Jennifer Chace
Research Affiliate (The Source School)
Faculty and Research Staff
Jennifer leads The Source School, a nonprofit she founded to nurture more human public schooling, and is the assistant director of the Center for Education Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation (CEPARE) and the Maine Education Policy Research Institute (MEPRI) at the University of Southern Maine. With her background in art and design, teaching and school leadership, and public policy, Jennifer’s projects focus on nurturing hope, mattering, trust, and democratic capacities for positive personal and social transformation through citizen engagement in policy making processes at all levels of governance.
After designing awareness-based systems change (ABSC) programming for public schools, Jennifer partnered with Cortico and CCC in 2021 to develop the Listening Schools Network / We Listen high school program. We Listen supports students as emerging experts in lifting peer and teacher voices to affect positive change through co-creation of school policies, developing civic muscle and the skills and dispositions for democratic citizenship.
The work has expanded to politically diverse schools from Northern Maine to NYC and also school districts, where Jennifer and her team now lead strategic listening and visioning using a combination of Cortico and ABSC tools. Jennifer is currently developing a model with Cortico and CCC for student co-designed and led tech-enhanced civic assemblies in high schools. She has also partnered with CCC on developing student co-designed tools for measuring progress in Listening Schools projects.
Jennifer led Phase One of Maine ED 2050 from 2022-2025, through which over 1000 youth, educators, and community members participated in Cortico conversations about the future of education in Maine, informing the public and Maine legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee through the Maine School Stories Portal.
Currently, in Phase Two, Jennifer is leading the design and implementation of the Maine Citizens’ Assembly on Education Priorities to be held in June 2026 with bipartisan legislative support, the second statewide citizens’ assembly to be held in the US. The Assembly will use a variety of deliberative technologies to support learning, sensemaking, decision making, and strategic use of recommendations by legislators. Jennifer serves on the Academic Advisory Committee for CrownShy’s Comhairle, a deliberative technology platform.
