ABSTRACT
The Iowa Caucus Project at Drake University is a multipronged effort to coordinate and institutionalize the unique opportunities for democratic engagement among the campus community during the quadrennial first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. Iowa is home to the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, the starting point for the parties’ presidential nomination campaigns. Since 1972, Iowa has been a fixture in the nation’s political life and innumerable would-be presidential candidates have flocked to the state to woo Iowa voters in the hopes of jumpstarting their campaigns for the White House. Much of the story of how Drake has developed an institutional culture for sustained student participation can be traced to the Iowa Caucus Project. Civic education and engagement is a particularly compelling arena for experiential learning theory precisely because democracy requires the application of knowledge to real-world problems.
