Mingus Union High School business teacher and interim Career and Technical Education Director Chad Elmer said one of his mentees, Dawson Rice, is off to great things as the first high school-aged Arizona legislative page in the state’s history.
“If you ever watch high school sports, have you ever seen a student that you know is going D1? They just play on a different field,” he said. “That’s Dawson. He just plays on a different field.”
Elmer has known Rice since his freshman year.
Now a senior, Rice works in the Arizona State Senate chambers in Phoenix twice a week.
“Back then I was teaching Ag, and he was a member of FFA,” Elmer said. “Part of FFA is taking students and competing in [Career and Technical Education] programs or competitions.”
“One of my favorites that I ran was the wildlife contest,” Elmer said. “I plugged Dawson in with a group of senior boys as a freshman, and they ended up winning state, and then that next year, we took him to national convention in Indiana, and he was able to compete with that same group as they were already in college.”
The senior state page said he always has loved the outdoors, but he’s also always been interested in politics and has had a love for public speaking.
“Since third grade, I’ve done little public speaking competitions,” he said. “I think my parents kind of pushed me into that, but they knew I already liked it. I just kind of had passion for it because I was little.”
When he learned about the page program in the state Senate as a freshman, he knew he wanted to do it. He began practicing job interview questions and hung a laminated sheet of questions in the shower so he could practice as often as he could.
Rice said he wasn’t sure whether the Senate would hire him. The requirements stated one needed to be 18 years old from all educational backgrounds. Rice was 17 when he applied and interviewed, but turned 18 in December, before he started work in January.
The hiring committee, which included the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, the page director and the head page weren’t sure if it was even allowed.
“They’d ask around and figure it out with HR there,” Rice said. “When it found out I could, I knew it’s what I wanted to do, and I’d already been practicing my interview questions for about four years.”
After his second interview, and speaking with the hiring committee, the interviewers told Rice the longer before he heard back, the better, because they’d eliminated other candidates before accepting applicants.
“That next morning, I ended up getting a call from the Senate, and I was actually so devastated, because I thought I didn’t get the job, that I let her go to voicemail, which was super sad,” Rice said. “But then I mustered up the courage and called her back about two minutes later, and they offered me a position.”
“He was the first ever high-school student to have his application accepted,” Mingus Union High School District Superintendent Melody Herne, Ph.D., said during the Dec. 11 District Governing Board meeting. “He’s the first to ever, as a 17-year-old, start the application process.”
“He is the first-ever 18-year-old to be given the position at the Senate for the first legislative session,” Herne said.
While the role of a state page is to learn more about the legislative process, the job is mainly just making sure things go more smoothly in the legislature — making sure TVs and chamber laptops are working in the building, fixing broken cords, making sure there’s enough coffee.
Rice arrives early in the morning twice a week, driving down the night before to spend the night with his grandparents, who live in Phoenix.
“About 9 [a.m.] is when committees usually start,” he said. “They kind of assign us to different committees. I got the Natural Resource Committee as well as the Republican Caucus, and so those are the two that I work in; [the job’s] nonpartisan in every way.”
Rice said his favorite part is being on the senate floor, watching the legislative process happen.
admitted to the program. Photo courtesy of Dawson Rice
It’s “just super cool, getting to be in there and just feel like you’re really a part of the whole process,” Rice said. “The most interesting thing is you see the floor and you think that it’s very professional … even when the members stand up to talk and give their pieces, everyone’s huddled up in their own little areas, talking.”
Outside of being a page, Rice, who was also a quarterback on MUHS’ football team, likes being outdoors. He hunts and fishes. Rice lives along the Verde River, and wakes up in the early morning in the summer when he’s out of school.
“I take a kayak and I go upstream, and I go up for miles — or not for miles — go up for probably two hours worth of upstream — and then I just slowly drift all the way down and fish kind of the whole way,” Rice said.
Rice said he likes to go hunting when he can, too.
Elmer brought him on a hunting trip, where he killed a bear.
Elmer said Rice wanted to go on a deer-hunting trip and he’s close with the Rice family, so they went together.
“It’s neat to put somebody to the test outside, because you know what they can do in the classroom,” Elmer said. “You can know what they can do, like in a competition, but when you actually put somebody in the woods, you can kind of see what they’re made of.”
Elmer’s the reason Rice got seriously involved in the National FFA Organization.
Rice said being busy with FFA, wilderness groups, hunting, fishing and now his new job in Phoenix, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with his school work.
“I just spend a lot more free time working on school, doing online classes and making sure I stay on top and keep rolling there,” he said.
That doesn’t surprise Elmer.
“Being in education for a long time, you see a lot of different types of personalities, but Dawson, he’s accountable,” Elmer said. “When Dawson says he’s going to do something. Nothing’s going to get in the way.”
In addition to working heavily on the weekends, Rice said he leaves Cottonwood at 5 p.m. the nights before he’s in the Senate chambers.
Most of the other pages are college students, mostly at Arizona State University, where Rice intends to major in political science and public policy starting in the fall.
