Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Recruiting instructors

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The Public Policy Initiative team and the Wikipedia Ambassadors are recruiting US professors who teach courses related to US public policy for the Spring 2011 term. We are looking for as many courses to participate as possible, given the resource constraints of the program—chiefly, funding to bring only a limited number of people next to the next Ambassador Training event, where Campus Ambassadors will be trained. If you know professors teaching US public policy-related courses, especially at the institutions below that we've already had positive interest from, or that are part of the Fall 2010 roster, you can help reach out to them and/or put them in touch with Annie Lin, the Campus Team Coordinator.

Schools of interest

In the first term, the Wikimedia team focused on establishing credibility for the program by recruiting from the more prestigious public policy schools. Now, we're focusing more on diversity: teaching schools, women's colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and in general a broad ranges of types of schools.

Example first contact email

Dear Professor [NAME],

My name is [YOUR NAME]; I am a Wikipedia Ambassador for the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot project of the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia and related projects). We are working with professors at universities across the country to incorporate improving public-policy-related articles on Wikipedia into the curriculum. In a nutshell, professors assign their students to write Wikipedia articles as part of the class, supported by a team of Wikipedia experts we provide to you in class and online, and we'd like to explore the possibility of working with you. At this point we are looking to work with a few more classes for the Spring 2011 semester, and we were wondering if you are interested?

The Wikimedia Foundation is pursuing this Public Policy Initiative with the aim of benefiting all parties: improving Wikipedia's coverage of U.S. public policy, exposing students to feedback from a diverse and public community of editors, and educating students and professors about the inner workings of the web's fifth most-visited website. Faculty members at Harvard University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, George Mason University, Indiana University, Syracuse University, Lehigh University, and UC Berkeley have already joined our Initiative with courses in the fall semester, and we're now looking for professors to participate in the Spring 2011 semester. We're defining the term "public policy" broadly: participating professors can come from sociology, economics, law, business, media studies, information science, and a variety of other disciplines.

More information about the Public Policy Initiative is available at http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative, and you can find out more about the Fall 2010 participants at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy. The educational magazine Inside Higher Ed also recently published an article about our project, available at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/07/wikipedia.

Would you be interested in talking with us about the Initiative and ways we could work together? If so, send me the best phone number to reach you at and when would be a convenient time for us to chat on the phone. Also, feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you very much!

[Your name] (User:[YourUsername]) Wikipedia Ambassador