SAU Honors College

The SAU Honors College was founded in 2003 by Dr. David Rankin, president of SAU. Dr. Lynne Belcher served as founding director and recently retired from SAU. The Honors College seeks and admits qualified students who seek to pursue a serious academic program with equally gifted peers and committed teachers. Honors classes are small and provide academically enriching opportunities for students and the faculty who teach them. Currently, SAU enrolls nearly 170 honors students and graduates about 66% of admitees in four years or less. Anyone interested in applying to the Honors College or seeking further information should contact the director, Dr. Edward P. Kardas at epkardas@saumag.edu or at 870 904-8897.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

You might be an SAU honors student

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy. Today I spoke at the penultimate Be a Mulerider (BAM!) session and explained Honors College aping Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck" line.

So, I explained to student, parents, and friends that these sayings might help them better understand what honors students are like.

  • If you are disappointed when your English teacher says the paper must be 10 pages or less, you might be an honors student.
  • If you love reading algebra equations, you might be an honors student.
  • If you happen upon Juliet's seemingly lifeless body and the first thing you do is order a toxicology screen, you might be an honors student.
  • When a satellite crashes in your front yard and you run to your computer so you can calculate the decay in the orbital trajectory, you might be an honors student.
  • If you are strolling on campus with a big smile on your face clutching your brand new iPad, you might be an SAU honors student.
  • If you love your smaller classes where your fellow students always make it to class, you might be an SAU honors student.
  • If your residence hall really is quiet during quiet hours, you might be an SAU honors student.
  • If your Honors Seminar instructor shows up for class wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and sandals then you really are an SAU honors student.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

New Server Room (Closet)

 The server closet in Nelson Hall houses our new and old servers

Among the benefits our our new Honors College space are four spacious closets. Nelson Hall, our new home, was once a residence hall. So, we now have four closets. Two are in David Wingfield's office and are used for storage of files and other stuff.

The other two are in my office. Today, one became the new home of peace.saumag.edu, mdst.org, mulerider.saumag.edu, and francis.saumag.edu. I removed the closet door so that the space would not get too hot. Suraj installed (see picture above, clockwise from upper left) our old server box, a monitor, keyboard (no mouse required for old UNIX command line interface), another monitor, keyboard, mouse, new server box, and uninterrupted power supply. Don't worry Suraj only needs to go into the closet rarely. He can access both servers remotely from the comfort of his desk next door.

The servers provide Web pages for psychology and honors courses, host the Web page of the Magnolia Dolphin Swim team, and most importantly provide resources for social work departments around Arkansas as well as the IV-E project.

While the servers now have a new home much still remains to be done. Soon, they will be configured for "fail-over" meaning that should the new (main) server crash, the old one would automatically take over. Additionally, both servers will contain the same information, while a nightly back up to a hard disk will add additional redundancy.