Student Fellows
For academic year 2010-2011, the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service met one of its longterm goals by establishing a Student Fellowship Program. Naming WIPPS Intern Coordinator Ian Reese as the inaugural Student Fellow, WIPPS undertook a commitment to an initiative that intends to celebrate, feature, and support student scholarship as part of its public scholarship mission.
Student Fellow Ian Reese has been part of the WIPPS “team” since 2009. Currently at UWMC student, Reese also coordinates the WIPPS Intern Program, assists on a diverse range of leadership projects, and serves as a deliberation moderator, among other duties. Previous to his employment at WIPPS, Reese served for AmeriCorps in Wausau, where he tutored at-risk middle school students.
Reese’s WIPPS Student Fellowship Project involves working with WIPPS Outreach and Educational consultant John Greenwood on a two-year K-12 Deliberation Project called “Impact of Deliberation in the Secondary School Setting.” This Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service (WIPPS) pilot project, supported in part by funding from the Kettering Foundation, partners with the Athens School District and the Wausau School District’s New Horizons (Middle School) and Excel and Achieve (High School) Charter Schools to test the hypothesis that teaching deliberation in the classroom will improve student civic engagement, individual leadership skills, academic proficiency, and group decision making; it will help each student become a better citizen, and group member, who makes decisions that value the collective good of society.
This project posits that the concept of “character development” is a benchmark not only of leadership (both social and personal), but it is also an indicator of moral development, and as such, correlates with tendencies towards civic engagement. For a complete description of the project, click below:
Download Deliberation-in-the-Secondary-School-Classroom-Project here: (PDF) (DOC)