Providing books to U.S. citizen hopefuls

The director and assistant director of our James F. Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship provided books and teacher resource guides for Lafayette Urban Ministry’s (LUM) citizenship classes on the evening of Tuesday, July 11.

Phillip VanFossen, Director of the Center and James F. Ackerman Distinguished Professor of Social Studies Education, and Anne Murphy-Kline, co-teaching coordinator for elementary student teaching and assistant director of the Center, were on hand to personally hand out “Citizenship: Passing the Test” to 20 students from Mexico, China, India, and El Salvador.

“Our goal is to support citizenship education by providing the LUM volunteers with resources and teaching support,” said Murphy-Kline.

“LUM has an outstanding group of volunteers and a well-established program. We can help them improve the effectiveness of the program by providing resources such as books and teaching guides and resources to make the work of the volunteers easier and more consistent throughout the course.”

LUM’s free Citizenship Classes prepares Tippecanoe County residents for the United States naturalization exam which is required to become a United States citizen.

“We hope for this to be an ongoing project for us and will continue to provide books and support as long as they want it,” said Murphy-Kline.

“This is a program which represents the core of our purpose–citizenship education—so we are happy to provide what help we can.”