An academy for public service

CHAPEL HILL -- As Veterans Day approaches, we should be proud that our nation has done a much better job in recent years when it comes to honoring our military veterans and emphasizing the nobility of military service. From bumper stickers to national policy, we as a society send a powerful message to our young people about the honor and importance of serving in the military.

But what about civilian public service? What about the men and women who serve our nation every day as teachers, emergency responders, civil servants and any number of critically important jobs? What kind of message do our young people get about serving our nation in a civilian capacity?

Sadly, we do not do as good a job of respecting our public servants. One indication of the imbalance in our priorities can be seen in my field, higher education. While we have five outstanding federal military service academies that offer tuition-free education to 20,000 students each year, we do not have a single academy for public service.

That may change, if a new bill can make progress in the new Congress.

Republican Arlen Specter has joined Democrats Hillary Clinton, Edward Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski in sponsoring the U.S. Public Service Academy Act in the U.S. Senate; Republicans Christopher Shays and Tom Davis joined Democrats Harold Ford, Sheila Jackson-Lee and Jim Moran to sponsor the same bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The USPSA Act proposes to create a new kind of service academy, one that takes the model of the military academies and places it in a civilian context. Like students at the prestigious military academies, Public Service Academy students would be leaders in training, getting ready to serve their nation following graduation. But instead of serving in the military, they would spend five years serving their nation by working as teachers, law enforcement officers and other essential public service jobs at the local, state and national levels.

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The new Academy would be America's first national civilian university, a college focused on leadership development and public service. It would be a truly national institution, with spots for incoming freshmen allocated by state according to the size of their congressional delegation. North Carolina, with 14 electoral votes, would be guaranteed a minimum of 28 spots in the freshman class. The resulting student body would be more geographically diverse than students at any university in the country.

Students at the Academy will pursue a tough, broad-based liberal arts education, but the entire curriculum will be structured to emphasize public service and will train students to become capable civilian leaders. They will be required to take advantage of service learning classes each semester, internships each summer and study abroad during their junior year. Like their peers at the military academies, Academy students will live the life of leadership and will learn the meaning and value of service. After graduation, they will fan out to serve in far-flung communities across the nation and even the world.

The Academy will be a completely different kind of civilian college, a "civilian West Point" more than just another liberal arts school. The intense, service-oriented program simply has no civilian counterpart in higher education today. Like the military academies, the Academy's rigorous program will foster a campus culture of service that will unify graduates with a shared sense of mission. Four years at the Academy, combined with the five-year post-graduation service requirement, not only will give graduates an unmatched educational experience, it also will help our nation meet critical needs.

The idea to build the Academy has progressed rapidly in a short period of time. It was launched barely a year ago by two Teach for America alumni: Chris Myers Asch and Shawn Raymond. Asch earned degrees from both Duke and Chapel Hill, and his North Carolina roots show in the Academy's Board of Advisors, which includes Alma Blount, the head of Duke's Hart Leadership Program; Hodding Carter, professor of leadership and public policy at Chapel Hill; James Joseph, former U.S. ambassador to South Africa who now teaches at Duke; and Peter Wood, a Duke history professor.

I also serve on the board because I recognize that at the beginning of the 21st century we face a new set of challenges that demand a new kind of service academy. We must respond with courage and vision. We must build the U.S. Public Service Academy.

(William Ferris is Joel R. Williamson eminent professor of history and adjunct professor in the Curriculum in Folklore at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is also senior associate director of UNC's Center for the Study of the American South and is a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.)