FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana University Center for Civic Literacy recently received a $25,000 grant from the Simon Family Foundation to study the gap in civics education available to students in wealthy and poor neighborhoods.
“There are so many things we don’t know about the distressing deficit of civic knowledge,” said Sheila Kennedy, professor of law and policy and director of the center. “One of the most troubling aspects of the decline in both civic literacy and civic engagement is unequal access to civic opportunities and instruction. We are so grateful to the Herbert Simon Family Foundation for enabling us to study and analyze that problem.”
The Center for Civic Literacy, a multidisciplinary research center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, pursues an aggressive research agenda to identify and address the causes and civic consequences of Americans’ low levels of constitutional, economic and scientific knowledge. It hosts a website and blog, and it publishes a quarterly newsletter and the free online, peer-reviewed journal Civic Literacy.
Established in July 2012, the center is supported by the IUPUI Signature Centers Initiative, which is designed to provide selected centers initial funding for a period of three years. The Simon Family Foundation grant is the first grant the center has received outside of IUPUI.