Public Service Medalists

Welcome to the Center for Civic Renewal at Sweet Briar College. Founded in 1999, our mission is to foster effective citizen engagement through understanding of the American constitutional system.

Our first goal is internal, to serve the Sweet Briar community---students, alumnae, staff, and faculty---by creating and promoting innovative programming and service learning. To accomplish this, we developed the Law & Society Program here at Sweet Briar College.

Our second goal is external, to promote law and civics education for citizenship in our local community, in the Commonwealth of Virginia as well as the nation at large. To accomplish this, we have developed the Virginia Law-Related Education Center.

Sweet Briar offers students a curriculum that studies the influence of participants in the judicial process (courts, judges, lawyers, and clients), as well as the impact of cultural norms, economic relationships, art, popular culture, media, and social institutions, on how law is articulated in society.

Through the Law & Society Program we promote and coordinate internships for students in the broader fields of law, politics, and public service. In recent years we have had students interning along a spectrum from the Supreme Court of the United States, to the office of the Amherst County Commonwealth's Attorney.

We have also promoted a number of special programs for the campus and local communities.

VALREC, the Virginia Law-Related Education Center, is part of a nationwide network of legal education centers under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice's Youth for Justice Program. Five private national institutions (the American Bar Association, the Center for Civic Education, the Constitutional Rights Foundation, Street Law, and Phi Alpha Delta) form a national partnership that oversees the fifty state law-related education centers.

Sweet Briar College's Center for Civic Renewal was selected in Fall 2002 by these five national organizations to house the law-related education center for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

VALREC coordinates law-related and civics education programs and initiative throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. It provides institutes and workshops for teachers, offers training in Law and Society curricula and practices in civic engagement for students, and maintains a law and civics resouce library in the Center's home in Gray Hall, on the campus of Sweet Briar.

Through our VALREC subsidiary, we in particular promote four curricular initiatives:

We the People: Project Citizen
	Since the summer of 2004, VALREC is the home to the Center for Civic Education's Project Citizen curriculum in Virginia.
Project Citizen teaches middle and high school students to identify civic problems in their communities, research solutions, and present public policy proposals to local and regional government officials.
We the People: the Citizen and the Constitution
	A keystone of the Center for Civic Education programs, "We the People: the Citizen and the Constitution" teaches secondary-school teachers and students about the U.S. Constitution and the responsibilities and rights of American citizens.
VALREC has established, with the Center for Civic Education, an annual national teacher's institute in Virginia on the Founding era. It includes content on judicial review, federalism, debates among the Constitution's framers, and constitutional bases for the American political system.
Street Law Supreme Court Summer Institute for Teachers
	In conjunction with the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society, Street Law sponsors each summer the Supreme Court Summer Institute for Teachers, which offers training in use of curricular materials on the nation's high court. Teachers in the institute gather in Washington, D.C., for one week of seminars and meetings with experts on the Supreme Court from academe, journalism, bench, and bar.
The institute culminates with a visit to the U.S. Supreme Court to see the justices hand down decisions and a reception at the Court with one of its nine justices. VALREC participates each year in the Teachers' Institute and provides curricular materials for Virginia teachers in the program.