IES United States charters its first American chapter at The Walker School

IES United States has chartered its first American chapter at The Walker School in Marietta, Georgia. The chapter opened its rolls this term with more than thirty members — a founding class larger than most first-year student organizations reach in a full academic year, and the strongest possible signal that the Society's method translates to American schools.

The chapter was founded and is led by Ray Roh, Vice President of IES United States and Regional Director for the Southeastern United States. A Walker student himself, Ray built the chapter the same way he now advises other founding leaders to build theirs: secure a faculty sponsor early, define the format before the first meeting, and recruit for seriousness rather than size. The size followed anyway.

Walker's chapter meets on a weekly cycle built around structured ethical dialogue. Each session opens with a case — drawn from medicine, law, technology, public service, or the ordinary pressures of school life — and closes only after every position in the room has been stated plainly and tested by someone who disagrees with it. Facilitation rotates, so leadership is practiced by many students rather than held by a few.

As the Society's founding American chapter, Walker also carries a second responsibility: it functions as the pilot for national programming. Curriculum sequences, facilitation training, and chapter reporting standards are being tested at Walker before they are issued to chapters chartering elsewhere in the Southeast and beyond.

“Thirty students chose to spend an hour a week arguing carefully about things that matter. That is the whole idea, and it is now running in an American school.”

The chapter's first-term agenda includes an intergenerational session with a practitioner invited through the Society's advisory network, a service project chosen and organized by the members themselves, and written work from students who want their reasoning held to a standard beyond the room. That written work will be considered for the Society's national review.

For IES United States, the Walker chapter closes the gap between a national organization on paper and one that meets on Tuesdays. For the Southeast, it establishes the model that neighboring schools in Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Alabama will be invited to follow.

Charters for the current academic year remain open to student leaders in grades nine through twelve. The national team reviews applications on a rolling basis and provides founding chapters with curriculum, facilitation training, and direct support from regional leadership.