Before Sam Ulmschneider ’06 attended the University of Mary Washington, he put his political prowess to the test in the nation’s premier civics competition for high school students.
In We the People, “we were asked to consider complex questions of public policy and political theory,” said Ulmschneider, who participated with his classmates in simulated congressional hearings before a panel of judges during the competition. “That experience is the reason I was motivated to study history and philosophy at Mary Washington.”
Today, Ulmschneider teaches those subjects and more at his alma mater, Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School in Richmond, where he has coached the school’s team to state championships and led it to three of its five national wins. While preparing for last year’s event, his class was spotlighted in Citizen Nation, a four-part PBS documentary series that followed teens and their teachers as they vied to secure a spot among the top 10 schools in the country – and win it all.
“I took We the People when it was a fairly young course,” Ulmschneider said. His teacher, Phil Sorrentino, “challenged us to think critically and argue our own views with a great deal of passion and engagement.”
The class primed him for the challenging coursework he found at UMW, where he read Plato’s Republic in a first-year seminar with Professor Emeritus of Philosophy David Ambuel, who he said had a “powerful impact” on his decision to major in the subject. Read more.