

As a Civic Scholar, Hübler will continue to lead the development and implementation of the CLDE Theory of Change with UMBC colleague David Hoffman, which will include creating tools for putting the theory into practice.  

Scott Jordan

J. Scott Jordan, Ph.D., is a cognitive psychologist who studies the neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy of cooperative behavior. He has published more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries, as well as four edited books and six special issues of peer-reviewed journals. He is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and has held fellowships at the University of Ulm (Ulm, Germany), the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research (Munich, Germany), and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld (Bielefeld, Germany). He has given more than 

60 invited talks at universities and institutions all over the world and is currently serving as the chair of the Department of Psychology at Illinois State University. Finally, he is extremely proud of his international comic book collection.

Molly Kerby

Molly Kerby is an associate professor in the Department of Diversity & Community Studies and Director of Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) at Western Kentucky University (WKU). Her current research and teaching focuses on issues pertaining to assessment in higher education, organizational sustainability/resilience, democratic engagement, and community-based research. She has been an active member of the American Democracy Project since 2004.

Kerby will serve as a Civic Fellow for assessment and will chair ADP's new civic assessment learning network, providing a stimulus for ADP to re-envision assessment practices. The first, and foremost, part of the plan creates a collaborative group of highly experienced assessment researchers and academic faculty who are involved in creating civic and democratic engagement projects at ADP schools. The goal is to identify current best practices in assessment, evaluation, and data collection methods that address immediate and future demands. In the second phase of this project, the collaborative team will begin creating an assessment plan to empirically measure the impact of ADP on member institutions. Although the design of this effort will grow organically through collaboration, the proposed the blueprint will be grounded in the theoretical notions of risk and resilience.

Morgan Lewing

Morgan Lewing is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership at Texas A&M-Central Texas and an ADP Civic Fellow for faculty development.  His research primarily focuses on the relationship between faculty member’s commitment to service-learning and the support provided by their institutions.  A recent area of interest centers on millennial faculty members committed to community engagement, and Lewing hopes to leverage his findings towards the development of intentionally designed ADP programs providing support to early-career faculty members. 

Specifically, in partnership with the ADP, Lewing will lead a new research project aimed at identifying motivations, perceptions, and needed areas of professional development for early-career faculty members that engage, or may be interested in, community engagement.  These findings will then be utilized to ground the design of an ADP Early-Career Faculty Institute that attempts to build understanding and capacity in future community engagement leaders.

Leah Murray

Leah Murray, is both a professor of Political Science and Philosophy and the Democratic Engagement Coordinator in the Center for Community Engaged Learning at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Murray dedicated her own education to studying political science and is now committed to educating her students about government and politics. Murray’s courses are particularly relevant in this political climate and undoubtedly guide and her inform students on their path to become civically engaged citizens. Murray’s devotion to community service and her desire to advance the effectiveness of the American Democracy Project make her Civil Fellowship all the more timely and meaningful.

As a Civic Fellow, Murray intends to improve how information about ADP’s work is spread. Murray feels that not all members of ADP can attend the yearly Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Conference and therefore do not have adequate access to all the important information spread at these meetings. Murray intends to create a protocol to gather information from these conferences and distribute it using various means through various networks so that the information becomes more accessible. Smooth communication is an important part of what makes any organization function and with Murray’s help, expertise and dedication ADP hopes to improve these connections.

Kristin Norris 

Kristin Norris, Ph.D., is the director of assessment for the Office of Community Engagement at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Norris works with stakeholders (internal and external) to track community-engaged activities to conduct assessment, evaluation, and research that transforms higher education and demonstrates how IUPUI’s community engaged activities (e.g., programs, pedagogies, research, initiatives) support the institutional mission, demonstrate progress toward the strategic plan, and inform decision making. Norris is passionate about student civic outcomes and the public purpose of higher education in addressing community issues.  

Norris earned her B.S. from Purdue University (Ind.) and M.S. from Indiana University in Hospitality & Tourism Management and her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the IU School of Education at Indiana University. She is an editorial fellow for the Metropolitan Universities journal and chair of IUPUI’s Program Review and Assessment Committee.