Hello everyone, and welcome to Helping Kids Think! This website is meant to document a recent project
created by students from the University of South Florida’s Honors College. In our project, we created a
Socratic-based program that we presented to a group of children ages 11-16 at a local after school
program called the Youth Art Corps. Here, you will find documentation of our entire project, as well as
advice for anyone who wishes to create a similar project. Enjoy!
About Us
We are a group of students from the University of South Florida Honors College, located in Tampa,
Florida. We were all students in an Honors Seminar in Applied Ethics class. Our class was asked by the
Dean of the Honors College to create a project that would positively impact either the USF or local area’s
community. After tossing around ideas of what program we should put on (i.e. SG Political Parties or
Campus Event to Promote Awareness for an Issue), we decided to attempt to put on an educational
program that would stimulate learning in students on a moral issue, through the use of philosophical
teaching methods (i.e. The Socratic Method). A major factor in selecting this program was a convenient
contact we had with the Youth Art Corps. It took us almost three months of prior planning before
putting on the program. We took a weekend retreat to strengthen communication and bonds between
our classmates as well as work extensively on the project as well. We also used a significant amount of
class time for planning, research, and practice for implementation of the project. The culmination of the
entire semester was when we implemented our project at the Youth Art Corps. We were graciously
permitted to put on the program twice for two hour time periods each time. The number of students
participating in the program varied per day.
Vanessa Armas
Sophomore
International Business
varmas@mail.usf.edu
Rachel Brown
Freshman
Elementary Education
Rebrown2@mail.usf.edu
Michael Canfield
Freshman
Philosophy
mcanfiel@mail.usf.edu
David Cunningham
Freshman
Bio-Medical Sciences
djcunnin@mail.usf.edu
Matthew Diaz
Junior
Political Science and Philosophy
Madiaz4@mail.usf.edu
John Duhaime
Freshman
Chemical Engineering
jduhaime@mail.usf.edu
Stephanie Holdener
Freshman
Biology and Mathematics
sholdener@mail.usf.edu
Nathaniel Johnson
Freshman
Bio-medical Sciences
nojohnso@mail.usf.edu
Monique Konstantinovic
Freshman
Bio-medical Sciences
mkonstan@mail.usf.edu
Kenneth Lee
Freshman
Biomedical Science
Klee4@mail.usf.edu
Susan Mendez
Sophomore
Philosophy
samendez@mail.usf.edu
Courtney Penn
Freshman
Philosophy and Studio Art
cpenn@mail.usf.edu
Jessica Ren
Freshman
Pre-Medicine
jren@mail.usf.edu
Lea Schlanger
Senior
Anthropology
lkschlan@mail.usf.edu
Kristen Slusser
Freshman
Communications
kslusser@mail.usf.edu
Aubrey Snow
Freshman
Political Science and Environmental Science
arsnow@mail.usf.edu
Nic Stemm
Freshman
Computer Sciences
nstemm@mail.usf.edu