Section Awards are given each year in four categories: Established Leader, Outstanding Civic Engagement Project, Emerging Scholar, and Best Paper.
Please e-mail Austin Trantham, Director of Awards, austin.trantham@saintleo.edu with any questions concerning the Section's annual awards!
The APSA Civic Engagement Section seeks nominations for our four annual awards.
Read about the awards below and submit nominations using the submission form. If you are interested in serving on an awards committee or have other questions about our Civic Engagement Awards, please email Austin Trantham, Director of Awards, at austin.trantham@saintleo.edu. The deadline for awards nominations is April 15th, 2026.
2026 APSA Civic Awards Nomination Form
ESTABLISHED LEADER AWARD
The APSA Civic Engagement Section Established Leader Award recognizes the outstanding and sustained achievements of an individual whose career commitment to civic engagement is marked by a consistent record of leadership in teaching, scholarship, and/or service to relevant communities.
OUTSTANDING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT PROJECT AWARD
This award recognizes a project led by an individual or team of individuals that serves to enhance and cultivate enduring student commitment to democratic engagement.
EMERGING SCHOLAR AWARD
The Emerging Scholar Award recognizes an individual who is making notable contributions in the teaching and/or research of civic engagement within five years of earning their terminal degree and whose career to date demonstrates significant promise in this area.
BEST PAPER AWARD
The Best Paper Award recognizes the Best Paper presented at a Civic Engagement panel at the APSA Annual Meeting.
2025
Established Leader Award: Elizabeth Bennion, Indiana University South Bend
"Elizabeth Bennion has built a career around civic learning and engagement, as exemplified by her teaching, scholarship, and professional service record. A true leader in the field, she has taken leadership roles in the field, including as an original executive committee member of the section. Dr. Bennion served as a co-editor o three important books that all focus on integrating civic engagement in our classmates, along with over 80 publications in the field. Further, her work on nonpartisan campus voter education and engagement yielded increased voter participation rates on her campus and have been held up by several national organizations as a model. Dr. Bennion has also succeeded in tearing down the ivory tower through her weekly television program that invites the public to hear from academics, politicians and community activists. She is a two-time winner of the Barbara Burch Award for Faculty Leadership and has paved the way for teacher-scholars across the country to center civic learning in their work. Simply put, the scope and quality of Elizabeth's scholarship and civic engagement activities--both academic and in practice--is extraordinary.
Outstanding Civic Engagement Project Award: Hartford Voter Captains Project, Trinity College
"The Hartford Voter Captains Project is an exceptional example of community-rooted civic innovation. By empowering trusted community members to lead voter outreach within their own social networks, this project reimagines what grassroots mobilization can look like: relational, culturally responsive, and deeply personal. It not only increases voter participation but also helps build lasting connections between residents and local organizations. Its thoughtful evaluation approach ensures the project can grow, adapt, and inform future civic engagement efforts."
Emerging Scholar Award: Diana Da-In Lee, Princeton University
"Diana Da-In Lee's research exemplifies broadening empirical work on civic engagement in political science through engaged scholarship and a commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices. Her dissertation investigates the supply-side problem for racial minority representation by conducting field and conjoint experiments in partnership with nonprofit organizations. By connecting empirical approaches with real-world problems, her work advances our understanding of how civic organizations can help build more inclusive political pipelines. Her broader research portfolio reflects an impressive range of methodological and substantive work on the politics of representation and racial and ethnic politics, particularly in urban and local contexts."
Emerging Scholar Award: William O' Brochta, Texas Lutheran University
"William O'Brochta sets a strong example early in his career on the intersection of the scholarship of discovery, teaching, and engagement.. Dr. O'Brochta's background in comparative politics helps him bring a global perspective to the acts of everyday citizen leadership that students can do in his classes. O'Brochta's emerging scholarly productivity is deeply connected to engagement, with publications that embed citizen participation with rigorous methods. "
Best Paper Award: Stephanie Chan (Lafayette College), Frank Reichert (The University of Hong Kong), and Rosa Castillo-Krewson (American University) for "Vulnerability as Identity Facet: Reconceptualizing Vulnerability to Conduct Civically Engaged Research"
"The paper presents an engaging framework for conducting civic engagement research in disaster recovery and authoritarian regimes. The authors' principal contribution is offering guidance for conducting research in challenging environments through the Vulnerability as Identity Facet (VIF) framework.
2024
Established Leader Award: Diana Owen, Georgetown University
"Diana Owen is an established scholar who conducts rigorous research on political socialization and civic education. She has published dozens of journal articles, edited chapters, and books on youth civic engagement. In addition to her published research, Diana's practical scholarship supports K-12 teaching and teacher-scholars in colleges and universities as we seek to identify effective practices for cultivating the public-spirited citizens who are essential for sustaining democracy. Diana is also a generous mentor to colleagues, whether K-12 teachers and state education administrators or graduate students and junior faculty. She is ultimately motivated by a desire for poitical science scholarship to have a real-world impact and collaborates with those who this desire to imporve our democratic capacity. The Established Leader Award Committee honors Diana Owen for her career-long continual impact on civic engagement."
Outstanding Civic Engagement Project Award: Towson University-Baltimore County Public Schools Model UN Project
"The Towson University-Baltimore County Public Schools Model UN Project, ably led by Alison McCartney, is a model civic engagement project. The initiative has been ongoing for over twenty years, and beautifully enhances and complements conventional classroom instruction for both college and high school students. Program participants learn about global issues and the role of democratic citizens in addressing them as they train, prepare for, and participate in the Model UN conference each year. The project is democratically engaging in its inclusivity, as it is free to its participants, and enrolls a majority of students who are economically or socially disadvantaged. Dr. McCartney is one of our discipline’s experts in the pedagogy of civic engagement, and the Outstanding Civic Engagement Project Award Committee honors her commitment to the critically important work of developing future civically-minded leaders."
Emerging Scholar Award: Jae Yeon Kim, Johns Hopkins University
"Since earning his Ph.D. in 2021 from the University of California-Berkeley, Jae Yeon Kim has begun building an impressive record of civically-engaged scholarship. His postdoctoral work has centered on examining the extent of civic associations in America utilizing Census data. Other projects utilize survey methods to explore the philanthropic efforts of civically-minded nonprofits and related organizations. Jae is currently conducting an applied study using citizen engagement to inform those who design and administer safety net programs; field experiments have already taken place in California, Colorado, and New York. All members of the Emerging Scholar Award Committee congratulate Jae on his research agenda to-date, and look forward to seeing him make future impacts on the discipline.
Best Paper Award: Maricruz Ariana Osorio (Bentley University), Stephanie L. DeMora (University of Pennsylvania), Melissa R. Michelson (Menlo College), Kescia A. Dickinson (University of Mississippi), Jasmine Jackson (Texas Christian University), and Jazmine Jimenez (Arizona State University) for "Students as Knowledge Brokers: Voter Information Sharing and the Political Consequences of Informing Students of Color and First-Generaltion Students on Electoral Politics"
"The selection committee felt strongly that this paper stood out among a strong group of nominees for its effective use of focus group methodologies to gather data on youth political socialization, and for its especially insightful analysis of the radiating effects of on-campus programming aimed at increasing civic knowledge and engagement among college students. The authors’ findings are quite valuable in spotlighting the key roles of students serving as change agents and mobilizing leaders—not only within higher education settings but also in their families and local communities. Finally, this work opens up a broad array of new questions about how our on-campus efforts to 'teach' civic engagement should be conceptualized, who we should be trying to reach with our programming efforts, and how our on-campus work can be structured to account for the radiating societal effects of our work with students."
2023
Established Leader Award: Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University
"Jane Mansbridge has long advanced the cause of the APSA Civic Engagement Section through her major works on democratic theory, which have helped to illustrate and illuminate the dynamics and problems surrounding civic life. Throughout her career, she has merged academic scholarship with practical application in the world of public policy through active participation in political and social movements. Finally, the award committee felt that Dr. Mansbridge’s unpretentiousness and approachability as a citizen-scholar has allowed her to work closely with many civic-based organizations while inspiring others in the discipline. These qualities certainly make Jane Mansbridge a fitting recipient for the 2023 Established Leader Award."
Outstanding Civic Engagement Project Award: Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh
"The Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh incorporated students, faculty, staff, and community members into their efforts to advance public service and democracy. The Center’s Afghan Asylum Assistance Task Force has worked tirelessly to assist displaced Afghans in completing visa applications following the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Taliban forces. The related Afghanistan Project has brought exiled Afghan scholars to the University of Pittsburgh to continue their important research work. In summation, the awarding committee was impressed by the Center’s ability to swiftly and proactively promote civic engagement through a multi-faceted response to global events."
Emerging Scholar Award: Sara Sadhwani, Pomona College
"Sara Sadhwani's impressive level of research activity and related practical experience with political and civic initiatives includes real-world policy implications. She currently serves as a commissioner on the California Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission, an organization responsible for federal and state-level redistricting efforts. Her academic expertise in the area of voting rights critically informed the commission’s work. She also serves on a civic engagement collaborative dedicated to scholarship on Asian-American voters. All members of the award committee conclusively and collectively agreed that Dr. Sadhwani’s substantive civic advocacy efforts merited recognition with the Section’s 2023 Emerging Scholar Award."
Best Paper Award: Oded Marom, University of Southern California for "Dinner Party Politics:: How Associational Culture Fosters Partisanship in the American Libertarian Movement.”
"Oded Marom's paper, "Dinner Party Politics," examines how associational life shapes partisan outcomes using an in-depth comparative case study design focused on two libertarian groups. Marom draws on the idea of civic styles to understand how cultural and political context are interpreted and shape group activities and beliefs. A real strength of this paper is the multi-faceted, original data collection that included four years of ethnographic observations and twelve focus groups. The findings of this research make a strong contribution to civic engagement, and have implications that are important for understanding how associational life influences its members beliefs and attitudes.
2022
Established Leader Award: Peter Levine, Tufts University
"Peter Levine is a fitting recipient of the first Established Leader Award for the new Civic Engagement Section. Peter has been a long-time advocate of teaching and scholarship in the field of civic engagement. He was the director of The Center for Information and Research in Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) for seven years. Prior to that he served as deputy director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal. He co-founded the National Alliance for Civic Education, and also served for three years as the chair of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. Further, he teaches a Summer Institute of Civic Studies, and he is the organizer of the annual Frontiers of Democracy conference. Finally, Peter has authored several books and scholarly articles on civic engagement."
Outstanding Civic Engagement Project Award: YMCA Citizen Scholar Program, University of South Florida
"The selection committee was impressed with so many dimensions of the University of South Florida YMCA Citizen Scholar
Program -- its scope, its duration, and itsdocumented success among them. This project was not just aspirational; it had a
significant track record of success."
Best Paper Award: Andrew Smith (University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley) for "Serving Learning at an HIS: A Preliminary Analysis"
"Andrew Smith's paper examines an important question of how students from historically marginalized communities are able to benefit from community based learning. This case study finds evidence that mainstream service learning approaches translate well to the context of Hispanic-Serving Institution and makes recommendations for a few adjustments that would further enhance the effectiveness. This paper makes constructive contributions to the conversation about service learning pedagogy."