Center for Democracy to move to Augsburg College

The Center for Democracy and Citizenship, a program out of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, will move to Augsburg College in time for classes in the fall.

The Executive Committee of the Augsburg College Board of Regents approved the move Friday morning, which will involve relocating the center from the University’s West Bank to a facility in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, near Augsburg, and transferring about 11 employees. No positions will be cut.

The center is part of the Politics and Governance area at the Humphrey Institute, and focuses on promoting civic engagement in communities via organizing coalitions, providing coaching and training in civic engagement at schools and community organizations and doing research on democracy and citizenship.

Elaine Eschenbacher, associate director of the center, said the grant-funded program was having difficulty “sustaining its mission” as the University put more emphasis on research. “We felt that the mission of Augsburg was a really good match for the program.”

Harry Boyte, director of the center at the University, will continue to be a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute. “What we like about Augsburg is the ground-level connection to neighborhoods and diverse cultures,” Boyte said in a statement. “Augsburg is rare in that it has strong connection to place, in this case an urban setting and Cedar-Riverside. We’re absolutely convinced this is the wave of the future and Augsburg is going to be a pioneer.”

The center will move all of its grants to Augsburg by July 1, but the center will remain on campus until Sept. 1, when the space in Cedar-Riverside is ready.

Over the next year, the center will work with leaders at Augsburg to integrate their work into the college’s curriculum.

The center, which was founded by Harry Boyte in 1993, grew out of Project for Public Life, established at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute by Boyte in 1989. The center raises its $1.3 million annual budget through grants, contracts and individual gifts.