RE’s Foundation: The Humanities

“Part of why humanities gets cut is because it doesn’t produce immediate and recognizable value to society,” said Ransom Everglades Humanities Department Chair Jen Nero. “STEM builds the bridge, and STEM saves the patient, and STEM creates the algorithm. What we do is intangible – though arguably of greater importance.”

Against this dour national backdrop, it’s all the more remarkable that the Humanities Department at Ransom Everglades isn’t just doing well. It’s growing and thriving. On the one hand, the school is investing in the humanities more than ever, largely in the form of a brand-new $30 million humanities center set to begin construction in September of this year. But the building, funded in part by a $7.5 million gift from RE parents Brett and Daniel Sundheim, is just a concrete symbol of the growing energy and visibility of humanities programs at RE – energy that can be felt everywhere from the Bowden Fellows Gallery Night to the everyday Harkness table.

   
The persistent quest for excellence in the humanities continues a long tradition dating back to the early days of the Everglades School for Girls and Adirondack-Florida School. From the beginning, both campuses focused on rich discussions of history and literature as key to students’ academic and moral growth. Some of RE’s most legendary educators left their mark in the humanities – Catherine “Kitty” Proenza, Jane Dolkart, Suzanne “Buzzie” Borona-Polson, Michael Stokes, Kenia Rebozo Mestre, Marian Turk, Jose Rodriguez and, of course, Dan Leslie Bowden – to name just a few.

When the new humanities building opens its doors, it will only substantiate a truth many students already feel: It’s never been better to be a “Humanities Kid” at Ransom Everglades. And it’s only going to get better from here.

During a midday break in January, 16 RE students gathered around a Harkness table in the Ransom Cottage, home to the Holzman Center of Applied Ethics, to discuss an ethical dilemma: Is it OK to use genetic engineering to design the kind of child you want? At the table were two physicians, Dr. Ken Zide and Dr. Joanna Bedell ’05, and Taliya Golzar ’11, the Chief Operating Officer at Nodal, a company specializing in surrogacy, who provided essential context from the professional world. But for the most part, the students themselves came up with the answers – or at least formulated tentative approaches to the deceptively thorny question. Most agreed that using genetic engineering to weed out certain diseases was a good idea, but we’d be on a slippery slope if the practice moved from considerations of health to matters of aesthetics. 

“What would we miss out on as a society if everyone were homogeneous?” Zide asked the table. 

“It makes us a more empathetic society when we have to adapt to people with different needs,” replied Nina Rivera ’25.

The conversation was the fourth in a series of Medical Ethics Roundtables that have been running this year under the umbrella of RE’s Holzman Center of Applied Ethics. The Holzman Center has been around since 2021, when it was funded by RE parent-of-alumni Steve Holzman. But it has come a long way since, according to Associate Head of School John A. King Jr., who directs the center, and its evolution is particularly visible in the degree to which its programs are sparking student engagement. What started out as an exciting speaker series with notable figures such as Home Depot Co-founder Ken Langone and City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has grown into a web of interconnected initiatives that are much more student-driven.

“One thing I hope people have noticed this year is that I haven’t made any announcements about [the Holzman Center] at assembly,” said King. Instead, the faces of the program have been Ana Gonzalez ’26, Sophia Linfield ’26 and Alex Russoniello ’26, three students who became Student Advisors after doing ethical leadership projects around the world through RE’s partnership with the organization Students Shoulder-to-Shoulder. 

In Gonzalez’s case, exploring ethical questions inspired her to reexamine RE’s backyard. Her project focused on the effects of gentrification in Coconut Grove, and her understanding of the topic transformed profoundly after extensive interviews with local residents. 

“My project was a unique opportunity to connect abstract concepts to real-world challenges, all while exploring how the humanities foster collaboration and dialogue,” she said. “By engaging with diverse perspectives, I came to understand how storytelling and ethical analysis can bridge ideas, shed light on systemic issues like gentrification, and inspire meaningful change in our broader society.” 

It is perhaps a testament to the growing cultural impact of the program that students in seemingly unrelated courses are pursuing ethics projects on their own. At the beginning of the year, my own Journalism and Media Studies student, Isla Dua ’27, pitched an opinion column series called “The RE Ethicist.” At the center of each column would be a question: What are the ethical implications of our daily choices, like buying fast-fashion from Shein or using TikTok?

To King, that kind of reexamination of the everyday is the entire point.

“A lot of people kind of compartmentalize ethics in their mind. ‘Oh, ethics belongs over here. It’s the job of a philosopher, perhaps a judge, a theologian, a counselor,’” King said. “My goal is to help students see ethical dilemmas where they didn’t see them before.”

On a Monday evening in early July, King logged in to a Google Meet and saw a grid of familiar faces in settings that couldn’t have been more distinct. Sindhu Talluri ’25 was in Taiwan. Jordan James ’25 was in Vietnam. Kenzie Kaplan ’25 was on a bus heading to a remote village in Argentina. And Ethan Sullivan ’25 was in a tent on the Appalachian Trail.  

These were, of course, the current class of Dan Leslie Bowden Fellows in the Humanities. Since the program was endowed by former Bowden student Jeffrey Miller ’79 in 2016, students have honored the legacy of the legendary English teacher by pursuing independent research projects around the world, on a huge variety of topics. But something was a little different this year: a sense of camaraderie, as if they weren’t just exploring their own topics but contributing to something together, something shared. 

“We had a really great group of kids this year,” said King. “They supported each other more than any group so far.” 

The group just clicked. But their cohesion might have also stemmed from an increasingly undeniable reality: at Ransom Everglades, being a Bowden fellow is a big deal. Not only do self-proclaimed Humanities Kids vie for those coveted (and competitive) spots. The fellows have also modeled what it means to do “public humanities,” in King’s words, inspiring RE teachers to create similar opportunities within and across existing courses. 

Students in the Applied Ethics course, another outgrowth of the Holzman Center, craft independent projects that involve not just public visibility but explicit advocacy: pamphlets circulated at community board meetings, petitions to local government. 

“These passion projects empower students to be creative, engaged citizens in their broader community,” said Jenny Carson ’03, who teaches the Applied Ethics course. “This work serves as a springboard for meaningful engagement with the world beyond the classroom, where their ideas and ethical reasoning can have a tangible impact.”

Meanwhile, the English Department is placing more emphasis than ever on presenting research to a wider audience. Students in all three 11th-grade Research Seminars, having already written the classic research paper in the fall, now spend their spring semester learning how to convey an original perspective on a literary text in a public-facing format: a podcast, TED Talk, or YouTube-style video essay. Next year will see the launch of the department’s very first 600-level course: a Literary Theory seminar in which, after wrestling with Derrida and Kant, seniors will spend the second semester making a public-facing project that uses theory to illuminate a piece of pop culture – a film, a song or even a video game that matters to them.

“For me, literary theory fully unlocks students’ abilities to engage with literature, culture and the world in a way which feels authentic to their own interests and voice,” said English Department Coordinator Matthew Helmers. “It’s like, after many years of hard study, these students are finally able to be handed the secret manual on how all this stuff works … and then I get to say, ‘Now go have fun.’”

Thus far, RE students who have produced these kinds of projects have had few places to display them. That will change in spring 2027, when the new humanities building on the La Brisa side of campus is projected to open its doors. 

Since the early ’60s, humanities classes have been housed in Ludington, a building that has its charms – Lila Diamond ’23 wrote a passionate ode to its idiosyncrasies and lived-in coziness in The Catalyst – but also undeniable weaknesses. 

“I had classes in there 40 years ago,” said Chief Operating Officer David Clark ’86. “That tells you something. And I think when you look at collaboration between teachers, and you look at the way departments collaborate, and even kids collaborate, Ludington does not allow us that kind of space.” 

Like the Constance and Miguel Fernandez STEM Center, the 29,000-sq.ft. space is intended to promote collaboration first and foremost, with large open seating areas anchoring each of its three floors. The bottom floor will house a multipurpose space that, like the Posner Lecture Hall, will be able to transform into different configurations – from auditorium to study area to gallery and back again. 

“There’s just going to be more flexibility in the new building and a lot of opportunities to do different things,” Clark said. 

At the same time, even though the Gensler-designed building will feature clean lines and a modern, minimalistic style, it won’t be another Fernandez STEM Center. It can’t be. 

“I think this will have a warmth to it,” said Head of School Rachel Rodriguez. “If we truly expect us to have a pedagogy of inquiry, we need to delve into spaces that complement it for us.”

There will be glass: floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto La Brisa’s iconic house, dense tree canopy and ample green space. But not as much as in the Fernandez STEM Center. The goal is to give each teacher the opportunity to make a classroom space that feels inviting, contemplative and customized. 

“How do you want a student to feel when they walk into your classroom? How are you going to distinguish yourself? Every classroom that you walk in should make you feel something,” Rodriguez said.

Nero looks forward to the building because it will allow her department to do two things at once: focus on the future while holding onto the tried-and-true teaching methods of the past. On the one hand, she hopes the space will enable students to venture further into the digital humanities, applying their critical analysis skills – and creativity – to more contemporary media objects that reflect their digital lives. Or using digital tools like AI – her continued focus as the chair of the AI at Ransom Everglades Task Force – to ask new questions about old material.

On the other hand, Nero hopes the building will be a haven for the kind of teaching and learning that RE founder Paul Ransom himself practiced over 120 years ago: a handful of students, in a circle, talking about a text. 

“Particularly in this new era, creating spaces that can allow you to focus is such a very rare commodity, and we have to work extra hard now to create those spaces,” Nero said. “Giving students this precious opportunity to explore the meaning of their existence, this opportunity that I’m not sure they’re getting in any other endeavor in their lives … that’s amazing.”

For information on how to support the new humanities building, contact Director of Advancement Vicki Carbonell Williamson ’88 at 305 460 8826 or vwilliamson@ransomeverglades.org.