Teach for America director to speak at Rice Thursday night

CONTACT: Mike Williams
PHONE: 713-348-6728
E-MAIL: mikewilliams@rice.edu
 

Ann Best, executive director of Teach For America in Houston, will present a free public lecture on ”Leadership in Service” Sept. 25 at 6:30 p.m. at Rice University’s Sewall Hall, Room 307.

This Speakers Series talk kicks off the second year of the Houston Enriches Rice Education (HERE) project.

Best rose from the ranks of the organization’s kindergarten teachers to become regional leader in 2004, reflecting her passion for ensuring that children in low-income communities have the opportunity to get an excellent education. Teach for America is a national corps of recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools.

The Speakers Series, which will continue with a panel discussion Oct. 20 on Texas’ role in the current presidential election, is one element of HERE’s multifaceted approach to sharing Rice resources with the community, an important part of the university’s Vision for the Second Century.

Founded by Anthony Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and a professor of religious studies, HERE is a curricular and research initiative to strengthen connections between the university and the community while enhancing education on campus and beyond by spreading Rice’s academic culture to Houston schools.

Another HERE program is the Distinguished Visiting Lecture series, which brings community leaders to campus to teach courses, give public presentations and share their knowledge and experience. Last year’s lecturer, the Rev. William Lawson, is the retired pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church and a civil rights leader in Houston who both marched with and hosted the Rev. Martin Luther King.

Lawson, who taught a course in religion and social transformation in Houston, is helping HERE in another way, having donated his private papers to the Social Change in Texas archival collection, which will preserve the papers of Houstonians who have played important roles in local and national social change and build an oral history archive.

A lecturer has not yet been selected for this year.

A third HERE element, the High School Outreach Initiative, is an essay competition for students at 10 Houston-area high schools. The competition awards cash prizes and SAT preparation courses for the most thoughtful and ambitious works. Last year’s first-place essay, by Kierra Lee, a junior at Yates High School, cited violence as a sickness plaguing Houston and called for compassion as a tool to heal the community.

For information about HERE, visit http://here.rice.edu.

For information about parking at Rice University, 6100 Main St., visit http://parking.rice.edu/.