Introducing NHSEBBridge @ Gravitas: A New Partnership with the Stony Brook School
A new step for the NHSEBBridge initiative in partnership with the Stony Brook School will bring Ethics Bowl to new states and students.
A new partnership between the Parr Center for Ethics and Gravitas: A Global Extension of the Stony Brook School will bring the Center’s award-winning National High School Ethics Bowl (NHSEB) program to new areas of the country via an innovative online-first competition structure, drawing on the successes of the NHSEBBridge access initiative. Each year, the NHSEB brings together thousands of high school students from across the United States to think, talk, and work together on some of the most complex and controversial moral issues of our time.
This year, during NHSEB’s tenth anniversary season, NHSEBBridge @ Gravitas will bring together 8 first-year high school Ethics Bowl teams from places across the country where NHSEB Regional Competitions do not yet exist. Teams of students who are enrolled in Gravitas’ online curricular programs around the country will also participate. These first-year teams are invited to compete in a new, borderless Regional Ethics Bowl administered by the Gravitas Program in collaboration with NHSEB. Participating schools will be provided with a tailored experience for students and coaches who are new to the activity—with the additional provision of training, orientation, and formative feedback from experienced coaches and instructors from NHSEB and the Stony Brook School.
After both organizations spent two years designing and piloting innovative online offerings by necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, a partnership between NHSEB and the Stony Brook School is uniquely positioned to deliver a unique experience in character education and deliberative pedagogy to high school students who may not otherwise encounter it. NHSEB Director Alex Richardson said: “The Stony Brook School has participated in the National High School Ethics Bowl program since its earliest days, and we’re proud to partner with their Gravitas extension program now to ensure that the transformative learning experiences provided by participation in the Ethics Bowl are accessible to all kinds of students, whether they can get to an existing Regional Competition or not.”
“Gravitas was created to make a Stony Brook education, one marked by a commitment to critical thinking, civil discourse, global diversity, and intentional character formation available to students who for a variety of reasons cannot access the resources of an elite boarding school. Ethics Bowl-style learning is embedded throughout our program, and we are excited to join the NHSEBBridge initiative to bring Ethics Bowl training to students regardless of location or access to trained coaches,” said Gravitas Executive Director Sean Riley.
Event details are forthcoming. NHSEBBridge @ Gravitas will begin accepting teams by application in mid-October, and will prioritize first-year teams from locations without NHSEB Regional Competitions. To learn more about Gravitas, please visit gravitas.sbs.org.