American Assembly

The American Assembly, an affiliate of Columbia University, was founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1950 to illuminate issues of public policy. The Assembly's major objectives are to focus attention and stimulate informed discussion on a range of critical U.S. policy topics; to inform government officials, community and civic leadership, and the general public regarding the factual background and the range of policy options in a given issue; to facilitate increased communication among decision makers from the public and private sectors, as well as from institutions and organizations concerned with critical public policy issues; and to raise on a continuing basis the level and quality of public policy discourse on national and international issues.

Resource Link: http://www.americanassembly.org

Americans for Informed Democracy (AID)

Americans for Informed Democracy (AID) is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization working to raise global awareness on more than 500 U.S. university campuses and in more than 10 countries. AID fulfills its mission by coordinating town hall meetings on America's Role in the World, hosting leadership retreats, and publishing opinion pieces and reports on issues of global importance. Through these efforts, AID seeks to build a new generation of globally conscious leaders who can shape an American foreign policy appropriate for our increasingly interdependent world.

Resource Link: http://www.aidemocracy.org

Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania

The Annenberg Public Policy Center has been the premier communication policy center in the country since its founding in 1993. By conducting and releasing research, staging conferences and hosting policy discussions, its scholars have addressed the role of communication in politics, adolescent behavior, child development, health care, civics and mental health, among other important arenas. The Center?’s researchers have drafted materials that helped policy-makers, journalists, scholars, constituent groups and the general public better understand the role that media play in their lives and the life of the nation. The Policy Center maintains offices in Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

Resource Link: http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org

Appreciative Inquiry Commons

The AI Commons is devoted to the sharing of academic resources and practical tools on Appreciative Inquiry and the rapidly growing discipline of positive change. The site is hosted by Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. Appreciative Inquiry is the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations and the relevant world around them.

Resource Link: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu

Arizona State University - Intergroup Relations Center

The IRC provides education and training opportunities to students, faculty, and staff as well as intergroup conflict prevention and mediation services. It sponsors retreats, workshops, seminars, and institutes for faculty, staff and students, and collects, develops, and disseminates educational resources and data on discrimination, hate crimes, and intergroup conflict incidents at ASU.

Resource Link: http://www.asu.edu/provost/intergroup/

Campus-ADR.org

The primary objective of the Campus Conflict Resolution Resources project (Campus-adr.org) is to significantly increase administrator, faculty, staff and student awareness of, access to, and use of conflict resolution information specifically tailored to the higher education context. The Resource Center builds on the success of the Campus Mediation Resources (CMR) website built by Bill Warters and hosted by the Mediating Theory and Democratic Systems program at Wayne State. The CMR site has been phased out.

Resource Link: http://www.campus-adr.org

Center for Collaborative Organizations

The Center for Collaborative Organizations, formerly the Center for the Study of Work Teams, is based at the University of North Texas and was created for the purpose of education and research in all areas of collaborative work systems. The Center officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1992, although the first conference was held in 1990.

Resource Link: http://www.workteams.unt.edu

Center for Collaborative Policy

The Center is a joint program of California State University, Sacramento and the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. The mission of the Center is to build the capacity of public agencies, stakeholder groups, and the public to use collaborative strategies to improve policy outcomes. The Center produces a quarterly newsletter called The Collaborative Edge.

Resource Link: http://www.csus.edu/ccp/

Center for Deliberative Democracy

Housed in the Department of Communication at Stanford University and established in 2003, the Center for Deliberative Democracy is devoted to research about democracy and public opinion obtained through Deliberative Polling. Developed by Professor James S. Fishkin, Deliberative Polling is a technique which combines deliberation in small group discussions with scientific random sampling to provide public consultation for public policy and for electoral issues.

Resource Link: http://cdd.stanford.edu/

Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago

Building knowledge to serve children is the mission of the Chapin Hall Center for Children. Located at the University of Chicago, Chapin Hall is a research and development center that brings the highest standards of scholarship and the intellectual resources of one of the world's great research universities to the real-world challenges of policymakers and service providers struggling to ensure that children grow, thrive, and take their place in a formidable world. Working behind the scenes with lawmakers and government administrators, as well as on the front lines with program providers, Chapin Hall puts rigorous, non-partisan research in the hands of those who shape the programs and policies that affect all children in their daily lives.

Resource Link: http://www.chapinhall.org

Choices for the 21st Century Program

The Choices Program at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies offers deliberation-focused supplemental curriculum units for U.S. History, World History and Global Studies. Choices units feature historical background, a role play centered on alternative policies, primary source materials, detailed lesson plans and study guides. Units are affordable.

Resource Link: http://www.choices.edu

CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement)

CIRCLE promotes research on the civic and political engagement of Americans between the ages of 15 and 25. Although CIRCLE conducts and funds research, not practice, the projects that we support have practical implications for those who work to increase young people's engagement in politics and civic life. CIRCLE is also a clearinghouse for relevant information and scholarship. CIRCLE is based in the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.

Resource Link: http://www.civicyouth.org

Collaborative Democracy Network

A network of over 100 interdisciplinary and international scholars has been established to focus on the need to enhance the role of deliberative and collaborative methods in democratic governance. The goal of the network is to collaborate on research and theory building to strengthen the capacity of democratic governance institutions to produce better public policy. The Collaborative Democracy Network is being coordinated by the Center for Collaborative Policy at California State University Sacramento.

Resource Link: http://www.csus.edu/ccp/cdn/

Colorado State University - Center for Public Deliberation

The nonpartisan Center for Public Deliberation (CPD) was founded in August 2006 within the Speech Communication Department at Colorado State University, and serves as an affiliate of the National Issues Forum (NIF) network. Working from a communication perspective, CPD staff and students focus on the process of deliberation, not necessarily its product. Deliberation requires safe places for citizens to come together, good and fair information to help structure the conversation, and skilled facilitators to guide the process. The Center is dedicated to providing these three key ingredients to Northern Colorado.

Resource Link: http://www.cpd.colostate.edu

Columbia University - Teachers College Peace Education Center (TCPEC)

TCPEC's mission is to further the development of the field of peace education, particularly in recognition of the unprecedented need to address issues of security, war and peace, human rights and social justice, sustainable development and ecological balance. The Peace Education Center was established to provide outreach, resourcing, training and in-service education. The Center conducts research, curricular development and outreach activities in many world regions, working in collaboration with other such centers in the Philippines, Lebanon, India, Jordan, Japan, Israel, and Turkey.

Democracy Collaborative and Community-Wealth.org

Since 2000, the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland has undertaken integrated activities aimed at leveraging the resources of higher education institutions in support of democratic renewal, civic participation, and community building. The Collaborative's website now leads to Community-Wealth.org, its main project, which provides information about community wealth building activities.

Resource Link: http://www.democracycollaborative.org

Democracy Lab

Democracy Lab provides online forums for use in high school and college classes. National Issues Forums-style forums run for 10 weeks, fall and spring. Students from around the country dialogue in small groups and are guided from dialogue to inquiry and to action. Instructors adopt Democracy Lab and students purchase online access for $25.

Resource Link: http://www.teachingdemocracy.org

Discovering Common Ground: Missouri Communities Deliberate

Sandra Hodge at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri directs this program, which promotes deliberation in Missouri primarily through National Issues Forums. Downloadable from Discovering Common Ground's website are three PowerPoint presentations about moderating, convening and recording deliberative public forums, and an 83-page manual titled Deliberation and Your Community: How to Convene and Moderate Local Public Forums Using Deliberative Decision-Making.

Resource Link: http://extension.missouri.edu/cd/pubdelib/

Engaged Institutions

American colleges and universities are major assets for cities and regions and hold enormous potential to help solve society?’s most pressing challenges. Over the past 20 years, there has been a great push for these institutions to be more responsive and engaged in what happens outside their institutional walls. This means being better neighbors by more thoroughly integrating civic engagement within their organizational structures and practices, and their research, teaching, and outreach activities. A key question for advocates for the ?“engaged institution?” is: how can we produce this sort of deep organizational transformation? Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Engaged Institutions project seeks to provide answers to this question. PolicyLink, a national research and action institute based in Oakland, California, is the national evaluator of the project and maintains the website.

Resource Link: http://www.engagedinstitutions.org

Global Dialogue Institute

The Global Dialogue Institute at Temple University promotes a process called 'Deep-Dialogue' within and among the cultures, religions and other direction-shaping forces of the world. GDI fosters the Three Dimensions of Deep-Dialogue (ethics, globality and spirituality) by organizing and promoting research, publications, and face-to-face Inter-World Encounters in its Twelve-Step Program to Deep-Dialogue.

Resource Link: http://www.global-dialogue.com