University of Mississippi
Campus Specs
🏫Campus Type: 4 year, Public
🧑🏾🎓 Enrollment: 21,014
🗺 Location: Oxford, Mississippi
Campus Resources
💰Received Funding? $5000 Codesigner Grant
👨🏽💼Leader of Effort? Assistant Director of Community Partnerships, Office of Community Engagement
🙋🏽♀️Student Power? 10 Student Voting Ambassadors and 1 team leader
⏰ Development Time? Voting Engagement Roundtable formed in 2019
UMVotes Campus Created Resources
Student Body-Facing Materials
General Materials
UMVotes Voting Ambassador Materials
Faculty Champion Program Materials
Outreach Materials (including point system and rewards, menu of activities to choose from, letter to faculty, and sign up form text)
UMVotes Campus Strategy
Integrating voter registration into existing processes with campus partners to reach every student.
University of Mississippi included a voter engagement module as part of their online orientation in Fall 2020 that reached 3000 students. They also partnered with residence life and included videos about how to participate in the voting process during residence hall meetings and installed physical voting stations in all of the halls.
Additionally, the faculty liaison at the University of Mississippi’s Voting Engagement Roundtable created and led a robust Faculty Champions program, working with 47 faculty members to integrate student voter engagement into their class activities.
University of Mississippi’s athletics department also led an effort that resulted in the full registration of ten out of fourteen athletics teams on campus.
Through your chosen process, executing individualized voter registration and democratic engagement tactics.
Through the Faculty Champions Model, faculty members were able to choose from a 3-tiered system to incorporate a Blackboard Module, a visit from a Student Voting Ambassador, and/or extra credit opportunities for learning about voting into their classroom.
Ten Student Voting Ambassadors were able to facilitate 23 presentations that reached 700 students through those classes. The Student Voting Ambassadors were all trained in assisting students through the voting process, wrote informational blog posts that went out to the student body, and held office hours to support student voters as needed.
Due to limited person-to-person capacity at the University of Mississippi as a result of COVID-19, the Voting Engagement Roundtable creatively adapted by setting up physical voting stations in residence halls and athletic facilities. Students could get all the information they needed to vote at these stations, including notebooks with QR codes, state-by-state voting guides, and voter registration forms.
Students at the University of Mississippi were also given the option to attend follow-up notary appointments with the University, an essential access point to address Mississippi’s vote-by-mail laws that required ballots to be notarized.
Institutionalizing these tactics to be a sustainable part of your campus culture.
University of Mississippi’s Voting Engagement Roundtable was formed in 2019 and provided a new level of coordinating infrastructure to share existing efforts related to voting engagement and promote new collaborative efforts around voter registration, voter education, and voter turnout across the institution. Anyone interested in voter engagement can attend and share what they’re doing to help cross-promote efforts for an institution-wide collaboration.
Additionally, senior administration has committed to this work, including the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs & Dean of Students, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Community Engagement, Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Governmental Affairs, and Vice President of the Associated Student Body, as well as other student leaders. The Roundtable has new momentum and focus in developing and implementing strong university-level voting engagement plans to reduce barriers, educate students, and boost participation rates.
Leaders of the Roundtable are institutionalizing the Faculty Champion, educational, and Ambassador programs and external community partnerships to take place every semester, not just during federal election years.
