2019–2020 Civic Humanist Program

Program Formats

Our program offered two formats for secondary schools. Depending on educators' lesson plans, availabillities, and state testing schedules, we were able to provide one of the following programs:

  1. Full Program: Classes visit the Rice University campus offering catered lunches free of charge to visitors
  2. Abbreviated Program: Lecturers visit secondary school campuses as invited guests

To learn more about class visits to campus, read our blog post about the spring 2020 programming here.

1. Full Program: Class field trip to Rice University campus

Rethought as an all-day immersive experience, this iteration of the program brought high school classes to the Rice University campus. Our schedule of events remained flexible, but a typical program resembled the following:

  • 9:45 a.m.: Students, teachers, and chaperones arrive at the Moody Center for the Arts, a flexible teaching space to encourage new modes of making, learning and presenting.
  • 10 a.m.: Annie Lowe's interactive lecture, "The Art of Artifice"
  • 10:45–11 a.m.: Break/flexible time
  • 11–11:45 a.m.: De'Anna Daniel's interactive lecture, "Imagineering Possibility: Black Mermaids, Imagination and the Humanities"
  • 11:45 a.m.–noon: Break/flexible time
  • noon–1 p.m.: Catered lunch delivered to classroom.
  • 1–2:30 p.m.: Docent-led tour of the Moody galleries exhibits. In the spring 2020 semester, students had the opportunity to experience Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past and Present in the Brown Foundation Gallery. Students were also able to interact with two additioinal exhibits dispersed throughout the Moody Center
  • Supplemental activity (if time allowed): abbreviated tour of Rice's public art, as well as a visit to the Rice campus bookstore and Rice Coffeehouse, the only student-operated coffee shop and popular hangout spot on campus

2. Abbreviated Program: Lecturers visit secondary school campuses as invited guests

For classes that could not afford the time to leave their campuses, we offered an abbreviated program, where our lecturers visited high school campuses to present their interactive lectures in the time slots most convenient to educators and their students.

2019–2020 Partners

During the 2019–2020 academic year, the Civic Humanist program collaborated with humanities educators at the following secondary schools (listed alphabetically):

  • Alief Elsik High School
  • Alief Taylor High School
  • César E. Chávez High School
  • Heights High School
  • Jack Yates High School
  • North Houston Early College High School
  • Westbury High School
  • YES Prep – White Oak campus