Civics academy rebrands, expands

Father, son team increases online curriculum options

Father/Son duo Caleb and Chip Morris of ProCivica. Contributed by Chip Morris

The recent rebranding of the Monroe-based Civics Academy to ProCivica is far more than a cosmetic exercise. It signals a fundamental and ongoing broadening of the company’s mission from providing online access to court-mandated courses for criminal offenders to an expanding array of civics education and numerous other educational and business opportunities.

Founded by Monroe resident and licensed social work professional Chip Morris, the company that is now ProCivica, co-founded by Morris and his son, Caleb, an attorney, traces its beginnings as Civics Academy to the early 1990s.

At that time, Chip Morris was teaching in-person classes mandated by courts for criminal offenders, based on existing materials for those classes. Before long, after seeing many of the same people returning for court-mandated instruction, Morris began wondering why there was an apparent shortfall in the course materials, despite their quality.

“The material was great,” he said in a recent interview, “but it was going over their heads. It was just clinical. None of the materials were connecting the dots for people.”

By not “connecting the dots,” Morris meant the materials were not relating to the everyday experience of what it means to live in the United States.

“What I eventually discovered,” he said, “is that where they were is where I was — the United States of America, in a democracy, in communities that are based on the rule of law and the social contract.”

“We were telling them all this clinical stuff – cognitive behavioral reframing and reshaping and all of that — but it wasn’t making any sense to them” in terms of their everyday life as Americans, Morris explained.

“If you don’t know the rules of lacrosse, which I don’t, I’m not going to win at that game,” Morris explained. “So if you don’t know the rules of the road of American society, you’re just going to survive, not thrive.”

At that point, Morris realized that he should be combining the goals of court-mandated instruction, with its focus on cognitive behavioral therapy, with some grounding in civics.

“It’s a very novel approach, and it worked,” said Morris, who wrote the coursework himself, based on his credentials, which include being a licensed clinical social worker.

He knew his approach was working, he said, when he started getting calls, and when a couple of local judges started asking what he was doing differently from other court-mandated educational programs.

By 2020, Civics Academy was offering in-person court-mandated classes across the state, from Savannah to Albany to Macon and across metropolitan Atlanta and north Georgia.

Then, suddenly, like all businesses, Civics Academy found itself dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, at precisely the time that Morris was looking at the possibility of expanding the business beyond Georgia across the United States.

As COVID continued to negatively impact the in-person business of Civics Academy – it went from getting as many as 400 monthly referrals to its in-person classes to no referrals at all – the pandemic forced Morris to start thinking about taking his business online.

Beyond even the pandemic, Morris noted that scaling the business – finding brick-and-mortar locations, training staff in far-flung communities, and maintaining a consistent teaching style – would be problematic even after COVID. 

“I already knew I was going to have to go in that (online) direction,” Morris said. “COVID just forced the issue.”

And thus began the transformation of Civics Academy to ProCivica, with its guiding philosophy of “Building Communities One Person At A Time”. The transformation also marked the start of the father-and-son collaboration that both have enthusiastically and gratefully embraced.

His son, Morris said, “helped me basically take my curriculum, assess all of our classes, and translate them into online-ready.”

Since then, with Caleb Morris providing much of the vision for the company’s future, ProCivica has developed its own digital learning management system, and is expanding its course offerings beyond judicially mandated classes.

In a recent interview, Chip Morris confessed to some worry about going from in-person classes — which research conducted with the University of Georgia showed were 94% effective, with just 6% of offenders assigned to courses committing further offenses – into the digital arena.

But as things have turned out, Morris’ subsequent look at the effectiveness of ProCivica’s online offerings as compared to in-person instruction have indicated that the digital classes are even more effective than in-person classes.

To Morris, the reasons are clear. For one, taking an online class is far less distracting than being in an in-person class, where the instructor likely will have to interrupt class time to quiet talkative class members, to get class members off their cell phones, or to handle other distractions.

And, Morris continued, online classes, which can be taken at the class members’ convenience, also eliminate conflicts with work schedules, transportation issues and other hindrances to making it to a physical location for class.

With its digital infrastructure now in place and ready, ProCivica isn’t wasting time in branching out in the online instructional arena. January is slated to mark the company’s rollout of a gang prevention class in collaboration with the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, along with the introduction of life skills classes for both adults and juveniles.

Beyond that, the sky is the limit for what ProCivica can and will offer in terms of online instruction. A first step, Morris said, will be an effort to expand its judicially mandated courses across the United States. From there, the company is getting ready to offer courses for doctors and lawyers in the medical liability arena. There is also a move to get ProCivica involved in workforce development, and Morris also wants the company to get involved in civics education for young people and families.

“We have a learning management system platform now,” Morris said. “We can take your information, we can build courses, and host it on our site, just for you.”

Beyond that, Morris added, ProCivica is “starting to move out into providing a platform for anybody to sell their classes or present their classes … .”

According to Morris, moving from in-person to online delivery of classes truly opened up the company’s vision for its future.

“That’s when the vision became clear,” he said, as the realization hit that “if we do this, then we can also do this. It’s been a progression since 2020. And it did help to have my son, who’s younger, more in tune to the new technology” as part of ProCivica, Morris said.

But even as ProCivica moves well beyond its beginnings with judicially mandated classes, it’s not going to lose that focus, Morris said, as it seeks to move into providing classes for people while they are incarcerated, to “teach them the skills they will need to go out into the community.”

Another possibility, according to Morris, will be offering online instruction to the families of incarcerated individuals to assist in the transition back into society “so they can learn some of the things the (incarcerated) individual is learning so they’re on the same page, they’re not having conflict over those issues.”

In the end, Morris said, “there really is not much of a limit” to the instructional and other offerings that can be made available through ProCivica.

“Now, if you came to us, and said ‘I want to build this class for lawyers (or other audiences)” the process is, “Give me your material, we’ll develop it based on consulting with you on how you want it structured.” From there, ProCivica’s instructional designer and her team will build the class.

“I am surprised at how big and how fast it’s grown,” Morris said. “I did not realize just how fast … people would grativate to this.”

At the same time, he was quick to add, “It shouldn’t have surprised me. People want to thrive. They don’t want to just get by.”

According to Morris, it is people, not technology, at the core of ProCivica’s vision for moving forward.

“We’re definitely going to be technology-driven, but people first,” Morris said.

That “people first’ aesthetic is particularly evident as father and son continue together to move their business into the future. For Caleb, the collaboration with his father is at the heart of ProCivica.

“What I didn’t foresee happening is having this time with my father … my best friend and my business partner,” Caleb said, marveling that he “got to start a company with my father that has shifted to a more national scale.”

There’s a similar sense of grateful wonder for Chip Morris.

“Working with my son as the cofounder of this part of the business has been just priceless,” he said. “The biggest gift I could ever be given is the ability to work and build a company with my son.”­