Experience Beyond the Classroom

Fall 2026

While the Hypatia Scholars program is built around a year-long seminar that asks students to engage in fundamental questions facing humanity’s relationship with technology, it extends beyond the classroom in the form of field trips, film screenings, and other community-building events.

At the beginning of November, the Hypatia Scholars took its first field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, where the students engaged in the process of “slow looking” at works of art.

“Slow looking” is a term coined by Shari Tishman, a researcher at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, in which viewers “move beyond a first impression and create a more immersive experience.”

Each Hypatia Scholar was asked to choose two works from the Art Institute’s massive collection and sit with it for ten minutes, before answering a series of questions about what they see, think, and feel.

This kind of patient and deliberate approach to seeing and thinking is one that the Hypatia Scholars program seeks to engender in its scholars. It is a habit of mind that is a radical act in a world in which AI and other technologies present us with convenient time-saving shortcuts.