​Virginia Commonwealth University hosted the ninth annual Virginia Student Voting Summit, a nonpartisan event bringing together students, campus administrators, election officials, and community advocates from across Virginia to promote civic engagement ahead of the midterm elections. Presented by VCU's Division of Student Affairs, the Baldacci Institute for Civil Discourse, and the Campus Vote Project of the Fair Election Center, the daylong summit gave student leaders the chance to share strategies for nonpartisan voter engagement and build relationships with peers doing similar work across the commonwealth. The event closed with a moderated dialogue facilitated by the Close Up Foundation, inviting students to deliberate on key policy issues while practicing respectful engagement across differing perspectives. For NCDD's network, the summit models exactly the kind of structured, cross-campus dialogue and civic engagement work central to NCDD's mission, particularly its emphasis on building constructive relationships around contested political topics. The event also highlighted the work of VCU Votes, a student-led nonpartisan initiative with more than 300 members working to register and mobilize student voters ahead of Election Day. This annual rotating summit offers a replicable model for other universities interested in building similar nonpartisan civic engagement infrastructure.

American University's Sine Institute of Policy and Politics has released the fifth installment of its annual poll on young Americans, finding that respondents aged 18 to 34 express strong pride in the country's history and firm belief in diversity and community values, even as most describe the nation's current state using words like "broken," "divided," and "polarized." The poll found that while 57% of young Americans report feeling proud to be American, nearly half say they lack a strong sense of belonging despite a clear desire to build stronger community ties, revealing a gap between national identity and lived civic connection. Conducted in partnership with the Close Up Foundation and Future Caucus and shaped in part by a 19-student advisory group, the survey offers a data-grounded look at how young people define their generation's civic role and participation. The findings give NCDD's network concrete evidence of the tension between disconnection and desired belonging that dialogue and deliberation work is designed to address, particularly among a generation navigating the country's 250th anniversary.

​Jason Vadnos, a Vanderbilt University student and contributor to the State of the Student Vote Substack, examines what existing research can tell us about the long-term impact of student voter engagement work in a May 2026 article. Drawing on decades of service-learning and civic engagement studies, Vadnos argues that high-quality, reflective civic work in college is consistently linked to later careers in public service, nonprofit leadership, and civic life, even though direct evidence specific to nonpartisan student voter mobilization remains thin. He points to a practical takeaway for practitioners now: programs that build in structured reflection, mentorship, and explicit connections to civic identity produce more durable outcomes than turnout numbers alone can show. His call to invest in better data collection on these programs speaks directly to NCDD's mission of strengthening the infrastructure and practice of dialogue, deliberation, and civic engagement across generations.

iCivics and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are co-hosting the 2027 Civic Learning Week National Forum on March 11–12, 2027, in Charlotte, North Carolina, under the theme Civic Education in the Digital Age, and are now accepting proposals from presenters. The Forum brings together researchers, educators, policymakers, and public- and private-sector leaders to strengthen the national movement for civic education, with this year's call seeking sessions on digital tools in civic learning, how young people learn, trust in civic institutions, and field adoption and assessment. Prospective presenters can join an optional webinar on August 28, 2026, and must submit proposals by September 18, 2026. This call offers NCDD's network of educators and practitioners a direct avenue to shape national conversations about civic education, reinforcing NCDD's mission to strengthen democratic participation through informed, engaged citizenship.

Civics Unplugged is accepting applications for the 2026–2027 Civic Innovators Fellowship, a free, virtual, 16-week program that prepares high school students to take action in their communities. Running from September through April, the Fellowship combines interactive, discussion-based weekly sessions on history, democracy, technology, and culture with skill-building, purpose exploration, and hands-on community projects, all within a regional cohort supported by alumni mentors. Its admissions approach is deliberately non-traditional, setting aside GPA, test scores, and resumes in favor of assessing applicants on who they are and what they hope to build, with the stated aim of finding potential rather than prior achievement. The application deadline is September 4, 2026, at 11:59 PM PST, and the program is open to current high school students and those on a first gap year begun in June 2026, including international applicants for its U.S.-focused, English-language content. For the NCDD network, the Fellowship is a notable youth civic-engagement pipeline and a resource practitioners can pass along to young people ready to start doing community work now.