This mapping tool is designed to help people at various campuses connect with each other, so they can get their schools engaged in the election, on a nonpartisan basis. It's modeled on what FocusTheNation used to create global warming teach-ins on almost 2,000 campuses in January 2008.

Two excellent election engagement sites—the key service learning network Campus Compact's 2008 Campus Vote Initiative and the Your Vote, Your Voice project created by the major Washington DC higher education groups—offer all the resources a campus needs to engage their students in the election, as voters and volunteers. They have great examples, templates, interactive tools, and general advice. Various higher education associations are now sending out notices encouraging their members to use the resources on these sites. But before this map, people who wanted to get engaged had no way to connect and coordinate at a given school, or in their state.

This map—created with the volunteer effort of Seattle software designer and climate change activist Phil Mitchell, in coordination with Campus Compact's 2008 Campus Vote Initiative and Your Vote, Your Voice—is designed to meet this need. We hope you'll pass the word about this map, and check back to see who else is participating on your campus and nearby. The prime goal of this list is to let people at any given school sign up so they can find each other and work together to help their campuses engage their students in the election, on a nonpartisan basis. The Campus Vote Initiative will also send periodic updates to the list of those who sign up, like reminders of voter registration deadlines. But otherwise your information will be kept private.