{"id":146,"date":"2026-09-01T06:57:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.odu.edu\/odufacultytemplate\/?page_id=146"},"modified":"2026-09-04T12:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T16:25:12","slug":"bio","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/bio\/","title":{"rendered":"History of the Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the Center Began<\/h2>\n

The Center for Civic Lands and Democratic Stewardship was founded at Old Dominion University in 2026<\/strong> from a simple observation: public lands do more than preserve landscapes, ecosystems, and historic places. They also create relationships among people.<\/p>\n

The idea emerged in part through research on volunteers serving in the National Park Service. That work involved extensive interviews with volunteers and National Park Service employees as well as immersive, residential volunteer service in multiple national park units. (Learn more about that research here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

What began as a study of volunteerism increasingly revealed something larger.<\/p>\n

Volunteers described relationships with places, visitors, employees, fellow volunteers, communities, history, and future generations. Parks were not simply recreational destinations or protected resources. They were places where people practiced stewardship, encountered public institutions, learned stories about communities and the nation, and assumed responsibility for something belonging to everyone.<\/p>\n

These experiences led to a broader question:<\/p>\n

What if we understood public lands as civic institutions as well as protected places?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Center Takes Shape<\/h2>\n

The Center for Civic Lands and Democratic Stewardship was established at Old Dominion University to pursue that question.<\/p>\n

The Center brings together longstanding work in civic engagement, public administration, volunteerism, community-engaged scholarship, deliberative democracy, and public lands<\/strong> under a common framework.<\/p>\n

Its creation reflects a belief that universities can contribute most effectively to public life when they work with<\/em> communities and practitioners rather than simply studying them from a distance.<\/p>\n

Looking Forward<\/h2>\n

The Center is being built as a collaborative space.<\/p>\n

Its future will be shaped through relationships with students, faculty, public-land professionals, volunteers, communities, nonprofit organizations, scholars, and others who care about shared landscapes.<\/p>\n

The Center’s history, just like that of public lands, is still being written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the Center Began The Center for Civic Lands and Democratic Stewardship was founded at Old Dominion University in 2026 from a simple observation: public lands do more than preserve landscapes, ecosystems, and historic places. They also create relationships among people. The idea emerged in part through research on volunteers serving in the National Park …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32712,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32712"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/146\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/civiclands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}