The newsletter of the Honors College has gone through several transformations during its existence. This latest version, our first electronic newsletter, embodies the highlights of this past academic year in the College. The students in the Honors College at FIU represent the best and the brightest that this institution has to offer. Their efforts and achievements are only touched upon here in what has been a landmark year for us under the leadership of Dean Ivelaw Griffith. Our convocation event, participation in student conferences, and new lecture series with its accompanying Occasional Paper series are only some of the accomplishments that represent the new Honors College. In this time of renewal and growth for the College, we at With Honors hope that you are inspired to support the College on whatever level you can by attending our events, recognizing the work of our students, and contributing to our scholarship fund. As a community, FIU has many facets that make it as dynamic and forward thinking as it is. The Honors College aspires to continue to be an integral part of that dynamic and we hope that you will support us in our efforts. John Kneski, Assistant Dean
Parade of Nations and Convocation ~ Sharing Secrets of Excellence The Honors College held its inaugural Convocation on October 2, 2001. The program kicked off at 2.00 pm with a Parade of Nations and States in which our students proudly bore flags of the 58 countries and 19 states represented in the College. The Parade culminated in the Graham Center Ballroom for the indoor segment titled "Sharing Secrets of Excellence". Led by Mistress of Ceremonies, Arianne Britt, President of the Honors College Society, and Master of Ceremonies, Aldo Picini, BBC Honors College student, this segment celebrated the outstanding work produced by our faculty and students. In addition to a procession of faculty and administrators, remarks from distinguished university personnel such as Dean Ivelaw L. Griffith, Honors Representative to the Student Government, Maria Garcia, Provost Mark B. Rosenberg, President Modesto A. Maidique, and Howard Rock, Chair of the Faculty Senate, numerous awards were presented to students for their outstanding work in categories such as Critical Writing, Drawing and Video Presentation. The award recipients were as follows:
One major highlight
of the event was the excellent Convocation address delivered by Dr.
Stephen Fjellman, Associate Dean of the Honors College. The Convocation
also marked the "kick-off" of a major Scholarship Campaign. For
more information about this year's covocation event and images from
last year's, visit the HC Convocation website at http://www.fiu.edu/~honors/convocation.
One of the major initiatives of the College this academic year is its Honors Excellence lecture series. The inaugural Honors Excellence Lecture, "Managing Foreign Policy in an Interdependent World," was held Monday November 26, 7.00 pm at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center. Delivered by Honorable Billie Miller, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Barbados, the lecture attracted some 100 attendees including Honors College faculty and students and members of the wider community. Hon. Billie Miller was educated at Queen's College in Barbados, King's College, Durham University, and the Council of Legal Education in England. She was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1968 and to the Bar of Barbados in 1969, and was a practicing attorney from 1969-1976 and 1987-1994. She was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1994 and was also charged with the responsibility of Leader of the House of Assembly. Since 1999 she has been the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. Currently she is the Chairperson of the Association of Caribbean States' Ministerial Council; President of the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Parliamentary Group on Population and Development for the Caribbean and Latin-America; Chairperson of the Inter-American Development Bank's Advisory Council on Women in Development; and Vice-Chairperson of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.
On February 4, renowned Nobel Laureate Dr. Murray Gell-Mann met with over 200 Honors College students, and faculty and other members of the university community. The Honors College Student & Faculty Panel session was titled "Creative Thinking ~ Conversations with a Nobel Laureate" and was held in the Graham Center Ballroom. Murray Gell-Mann won the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physics and is both Professor and the Co-Chairman of the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute. He entered Yale University at age 15. After receiving his B.S. there, he worked at the University of Chicago with 1938 Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi who discovered the statistical laws, nowadays known as the "Fermi statistics". He obtained his Ph.D. from MIT. He has been a professor of physics and theoretical physics at California Institute of Technology for much of his career. During the 1950s, discoveries of new subatomic particles were proliferating so quickly such that scientists spoke of a "particle zoo." Gell-Mann turned his attention to some particles that behaved particularly strangely. He proposed a new quantum property of particles he called the "strangeness number." While studying particles, he found even more general characteristics that allowed him to sort them into eight "families." He called this grouping the eightfold way, referring to Buddhist philosophy's eight attributes of right living. Then he found that the eightfold way could really best be explained by a particle, undiscovered as yet, that had three parts (hadrons), each holding a fraction of a charge. He called them "quarks" with a nod to James Joyce, whose novel Finnegan's Wake contains the passage: "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" Fractional charge seemed an outrageous suggestion at first, but proof came for his theoretical quarks in 1974. The names alone that Gell-Mann applies to his new theories and formulations reflect his sense of humor, immensely broad range of interests, and deep understanding. The theories themselves say that much more. A colleague once said, "Murray has no particular talent for physics, but he's so smart he's a great physicist anyway." His main avocational interest is historical linguistics, and hiking, camping, and bird-watching take up his time outside the lab. In fact in 1969, the same year he won the Nobel Prize in physics, Gell-Mann helped organize an environmental studies program sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences.
The Spring Honors Excellence Lecture was held on Thursday April 11, 2002 at 6:00 p.m. in the Mary Ann Wolfe Theater at the Biscayne Bay Campus. This lecture, titled "Tourism and Public Culture," was delivered by Dr. Keith Hollinshead, Professor of Public Culture at the Luton Business School, University of Luton in England. Dr. Keith Hollinshead is one of those rare individuals who has moved from the operational world of tourism management to the transdisciplinary realms of public culture/cultural studies. He first studied ancient history at Leeds University in England, and then completed the M.Sc. in Management Studies at Loughborough University, also in England, before completing the Ph.D. in Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University. He now brings broad adisciplinary and critical counter-disciplinary outlooks to the study of public culture, heritage studies, and tourism sciences. He is Vice President (for International Tourism) of the International Sociological Association and Associate Editor of the following three specialist international peer review journals: Tourism Analysis, Tourism, Culture and Communication, and Current Issues in Tourism. Moreover, he serves on the editorial boards of Tourism Management and the Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing. Dr. Hollinshead has spent most of his "applied" career in Australia, including as the first Promotions Manager of the huge Yulara International Tourist Resort (alongside Ayers Rock/Uluru National Park) in the Northern Territory's Red Center. He also has been a tourism and leisure consultant in Australia and Wales, as well as in Colorado and Texas. A citizen of both
Australia and England, his books include Tourist Resort Development:
Markets, Plans and Impacts, and The Possum Stirs: Folklore in Australia,
and he now is working on Journeys in Otherness: The Representation of
Differences in Cultural Tourism, and Tourism and Cultural Values: Tourism
and Cultural Dynamics of Peoples, Places, and Pasts. He also has published
scholarly articles in several journals, including the Journal of Parks
and Recreation Administration, Society and Natural Resources, Leisure
Studies, Tourism, Culture, and Communication, International Journal
of Tourism Research, and the Journal of Leisure Research.
The Honors College is pleased to announce the establishment of an FIU chapter of the Phi Theta Kappa Alumni Association. Phi Theta Kappa is an international Honor Society for two-year institutions that provides many opportunities worldwide for leadership training, internships and scholarship awards. Students who were members of a Phi Theta Kappa chapter anywhere in the world, are automatically members of this Association. The "Mentor by Major Program" allows incoming PTK transfer students can email questions to student mentors in their field of study at FIU; the aim of this program is to assist new students in answering unresolved questions they might have. The current President
and Vice President are Angela Llanos and Michelle Kellher, respectively.
New elections will be held on August 28th through the 30th. For active
membership and the resulting benefits, the Association needs to hear
from you. Interested students should contact Angela Llanos at angela.llanos@ptk.org.
or visit the PTK website which is located at http://www.fiu.edu/~ptkfiu.
Last year's National Collegiate Honors Council Conference was held Chicago, Illinois in November. Ten Honors College students and five faculty members from FIU attended and made outstanding presentations in several panels. Louis Foster, MIS major; Deborah Fritz (interior design) Shelly Forde (interior design); Damion Dunn (international relations); Stefan Jhagroo (international business); Ricki Lander (advertising/dance); Elizabeth Mackey (accounting) Marissa Kingham (public relations); Karina Becerra (environmental studies); and Lizbeth Ramon (MIS) all presented papers at the Conference. Many thanks to colleagues who organized the Chicago panels their leadership and mentoring: Bill Beesting, Devon Graham, Caryl Grof, Bob Hogner, Peter Machonis and Sharon Placide. This year, our students once again delivered outstanding presentations at the Florida Collegiate Honors Council Conference held in Sarasota, Florida, February 22 to 24. FIU had the largest delegation, comprised of 12 students and five faculty members. In addition to the educational value of the conference, the students learned about the geography, history, and environment of Florida while driving with their professors to and from Sarasota. The professors involved were William Beesting, Stephen Fjellman, John Kneski, Peter Machonis, and Sharon Placide. Honors College students Regina Helena Moller and Erik Leontiev's paper "Mediterranean Culture ~ Aesthetics, Values & Authority," Arianne Britt and Yvette Hernandez's paper "How Tall is Polyphemus?" Mariam Baksh and Pablo Valdes' paper "Disputing A Popular Notion of Religion," Connie LaFlamme and Alessandro Montanari's paper "Foreign Study: Honors Students in Europe," Damir Sinovcic's paper "Historic Ceilings of Florida," Miguel Acosta's "Virtues Underestimated," and Marissa Kingham and Giselle Sanchez's paper "Scholars in the Swamp ~ FIU Students in the Everglades," were all presented at the Conference.
Honors College Expands Study Abroad Programs This summer The Honors College again offered its two perennial study abroad opportunities for its students in Spain and Italy. These programs were originally designed to fulfill the six credit senior year requirement for graduation through The Honors College, but may be substituted for other portions of the curriculum in the future. The Honors College Study Abroad Programs offer students the opportunity to experience immersion in another culture while pursuing a rigorous academic program integrated with the honors curriculum. The two separate four week programs consist of enrolling in two full summer session Honors College courses, the first half of which includes the study abroad component. These programs took place in the month of May with a group of participants registered for both the Spain and Italy programs. Participating faculty in the two European programs were The Honors College offered for the first time this year its new Caribbean Summer Study Abroad Program. In this course, students experienced the physical environments of Jamaica and learned how the interactive role of the geologic, or environmental setting of the region, played a significant role in their history; as well as the blend of European, African, Asian and Taino cultures. Instructions were designed to give a broad overview of the general geologic setting as well as special attention given to issues of multiculturalism; the relationship between the diverse geographic and geologic factors on natural resources, and present history. Florentin Maurrasse, who holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and is a Professor of Earth Sciences, led the new program. He specializes in stratigraphy, paleoceanography, and paleogeography of the Caribbean. Radiolarian and smaller foraminiferal biostratigraphy. Litho- and biostratigraphy of deep sea sequences in the Caribbean Sea and exposed deep sea sequences on land. Climate changes as recorded in pelagic sequences. The Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in southern Haiti and other Caribbean sites. Other interests include carbonate facies development and distribution in the Plio-Pleistocene carbonates of South Florida and their relation to the regional hydrogeology. A fourth new program has been added as our first full semester long program. This Fall will be the inaugural semester for the new Semester at The University of Alcala de Henares Madrid, Spain Program. Students are able to take, in English, transdisciplinary courses that will acquaint them with different aspects of Spanish culture. They also are expected to take one language course suited to their skills. Classroom instruction is complemented with a wide variety of site visits. The instructors will be Dr. Fernando Gonzalez-Reigosa from FIU and faculty members from the University of Alcala de Henares. Students have the option of living in the dorms at the University of Alcala de Henares or staying with a local family. Participants travel together to and from Spain, as well as to the various sites within the country. Plans to further expand the study abroad opportunities in the Honors College are under way.
Last year The Honors College initiated an effort to create a Diplomatic Partnership Council to facilitate fundraising, student networking, and marketing of the College. An initial meeting by Dean Griffith with the Consul General of Trinidad and Tobago led to a meeting with Consuls General of Barbados, Haiti, Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana, Bahamas, and Antigua hosted by the Barbados Consul General. At this meeting, attended by Dean Griffith, Associate Dean Fjellman, Assistant Dean Grof, and Assistant Dean Kneski, an project was endorsed and the Trinidad and Tobago Consul General was named as leader of the new group to pursue this significant initiative. Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. What separates my Honors College courses apart from the other ones I teach are the interdisciplinary nature of the topics under study; the greater opportunities for creativity in approaching the topics, both on my part and that of my students; and the high level of intelligence, creativity, and articulateness of the students. For good reasons, universities are structured along disciplinary lines: English, physics, engineering, hospitality management, etc. Disciplinary approaches permit very valuable, in-depth investigations of certain kinds, but because of their sharp but narrow focus, they often do not address connections to other subjects. The Honors College typically offers interdisciplinary courses, especially during the first two years. These compliment the disciplinary approach by broadening the perspective and allowing students to see how the same topic can be treated in different ways, all of which can be productive. For instance, this year the freshman class is studying the cold war, not only from a purely historical and political point of view, but also in terms of how that 45-year-long struggle between superpowers influenced how ordinary people lived their lives, artists and authors chose to create and how they approached their work, and how American society was shaped by it. A regular history class, political science class, literature class, or art history class might address some of these individual questions and in greater depth. But none would provide the wider point of view that shows how all of these factors work together; nor would they encourage students to be aware of the influences among them. The academic disciplines properly employ rigorous analytical approaches to their subjects; indeed, cultivating the ability to perform such rigorous analyses is the point of the undergraduate major in those disciplines. Such analysis is also important in the Honors College classes I teach, and my students employ them to learn about particular subjects. In addition, however, the Honors College offers greater flexibility and more opportunities for other, less conventional ways of learning about a subject. For instance, after studying how various authors and artists have addressed certain aspects of the cold war, my students are assigned to formulate their own creative response to it, using whatever medium they choose (i.e.: painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc.). Realizing that many students have not attempted to create any work of art since elementary school, I grade them on the ambitiousness of the conception, which they must explain in a short statement, and not on the quality of the execution (i.e.: what it looks like.) Other kinds of creative assignments include group exercises in which each student assumes a particular role and addresses an issue from that perspective. Last year, for instance, they had to argue for or against the practice of cutting down citrus trees in Miami-Dade, due to the citrus canker, from the point of view of a homeowner, a local nursery owner, a citrus industry worker in central Florida, and a grove owner in central Florida. Other students argued the proposal to build an airport at the site of the Homestead Air Force base from the viewpoints of an environmentalist, a developer, a member of the Homestead Chamber of Commerce, a homeowner in Homestead, and a small business owner else in the county. I attended a well respected graduate school, and in many ways the best part of that experience was the other students, whose intelligence, curiosity, and creativity stimulated me and pushed me to higher levels. The Honors College goes out of its way to choose such students, who are truly the greatest attraction the college has to offer. Editor's note:
Prof. Schwartz was a faculty member in the Honors College between 1996
to 2002 an is currently on sabbatical.
Faculty Achievement After nearly fifteen years, Dr. William J. Keppler, one of our founding faculty members, retired from the university at the end of the 2002 academic year. Dr. Keppler first taught in the Honors College with Dr. Stephen Fjellman, the other founding faculty member. For several years he taught the freshman Honors course at the Biscayne Bay Campus. Bill Keppler, successfully completed the NCAA Evaluator's training in Indianapolis in June which certifies him as a professional evaluator for the NCAA. All evaluators must be newly certified and are selected by the NCAA. Dean Ivelaw Griffith became a member of the Editorial Board of the, Caribbean Journal of Criminology and Social Psychology last year and also was President of the Caribbean Studies Association. The CSA was founded in 1974 by 300 Caribbeanists and now has over 1100 members throughout the world. Last fall Dean Griffith was awarded the Caribbean Bar Association of South Florida Award for Commitment to Caribbean Development and Education for 2001. He also was awarded the FIU 2001 University Access and Equity Award for Outstanding University Service in the area of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity for 2002. Richard Schwartz's book, The Films of Ridley Scott, was released by Praeger Press in the summer of 2001. The Films of Ridley Scott is the first full academic study of the director of Thelma & Louise, Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, and Hannibal, among other major films. Meri-Jane Rochelson delivered the following papers at international conferences last year: "Israel Zangwill's 'Dreamers of the Ghetto': Jewish History and the Construction of Jews as Europeans at the Fin de Siecle" presented at the conference "Textual Intersections in the Nineteenth Century: European Literature's, Histories, and Arts." University of Wales, Cardiff. -"Jewish Writers and Jewish Masculinity in Late-Victorian England." "Locating the Victorians: Reviewing our Interpretation of the Culture of the Victorian Period." The Science Museum, South Kensington, London. Third year Professor Charmaine DeFrancesco, Ph.D. has been appointed the FIU Faculty Athletic Representative to the Sun Belt Conference of the NCAA. Prof. DeFrancesco came to FIU in 1989 as the Counseling Consultant for the Athletics Department after developing one of the first academic support programs for student-athletes at FSU. In 1991, she joined in the College of Education as a faculty member and since then, has received several awards for her excellence in teaching. She taught in the Honors College between 1998 and 2002 and is currently a member of the United States Olympic Committee's (USOC) Sport Psychology Registry. Associate Dean Stephen M. Fjellman, Ph.D. will receive the 2002 Outstanding Faculty Award from the FIU Alumni Association. Recipients are recognized as those who have "made a lasting impression on the lives of the alumni. In addition to being the Associate Dean of The Honors College, Dr. Fjellman is also a Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. He has been at the institution since 1978. Prof. Caryl Grof, who is also an Assistant Dean of The Honors College, received the Student Affairs Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award last year for her outstanding work with both Honors Place and non-Honors Place student mentors. Coordinator Sharon Placide also was recognized for her work with Honors Place mentors. Prof. Bill Beesting, Honors College Director of Student Enrichment, has been named a founding member of the Board of Directors for the National Association of Fellowships Advisors. Prof. Beesting came to FIU in 1983 as the coordinator for academic advising responsible for all 225 freshmen. As FIU grew, he developed the Academic Advising Center and served as the first director. He wrote the proposal for the Academy for the Art of Teaching, now part of the permanent budget and in its tenth year. Along with Prof. Rick Schwartz, he founded the Journal for the Art of Teaching, to promote thoughtful dialogue about teaching. In addition to these acheivements, Honors College Faculty received the following Faculty Senate Awards for 2002:
Honors College Faculty
members Darden Pyron, Robert Hogner, and Bruce Hauptli received Teaching
Incentive Program (TIP) awards for 2001-2002.
Student Achievement Honors College Alumna, Azra Medjedovic, is this year's recipient of the Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Scholarship and the Golden Key Graduate Scholarship. Honors College sophomore, Melissa Leonard, received a Disney World Internship for summer and fall terms. Two photographs taken from a 1998 Lives, Livelihood, and Community (4th Year) class project are currently in the second city of a international tour. The two photographs were part of a sixty photo taken by members of Miami's homeless communities and assembled by students as The Miami Street Photo Project. All sixty are available for viewing at cba.fiu.edu|/mgmt/rhogner/street_show/index.html. The photographs are part of a larger exhibition Toxic Landscapes, Artists Examine the Environment. The exhibition and tour, sponsored by the Puffin Foundation, started last year in Pittsburgh (PA) and now is in New Jersey. After stops in Argentina and South Africa, the show will end this June at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti in Havana, Cuba. The Knight Foundation's Information Technology Department awarded two outstanding Honors College students, Leslie Jones and Lenny Ardiles, with summer internships. Leslie a senior in the Decision Science department of the College of Business, and Lenny a senior in the Computer Science department have had a chance to apply the knowledge they have acquired from their FIU courses, while at the same time, gain valuable experience in database programming in Visual Basics. Both Leslie and Lenny are extremely thankful to the Honors College for granting them this wonderful opportunity. Damir Anthony Sinovcic, an architecture major in The Honors College, won the National Center for Seniors' Housing Research "Aging In Place" Student Design Competition in February of 2002. The competition focused on two tracks: renovating a group of six rowhouses for a city's elderly population or designing a new dream home for a forty-something professional couple to address present and future needs. Sinovcic won first place in the Single Family Home Design Awards. "Damir represents the calibar of transfer student that we have at FIU and we are reaping the rewards of such an outstanding student," said Susan Lynch, director of Community College Relations and Transfer Services at FIU. The competition was funded under a cooperative agreement between the National Association of Home Builders Research Center and the U.S, Administration on Aging.
Honors College Student Awards The following students were the recipients of awards at the annual FIU Honors College Awards Ceremony this year. Patrice Scipio -
Fernando Gonzalez-Reigosa Award of Excellence Honors Place Mentors and Resident Assistant were also recognized. They were: Luanna Rahman (Resident
Assistant) "The Opportunity to Interact in an Environment that Fosters Dialogue, Cultivates Speculation, and Embraces Chance" by Leda Victoria Gitman Presented at the Honors College Annual Awards Assembly April 10, 2002 Graham Center Ballroom ~ University Park Miami, Florida When I was asked to speak here tonight, to say a few words about the Honors College, the first thing I did was to pull out from my library some of the books I had read as an Honors College student: Peter Burger and Thomas Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality, the very first reading assignment of the Honors College almost 12 years ago; Stephen Jay Gould's The Flamingo's Smile; Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, as well as Galileo Galilei's own Starry Messenger; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; The Raw and the Cooked by Claude Levi-Strauss; Lewis Mumford's The City in History; The Diary of Anne Frank, Stephen Fjellman's Vinyl Leaves; Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven.... The list goes on. I began to look through their pages, rereading underlined passages and deciphering margin notes scribbled in class. I was trying to find in them an underlying theme, something, perhaps, like the defining concern of the Honors College. But looking back through this body of readings from four years of Honors seminars, I was struck by the wild diversity of the material. One of the books I pulled out was Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind. In the introduction to his book, Bateson relates his experience of teaching a course that tried to get students to think some of the thoughts that are in his essays - thoughts like "Why do things have outlines?" or "Why do things get in a muddle?"; "What is play?" or "What is an idea?" The first day of class, at the end of the session, a student came up to him. The student glanced over his shoulder to be sure that the others were all leaving, and then said rather hesitantly, 'I want to ask a question.' 'Yes.' 'It's - do you want us to learn what you are telling us?' [Bateson] hesitated a moment, but [the student] rushed on with, 'Or is it all a sort of example, an illustration of something else?' And invariably, Bateson continues, "every year the question would arise after three or four sessions of the class: 'What is this course all about?' I am sure this will sound familiar to both the students and faculty of the Honors College. Like the class described by Gregory Bateson, the Honors College courses are not particularly about any subject matter. They are not particularly about the French Revolution, Modem Art, Darwinism, Disney World, Cybernetics, Socrates or Descartes - though they often do delve into all these subjects. So here, too, the question invariably arises, often during those initial seminars on "The Origins of Ideas and Ideas of Origin": "What is this course all about?" "Do you want us to learn what you are telling us?" "Or is it all a sort of example, an illustration of something else?" Indeed, the Honors College is about "something else" - something far less tangible than information, far less quantifiable than Òknowledge,Ó but far more profound and life changing in its implications: the basic perceptions, assumptions and beliefs-what Bateson calls "the epistemological premises" - upon which such "knowledge" is based. That is, the Honors curriculum is not about the knowledge of a subject - whether it is history, art, science, or contemporary society - but rather about the ways we come to "know" it and understand it. This, I think, is the Honors College's overarching concern and the most valuable legacy to its students. Surely, what the Honors College asks students to learn - to think critically about our lives and our worlds, to become aware of our culturally and historically determined perceptions, to take nothing for granted and to question the framework of this very thing we call reality - is difficult and often uncomfortable. It sometimes means we need to re-imagine our place in the world, our relationship to others, and to ourselves. It sometimes means we become disconcertingly self-aware, self-conscious in the truest sense. But there is also a sense of wonderment throughout the whole process, a sense of excitement generated by the discoveries of seeing things anew. As I was looking through that vast array of books from my Honors College years, trying to discern some kind of meta-theme, the thought occurred to me that it was the very diversity of the material that makes the Honors curriculum so unique. Its boldly interdisciplinary approach proposes a way of thinking that weaves often unexpected relationships to create a more complex and comprehensive pattern of the world. The Honors College is not interdisciplinary in the traditional sense of the word, in that it applies different disciplines to a single problem. Rather, it seeks common patterns across disciplines to create a picture of human thought. In teaching students to look across disciplinary borders, the Honors College points to a way of seeing that transcends categorical boundaries. It's a way of seeing that seeks connections and that once learned translates into every aspect of life. But while looking at all those books I had pulled out from my shelves, another thought occurred to me. As interesting and challenging as these readings are - we are talking about some of the best thinking and writing around - they are not really the shaping force of the Honors College. Plato, Brecht, Garcia Marquez, Levi-Strauss - these are the catalysts in that great alchemical process that occurs when great teachers and great students are given the opportunity to interact in an environment that fosters dialogue, cultivates speculation, and embraces chance. I bring up alchemy because there is something truly magical in the way that an Honors College discussion can begin with a simple, basic thought and end up with a radically new insight: a new understanding of something, a new vision of the world-a bit of wisdom, if you will. During my years as an Honors College student, there were many such instances of enlightenment. So what is this course all about? I believe it's about nothing more difficult than learning to lead an examined life. Nothing more difficult, nor more important and more rewarding. The Honors College, really, is the beginning of a life-long journey - or rather, it teaches us to be thinking travelers in this long journey of life. Happy travels, and may the vision you gained through the Honors College illumine your journey! |
Letter from the Editor
Honors Excellence Lecture Series
Phi Theta Kappa Alumni Association
National and State Honors Council Conferences
Honors College Diplomatic Partnership Council Being Formed
Alumni Essay