History
The Civic Education Project has been educating and inspiring gifted students toward civic responsibility for 10 years.
Program founder Rob Donahue, a Northwestern alumnus, founded the Civic Education Project (CEP) in 1997 with the intent to connect students at a young age with meaningful civic engagement. A few years earlier, he had founded Northwestern University’s Alternative Spring Break, a thriving program that served as a catalyst for Donahue’s work with CEP and his desire to give students “an on-ramp to civic life and civic learning earlier,” even before college.
As the Civic Education Project has grown in its number of sites and enrollment through the years, the primary motivating forces for CEP’s work have remained the same: bring social issues front and center, match assets with needs and foster an engaged citizenry.
While we are proud of the powerful impact these programs have made on thousands of students’ lives, we believe CEP's success lies not in its reputation, but in the future we're helping to create. By connecting the brightest kids in the country with the nation's most pressing needs, and then empowering those students to act in response to what they have learned, we can chip away at the nation's most complex social problems; we can change the world.
[Read more about our history ...]
Civic Education Project Timeline
The Civic Education Project has been educating and inspiring gifted students toward civic responsibility for 10 years.
Program founder Rob Donahue, a Northwestern alumnus, founded the Civic Education Project (CEP) in 1997 with the intent to connect students at a young age with meaningful civic engagement. A few years earlier, he had founded Northwestern University’s Alternative Spring Break, a thriving program that served as a catalyst for Donahue’s work with CEP and his desire to give students “an on-ramp to civic life and civic learning earlier,” even before college.
As the Civic Education Project has grown in its number of sites and enrollment through the years, the primary motivating forces for CEP’s work have remained the same: bring social issues front and center, match assets with needs and foster an engaged citizenry.
While we are proud of the powerful impact these programs have made on thousands of students’ lives, we believe CEP's success lies not in its reputation, but in the future we're helping to create. By connecting the brightest kids in the country with the nation's most pressing needs, and then empowering those students to act in response to what they have learned, we can chip away at the nation's most complex social problems; we can change the world.
[Read more about our history ...]
Civic Education Project Timeline
| 1997 | Active Learning Project is founded, with a pilot program of 7 students from four Chicago-area high schools studying HIV/AIDS in Atlanta, Georgia. |
| 1998 | CEP begins offering annual winter and spring break field study programs, primarily for Chicago-area students to sites throughout the Midwest. |
| 1998 | Bank of America Foundation gives CEP its first grant award. |
| 1999 | Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development (CTD) becomes the Civic Education Project's institutional home. |
| 1999 | CEP begins offering three-week summer courses for academically talented students through CTD's Equinox Program. |
| 1999 | Youth Service America presents CEP with a prestigious Social Entrepreneur Award. |
| 2000 | CEP offers first summer courses for junior high school students. |
| 2002 | By partnering with Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Johns Hopkins University, CEP expands its reach to students across the nation. |
| 2002 | CEP offers first programs exclusively for program alumni. |
| 2003 | The launch of Civic Leadership Institutes in Baltimore, Maryland, and Chicago, Illinois, marks an expansion of CEP's summer program offerings. |
| 2005 | CEP revamps spring program model under the name "CivicWeek" and opens the program to students across the country. |
| 2005 | Associated Press story about CivicWeek appears in publications throughout the country, including USA Today, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and others. |
| 2006 | CEP begins partnership with Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to provide intense service-learning programs for promising students with financial need from across the nation. |
| 2006 | CEP expands Civic Leadership Institute program model to the west coast with new site in San Francisco. |
| 2008 | CEP celebrates 10 years and serves its 2,000th student. |
next: Press & Awards
