Compact20: Biennial Summit of Presidents & Chancellors

BIENNIAL SUMMIT OF PRESIDENTS & CHANCELLORS

RAJ VINNAKOTA

President, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Raj Vinnakota is the seventh president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation in July 2019, Vinnakota served as the Executive Vice President of the Youth & Engagement division at the Aspen Institute, a new venture focusing on youth leadership development, civic engagement, and opportunity. Before work at the Aspen Institute, he was the co-founder and CEO of The SEED Foundation, the nation’s first network of public, college-preparatory boarding schools for underserved children. Vinnakota remains on the board of The SEED Foundation.

A graduate and former trustee of Princeton University, Vinnakota has dedicated his career to educating, empowering, and supporting America’s youth, particularly those from disadvantaged communities. His work as a social entrepreneur and non-profit leader has earned him fellowships from Echoing Green, The Ashoka Foundation and the Aspen Institute, as well as awards such as Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award, Harvard University’s Innovation in American Government Award, and Oprah Winfrey’s Use Your Life award.

Vinnakota is currently leading a project with a group of institutional funders aimed at deepening understanding of the existing landscape of civic education in the United States in order to catalyze effective philanthropic engagement to strengthen our collective capacity for practicing democracy. At the Summit, Vinnakota will share results of that investigation with a focus on the opportunities for senior higher education leaders to drive positive change.

The Compact20 Summit of Presidents and Chancellors will be a working meeting with a focus on producing actionable results for individual campuses and for Campus Compact. In particular, as we leave the Summit:

Participants will take with them practical ideas for increasing participation on their campuses, with a special focus on seizing the opportunity of 2020 to build electoral engagement and long-term commitment.
Campus Compact will benefit from the knowledge and experience of Presidents and Chancellors as we refine a curriculum for strengthening the capacity of senior higher education leaders to catalyze positive change in civic engagement and democratic learning.

Throughout the Summit, we will be motivated by the theme Compact20—full participation—as we explore the linkages between full participation in our democracy, our economy, and our social and cultural life.

Featured speaker: Raj Vinnakota, President, Woodrow Wilson Foundation
Vinnakota recently authored From Civic Education to a Civic Learning Ecosystem, a white paper for an ideologically diverse consortium of foundations. He will speak on the conclusions of the research and the opportunities for colleges and universities as these funders move toward practical steps to act on the report’s recommendations.
Professional development for senior leaders: Workshopping a curriculum-in-development
Campus Compact has been developing a mini-curriculum on civic engagement and the public purposes of higher education. The purpose of the curriculum is to form the basis for integrating greater attention to higher education’s public purposes into existing professional learning opportunities for aspiring and new presidents. Our purpose in this session is to improve the draft curriculum, develop a plan for bringing it to various organizations, and get ideas from participants about how to move this effort forward.
National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service: A Report by Commissioner Janine Davidson, President, Metro State University Denver
This Congressionally-chartered commission is completing its effort to identify ways to increase participation in all forms of service to the United States. President Davidson will present the commission’s conclusions and legislative recommendations, with a special focus on how colleges and universities can contribute to a significant increase in service.
From today to Election Day: Presidents contributing to full voter participation, in partnership with ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge
This interactive session will focus on the opportunities for college and university presidents to contribute to achieving the goals of full voter registration and full voter participation in the 2020 election cycle. We will hear from presidents whose campuses have achieved significant voter participation increases and discuss specific steps each campus can take to move from where they are now to a full-participation campus.

BIENNIAL SUMMIT OF PRESIDENTS & CHANCELLORS

Featured Speaker

Goals

Agenda