Civic engagement and the global liberal arts college: Empowering students through immersive curriculum, interactive pedagogy, experiential learning, and residential education

This chapter empirically illustrates how civic engagement education has been fostered and hindered in a less liberal context, with Yale-NUS College in Singapore as the case study. Our findings are informed by focus group interviews, document analysis, and personal observations. Building on the conceptual foundation in Chapter 4, we argue that the liberal arts and sciences common curriculum, active learning pedagogies, intimacy and multinationalism of the college community, support for student initiatives, and can-do culture of Yale-NUS have combined to nourish vibrant spaces for student civic engagement. However, there remain
barriers to civic engagement. These include students’ workload and major selection, perceived liberal bias in the college, national political regulations, and the intimacy of the college community, which can be a double-edged sword. Additionally, international students have faced distinctive challenges such as Singapore’s legal and cultural constraints on political engagement, and the absence of a critical mass of co-nationals for collective action.