Honors College Report: January 29, 2014

 

Honors College Report

January 29, 2014

Activities and News:

• Several honors students are preparing submissions to the Southern Regional Honors Council meeting that will be held in Savannah in March.
• The annual meeting of the SAU Honors Council will be Sunday, February 9 from 2 to 3 pm in Reynolds 205. Honors students who have traveled over the last year will present brief accounts of their trips, purpose, and what they learned.
• Currently, 28 honors students have applied for May 2014 graduation, a record number!
• Lera Black, using data compiled by Rachel Wetherington, has created a new poster showing where SAU Honors College students come from. (see below)
• Deana Hughes and Hayden Kopplin were recently named to Who's Who Among Students at American Colleges and Universities.
• The honors general psychology class is being taught using iPads and an app developed by empowered.com. This is a pilot project by the company and SAU is one of several schools selected by them to evaluate this method of teaching. empowered.com selected the Honors College because of its universal distribution of iPads to its students. The other schools are:

Cambria-Rowe Business College at Clemson University,

Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University,  
Texas Southern University,

University of California at Irvine,

University of California at San Diego,
University of San Francisco,

University of Southern California's: Viterbi School of Engineering, Rossier School of Education, and Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

• SAU Faculty are teaching a record number of full honors and contract honors courses during the Spring 2014 semester (81 courses and 206 students).
• See: http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-the-Point-of-an-Honors/144227/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en for a nice description of what Honors education is all about. The author, Nancy West, argues that Honors Colleges provide a "third place" for honors students. She describes such places as "environments, separate from work and home, which people visit frequently and voluntarily. Examples include coffeehouses, cafes, salons, and the Internet. Although they vary wildly in look and feel, third places share certain fundamental traits. They act as social levelers, discounting class status as a marker of social significance. Their mood is playful; their atmosphere is warm and friendly. They promote group creativity and lively conversation. Most important, they serve as anchors of a community, fostering broad and less scripted interactions than those we have at home or our regular workplaces.
• Dr. Kardas will attend two meetings soon. The first will be at the State Capitol next Monday. The Joint Legislative Committee on Education is hearing testimony from the Honors Deans of UCA and UA-Fayetteville. The second will be the board meeting and co-chairs meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Council in Omaha at the end of February.  
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• Poster by Lera Black, data by Rachel Wetherington