A few weeks prior to Rice’s weeklong new student orientation, dozens of incoming Owls took time out of their summers to immerse themselves in the city of Houston and the social justice issues local advocates are striving to address through the Civic Immersion program, one of the flagships of the university’s Center for Civic Leadership (CCL).
Civic Immersion is a service-learning opportunity for incoming students to engage in the Greater Houston community while forming close bonds with their fellow Owls before they officially start their academic journeys at Rice. All incoming students were invited to apply to the program, and no previous experience with civic engagement was required.
After pivoting to a completely virtual program during the summers of 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, 2022 saw the return of an in-person component. The program’s first week in mid-July had a hybrid model, with students gathering on campus to venture out into the community, and additional students from around the globe participating in the virtual program. A second, fully online version of the program was held in late July.
“We’re grateful that the normalization of virtual programming has opened access to our pre-matriculation program way up,” said Morgan Kinney, associate director of the CCL. “International students are able to tune in from all over the world as well as any student unable to take a week off from a job or other commitments. It was exciting this year to be able to combine that expanded reach with the longstanding in-person version of the program to maximize the breadth and depth of the connections we could make with the incoming class.
During Civic Immersion 2022, students engaged with a multitude of community partners — local charities, nonprofits and advocacy organizations including the Houston Food Bank, the Houston Housing Authority, the Partnership for the Advancement and Immersion of Refugees (PAIR), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Houston Climate Justice Museum (HCJM), SEARCH Homeless Services and The Beacon shelter.
Over the course of the program’s one-week sessions, students spent their days working with the organizations, attending presentations from CCL staff and local civic leaders, and gathering each evening for group reflections on the day’s projects and activities.
Brandon Chen, a Will Rice College junior and one of this year’s Civic Immersion student site leaders, was inspired to apply for a leadership position after his positive experience with another CCL program, Alternative Spring Break, during his freshman year in 2020.
“With all these moving parts, seeing it all come together and seeing how the students learn and grow together as a cohort, getting to know each other better and getting to experience everything in the city, it’s been really rewarding,” said Chen.
For freshmen Cecilia Nguyen from Hanszen College and Arjun Surya of Sid Richardson College, Civic Immersion felt like the perfect opportunity to take the first steps toward engaging in productive advocacy during their time at Rice.
“We’re not just volunteering — it’s changing our mindset, and how we approach any type of service,” said Nguyen. “One of the things they taught us to think about is asset-based help, which is thinking of the positives behind the community and how we can grow on their existing strengths, rather than thinking, ‘Oh, we need to fix this, this and this.’ It’s working alongside the community, empowering them instead of just being outside help going in.”
Surya felt the program “would be a really great opportunity to meet a lot of other rising freshmen, and also to have an opportunity to explore Houston and learn about how I can get involved in the city, learn about the different ways that I can stay involved and actually contribute,” he said.
“I remember on the very first day, they told us that whenever you’re trying to create a difference through justice, it’s not the same as charity,” Surya explained, “because rather than just going somewhere once and doing something positive, you’re trying to create change in a community to let them become more sufficient by themselves.
“This program in and of itself was like that as well — rather than just giving us a week of doing a lot of community outreach projects, they’re also giving us the tools we need so that in the future, we can do something similar to this and also create change in other communities as well,” he continued.
Nguyen agreed wholeheartedly.
“I feel like I’ve been able to see through this program that the Rice mentality is a lot different from how I’ve grown up and how I’ve approached problems, or what I’ve been taught in high school,” Nguyen said. “I feel like it’s very transformative to learn this way. It’s been a really good experience.”