USD's Hellwege Leads Chiesman Center for Democracy on the University's Vermillion Campus
This May, the center welcomed a new director, Julia Hellwege, Ph.D., associate professor of political science, who continued and expanded the center’s activities that promote civic engagement in South Dakota.
“The Chiesman Center supports research on civic engagement and civic education activities,” Hellwege said. “We support anything related to American democracy with a special focus on South Dakota.”
A major election year presented the center with numerous opportunities to educate the public and promote civic responsibilities.
One of these activities was a collaboration with South Dakota News Watch to poll 500 registered voters in the state to gauge their thoughts on election integrity, a variety of political races and the initiated measures and constitutional amendments on the ballot this year. The Chiesman Center and South Dakota News Watch sponsor two statewide polls on issues related to democracy each year.
Another project is administering the nationwide Kids Voting project in school systems throughout South Dakota. Designed to engage youth in voting at an early age, the Kids Voting project gives K-12 students across the state the resources to learn about registering to vote and the ability to cast their own vote on a special electronic ballot on election day.
“The Chiesman Center covers all the costs and the administration of the Kids Voting program. There is a lot of technical work building the ballot on the back end,” she said.
Housed in the Department of Political Science in the USD College of Arts & Sciences since 2018, the center was founded in1996 by the estate of philanthropist Allene Chiesman, who graduated from USD in 1936 with a bachelor’s degree in history. Hellwege said the move to USD allows the center to use resources and faculty expertise from departments throughout the entire university.
“The pillars of our broad mission are civic engagement, education and research,” Hellwege said.
A new project under the engagement pillar is called Engage South Dakota, which is also in collaboration with South Dakota News Watch.
“The Engage South Dakota project is like a community conversation,” she said. “We start with a community survey to understand what are the key issues that the people in the community care about and their proposed solutions. We ask what community members would like to see happen in the community. And then we invite community members, with a focus on community leaders, to come to a physical conversation.”
A pilot program in Hot Springs is currently underway in collaboration with the Southern Hills Economic Development Corporation.
Another center project is “Dakota Dialogues,” a podcast distributed through South Dakota Public Broadcasting that features conversations with local and national experts on governance and democracy.
Results from the center’s polls on South Dakotans’ thoughts on democracy were the genesis of the podcast.
“There were a lot of interesting questions about democracy and people's feelings toward democracy and alternatives to democracy,” Hellwege said. “We invited various experts and community leaders to discuss those results.”
Under the research pillar, the center gives grants to USD faculty for certain projects.
“We support research related to democracy of any USD faculty member in any discipline,” Hellwege said.
Research projects supported by the center include studies on how parenthood influences the legislative agenda of members of Congress and perceptions of the role of police in society, among others.
Undergraduate students at USD play a large role in performing this research, Hellwege said. “Most faculty who receive a research grant from the Chiesman Center do so with the intention of hiring an undergraduate research assistant.”
In addition, Hellwege employs two undergraduate assistants who perform many of the duties necessary to run the center’s various programs. “Students are involved at every level of all that we do,” she said.
Max Mickelson is one of the students who works at the Chiesman Center. The senior political science and economics major from Sioux Falls said he applied to work at the center after taking some classes with Hellwege.
“I primarily wanted to work at the Chiesman Center because I share its vision for democracy and think that it represents some of the best parts of the political science field,” he said.
Mickelson performed the technical work of creating the online ballot for Kids Voting this year and he traveled to Hot Springs to assist with the Engage South Dakota community survey program.
“The community survey project has been my favorite, because we are helping small community governments get the resources and knowledge they need to provide optimal services for their constituents,” he said.
As for the future of the Chiesman Center, Hellwege said she looks forward to hosting a conference on democracy next March and expanding the center’s research activities and programming.
“Some of the projects that I have in mind for the future tap into increased K through 12 and college student involvement in civic life,” she said. “I want to ensure that we are involving the whole state, especially young people, in civic engagement.”
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