NHSEB10: the 2022-2023 Season
As we all try to get back our semblances of normalcy in the wake of COVID-19, I’m thrilled to be starting off a new season of the National High School Ethics Bowl with you. This year promises to be a historic one, and for the first time in a few years, this fact has little to do with an ongoing set of social and economic crises. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the NHSEB’s original founding in the 2012-2013 academic year. Over those ten years, and particularly in the last (challenging) few, our program and community have grown in truly astounding ways that have motivated and inspired me as Director.
Not only have our numbers increased exponentially all around the country, we have continued to take on the core educational task of the Ethics Bowl in new and innovative ways, both online and off. I am reminded now that the virtues and habits of mind the NHSEB cultivates are more important now than they ever have been. Our students are the inheritors and future leaders of our democracy. Given what I continue to see and hear from them, I am as confident as ever that our future is in good hands.
To mark our tenth year, you’ll see much that is new and exciting from my team at NHSEB HQ in the coming months: from a newly refreshed look and feel across all our programming and materials, to the long-awaited redesign of our aging competitive structure in favor of a new Divisional Playoff system administered by the Parr Center and key partner institutions, to the seating of NHSEB’s first Student Advisory Council later this Fall, and more. All of these developments have been designed and will be implemented with consistent input from our large and diverse community, and I remain so grateful for our continued work together toward making the National High School Ethics Bowl progressively bigger, better, and indeed, all it can be as a moral and civic education program.
I wish you the best of luck in competition this season, and I cannot wait to see what the year holds.
Gratefully and excitedly yours,
Alex Richardson, Ph.D.
Director, National High School Ethics Bowl
UNC Parr Center for Ethics