Collection is incomplete. This site is a research map, not a ranking or a complete census of civic activity. Omission does not establish that an institution has no relevant activity. Counts describe documented records within the stated collection frame. They do not establish national prevalence or support causal or comparative policy conclusions.
Separate collection universes
| Universe | Unit and denominator | Public treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Formal undergraduate programs | Verified majors, minors, academic certificates and qualifying academic programs under the existing substantive PPE/political-economy/civic-formation rubric | Undergraduate Major & Minor Explorer; requirement analyses use records with sufficient course coding |
| Institutional ecosystem | Centers, institutes and other independently documented institutional entities | Ecosystem Dashboard; counts are entities, not institutions or credentials |
| Curricular initiatives | Governed undergraduate curricular arrangements with explicit civic purposes, academic credit and participation/completion rules | Curricular Initiatives; selected documented records, with no national denominator |
| National networks and associations | Cross-institution networks and projects | Context below; excluded from institution and program counts |
Relationships are evidence-backed links. One center may administer several curricula; one curriculum may involve several entities. A link never creates another credential or increases program counts. A center’s existence does not establish a curricular requirement. Campus offices, directories and unrelated course listings do not automatically qualify as curricula.
The canonical registry and public program table have different denominators. Bates’s former Civic Engagement GE concentration remains historical canonical evidence and is represented in Curricular Initiatives; Ohio State’s event-points Community Engaged Leader Certificate remains outside academic-program and curricular views. Planned and legacy formal programs retain explicit interpretation flags. A dated paper’s “census” means its documented project frame, not every US civic activity.
Institutional frame
Current institutional comparisons concern four-year undergraduate institutions, identified using institutional level in the local IPEDS directory. Documented non-IPEDS exceptions already in the program collection remain explicit exceptions. Two-year colleges have not been studied systematically and are outside current comparative universes. This is a study-design limit, not a claim that they lack majors, credentials or civic activity.
The September 14, 2026 scope correction retains all 203 historical ecosystem records but removes three from current institution-level views: Cuyahoga (two-year), CUNY’s mixed-system record (system context) and Arizona’s curriculum-only Civics in Gen Ed record (migrated curricular authority). The resulting existing-entity view contains 200 records. Adding ePluribus Stanford and Southern Mississippi’s Center for Community Engagement yields 202 current-view entities from 205 retained records. Colorado Mountain College is four-year in IPEDS and remains included. Grand Valley’s institutional identifier is resolved through the matched institutional directory. System-wide evidence is not attributed to every campus.
Curricular inclusion and edge cases
An included initiative needs official evidence of a named or identifiable arrangement, an undergraduate population, an institutional owner, explicit civic-learning purposes, academic credit, documented participation/completion rules, and durable governance. Catalog inclusion, formal approval, ongoing governance or documented continuing implementation can establish durability.
Include civic GE requirements, required first-year sequences, civic core reforms, school/cohort requirements, structured optional noncredential pathways and governed course clusters. An institutional requirement satisfied by one course can qualify; an isolated elective cannot. Collect only the civic component of a larger GE curriculum. Exemptions, alternative routes and population boundaries remain visible. Preserve institutional units without automatic semester/quarter conversion.
Governed mixed academic/co-curricular pathways may qualify when academic learning routes and civic completion rules are documented. Academic credit need not be independently established for every alternative route. Such initiatives are labeled mixed, and any route with unspecified credit remains explicitly described; inclusion does not imply a common minimum credit total. Citizen Scholars at Southern Mississippi illustrates this boundary. Purely co-curricular arrangements without documented academic routes remain outside scope.
Required, optional and alternative participation are distinct. “Alternative” denotes an authorized route to a broader requirement. Active and operating pilots appear by default; approved/planned records are selectable separately. Effective cohorts and version histories distinguish approval from implementation. Stanford’s 2027 three-quarter COLLEGE expansion is not a 2026 requirement.
Ordinary majors, minors and academic certificates follow the formal-program rubric. Purely co-curricular programs, voter drives, generic service resources, one-off events, K–12-only activity, research reviews and directories do not qualify. Faculty course-development support requires separate evidence of a governed student curricular arrangement before curricular inclusion.
Minors, CIP and IPEDS
IPEDS completions data do not provide a minor award category. Minors can also lack distinct CIP assignments, making systematic discovery harder than discovery of degree programs. Some institutions assign internal or state minor CIPs; those are recorded only with credential-specific evidence and kept distinct from degree reporting. A parent department’s or institution’s CIP does not establish a minor’s CIP. Unknown is different from documented absence of a separate CIP. Non-degree curricula and institutional entities cannot be comprehensively found through degree-completions codes.
Sources, review and denominators
Official catalogs, program requirements, registrar indexes, governance materials and university announcements establish canonical additions. Search results, submitted lists and third-party directories supply leads only. Sources carry checked dates, relevant catalog versions and observations. Inaccessible or contradictory evidence remains unresolved. Low-confidence fit, unclear credit or completion rules, and uncertain campus boundaries enter a review queue; new borderlines require Simon’s recorded adjudication before publication.
Partial and existence-only program records do not establish the absence of course requirements. Requirement rates use course-coded eligible records, report their denominator and preserve unknown values. DESK assessment denominators remain explicitly separate from record counts. Collection depth and source completeness are evidence limits, not ratings of institutional quality.
Time, discovery and updating
The follow-up search window is June 1–September 14, 2026 for web publication or change. Older programs surfaced by new pages retain their historical status. Discovery date, publication date, approval, launch, effective term and first cohort are separate observations; a recently indexed page does not establish a recent launch. Web-publication lag is a possible limitation, not an assumed explanation for any particular omission.
The initial curricular collection is a bounded official-source seed review, not a national census. The discovery ledger records searched institutions, queries, evidence, exclusions, duplicates and unfinished cases. Search limits and unresolved cases constrain coverage. “No qualifying record verified in this search” does not mean “no civic activity.” A broader national census requires a separately specified institutional frame, stratified pilot and resourcing.
Annual updates should refresh institutional identifiers, rerun the documented query protocol, recheck accepted sources, adjudicate pending cases and review planned/pilot initiatives. Site built, data snapshot and source last checked are different dates. Snapshot metadata records the current build inputs; individual records show source-check dates. The live site uses a disposable current snapshot; dated white-paper, CTREE, SEJ, PS and conference artifacts remain frozen.
Network context
The Alliance for Civics in the Academy and PPE Society are contextual networks. Hosting or affiliation at Stanford/Hoover or UNC does not make a network an institutional unit for this collection. Hoover is not added merely because it hosts a project. This appendix is illustrative; it is not a national-network census.