But the idea “lodged” in his mind. The more he considered it, the more Reveley thought hosting the vice-presidential debate “would energize what we were already trying to do” with the curriculum revision, he said. Longwood’s own history didn’t hurt, either, and it’s something debate officials were aware of as they considered where Pence and Kaine should face off. The final moments of the Civil War took place slightly north of the campus, and a pivotal moment of the civil-rights movement unfolded south of campus in the 1950s as students walked out of their all-black high school to protest its poor conditions. (Longwood looked the other way for decades and only recently offered a public statement of regret.)

Fast forward to the fall of 2015, when the school was awarded the debate: Reveley asked his new provost, Joan Neff—who had been at Richmond for the ‘92 debate—and a couple of other faculty members to move on some of the ideas they’d been exploring at the planning level and get them ready for implementation for this fall. Neff, Reveley said, was a good choice for the job because she had “a natural knack and understanding of how catalytic these events can be,” and she’d lamented that Richmond hadn’t incorporated the excitement around the ‘92 debate into the curriculum in a structured way, and was eager for the opportunity to do that at Longwood.

Long story short, more than 30 courses were either created or reworked to focus on the debate and, more broadly, the idea of students as citizens-in-the-making. A music-appreciation class has students listening to and discussing works composed for political purposes. A women-and-gender-studies course asks students to examine early debates about women’s rights and consider how perceptions of gender play out on the modern campaign trail.

Michael Mergen, an assistant professor of photography, created a class that puts student photographers on the front lines at rallies and protests. Mergen, a photojournalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times and Bloomberg, said the opportunity to design a new course seemed like a “natural fit” with his background, and a chance to discuss with students what it means to be a citizen leader or citizen artist outside of the classroom. And with the school willing to throw some money behind reporting trips, juniors and seniors who had never been on the street with a camera have in the last several months seen campaign events and protests up close. Some of Mergen’s students have credentials to cover Tuesday’s debate from inside the auditorium, and others will track watch parties and protests nearby.

“You’re looking at something bigger than just you and your personal interest,” he said during a phone interview. At the outset, half of his 11 students said they didn’t care about politics. Now, Mergen doesn’t hear those comments much anymore. “There’s definitely a sense of what they’re doing is so relevant and connected to a larger national and international conversation,” he said.