Honors Council Meets

Honors College students at 2013 Honors Council Business meeting (L to R) Samson King, Subir Shakya, Joy Tan, Darrell Gray, Kara O'Neal, Michelle Beavers, Zachary Pinson, Deana Hughes, Hali Pinson, and Chris Harris (Photo: Inna Bagaeva)

The Honors Council met for it annual business meeting on Sunday, January 13, 2013. Meeting with the Council was the SAU Honors College Committee. The Council was welcomed to SAU by Paul McLendon, Vice President for Financial Affairs. Director Kardas briefed the Council on some of the activities the Honors College had recently engaged in. Those included:

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• Upcoming visits to SAU Tech and College of the Ouachitas. These will set up Honors Programs at the two schools along with articulation agreements with SAU to transfer honors hours. The program will allow SAU to admit juniors as honors students.
• National Collegiate Honors Council Meeting: Two faculty and five students attended the meeting in Boston making four separate presentations.
• Honors College graduated 17 students (Spring and Fall 2012) including two in three years and one in three and a half years.
• The Honors Seminar hosted the following visitors: David Rankin, Trey Berry, and Lisa Toms.
• Zachary Pinson, Hali Pinson, and Michelle Beavers visited NASA's Stennis Space Center.
• Twelve students attended the showing of the remastered Lawrence of Arabia in Texarkana
• Wireless printer installed in Honors Lounge for student use with iPads

After, several honors students gave reports on their recent extramural trips.


Deana Hughes gave a brief report on her honors semester at Northern Arizona University. That program used the nearby Grand Canyon as a teaching device for experiential learning. Deana completed 16 hours of honors credits. She will give a more comprehensive report later in the Spring semester.


Darrell Gray took two trips. He spent several weeks in Detroit as an athletic training intern with the Detroit Lions NFL football team working long days. He also accompanied Dr. Wilson and other students to Boston to present at the National Collegiate Honors Council's annual meeting.


Subir Shakya traveled to the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis where he was able to take measurements from plant samples from the 19th century on. He and Dr. Shawn Krosnick are working on genus Passiflora.


Hali Pinson, Michelle Beavers, and Zachary Pinson spent two days in Mississippi culminating with an extended tour of NASA's Stennis Space Center. There, they met with NASA personnel interviewing them about their jobs as part of a NASA Research Infrastructure Grant ($15,000) from the Arkansas Space Consortium. Their research concerns gender and engineering careers.


Samson King reported on his Winter Break experiences in neuroanatomy at Wake Forest University. He got to observe researchers at work and gave a moving description of the necroscopy of a macaque monkey. The monkey was infirm and had to be sacrificed. Afterward, researchers took many samples from the body and sent them off to other labs.


Kara O'Neal, Darrell Gray, and Dr. Deborah Wilson spoke about their trip to the National Collegiate Honors Council meeting in Boston. There, they presented (at 8 am) the results of their honors statistics project. They also got to spend much time sightseeing in Boston and visited Harvard, MIT, and the Boston Common. Wilson commented that the students had to wake up early in the wee hours of the morning on both legs of their flights but that all were bright eyed and bushy tailed regardless.


Chris Harris, ignoring orders, gave a short PowerPoint presentation of his internship in Washington DC. He also got to travel to Austin, TX, where he had to live in a tent for three days. The nonprofit he worked for has since offered him a permanent position.


Joy Tan attended the meeting as the student representative from the Honors Committee. Kara O'Neal is the other student representative.


Director Kardas closed the meeting by describing how gratifying is is to him to watch honors students progress through the program. When honors students take the time to leave the campus to further their education they return as stronger and more accomplished human beings.


After the meeting all enjoyed hors d'oevres and other refreshments provided by ARAMARK. Those included Swedish meatballs, quiche, and egg rolls. Whatever food was left ended up in the Honors Hall Common as usual.