In 2023, four institutions, Bard College, North Carolina A&T State University, Tuskegee University, and Prairie View A&M University launched a network collaborative course (NCC) project entitled "Student Voting: Power, Politics, and Race in the Fight for American Democracy." The course was a historical and interdisciplinary examination of the 26th Amendment which was used as a prism through which to examine both the history of disenfranchisement and the fight for voting rights in the United States, and the role of college communities in that process. The NCC was funded through a $399,000 award from the Mellon Foundation to support the three-year applied learning research curricular project.

Moreover, this project highlighted how academic institutions and their leaders can also serve as important civic actors in promoting and defending democratic principles. The four institutions centrally involved in the project offer unique insights into the role of colleges in the fight for voting rights, particularly the fight against discrimination based on race and age.

NCCs are designed to bring students and faculty from diverse institutions into conversation. They are co-designed by faculty from the respective institutions and taught simultaneously. The courses may differ by institution, but they share key assignments that facilitate synchronous classroom discussions and synchronous and asynchronous collaborations that allow students to share experiences and understandings that that provide meaning and context to the course materials. NCCs successfully incorporated visual and written case studies envisioned in this project as teaching materials, including materials produced by students during the course.

This roundtable will bring together the four institutions, and professors involved in the NCC to discuss the effectiveness of the partnership, what they learned from using the platform and technique, and their plans for the course moving forward.