Kalamazoo College and the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) are receiving more honors from the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge for efforts that boost voter participation on campus.

K is one of 192 institutions from around the country receiving the Highly Established Action Plan Seal, which salutes campuses for developing a standout nonpartisan action plan for democratic engagement ahead of the 2024 election. The seal is based on a rubric that calculates points within categories such as civic engagement and learning, voter registration and education, and democratic engagement and participation.

K scored 33.7 points out of a possible 36 with K Votes—the CCE’s nonpartisan, student-led coalition that informs the College’s students, faculty and staff members about voting and civic engagement—being the primary driver of K’s efforts in powering voter participation. K Votes provides resources, reflection spaces and opportunities for civic participation while striving to help all students develop their individual politic, understand American political systems, and feel comfortable and confident exercising their political rights. It also helped fuel the College’s impressive voter turnout rate of 83.7% in 2020 during the last presidential election, a figure nearly 14% higher than the college campus national average, according to the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) at the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University.

The ALL IN mission is to foster civic culture and institutionalize democratic engagement activities and programs at colleges and universities, making them a defining feature of campus life. For more information on ALL IN, visit its website at allinchallenge.org.