Honors College Report

Honors College Report

31 January 2018

Personnel:

• Director Kardas, Assistant Director Wingfield, GAs Amgain & Edeniyl, Student Worker Nash. Director Wingfield's employment status will soon be changed from classified to unclassified.

Travel:

• Six SAU personnel: Dr. Berry, Dr. Wang, Mr. Ochs, Petr Kandidatov, Dr. Kardas and honors student Taylor McNeel will visit Havana in February to make presentations at Universidad 2018 meeting. All are on the program. Some time will be spent at the University of Artemisa, our host and partner institution in Cuba. Dr. Berry will be part of a rectors' (university presidents) on the democratization and inclusion in the university. His talk will cover our first-generation students and our African-American student. Kardas, Wang, and Ochs along with Cuban colleagues Margarita Gonzalez and Able Castro will report on the murals painted on each campus. Kardas, Wang, and Gonzalez will cover the logistical hurdles successfully overcome while Ochs and Castro will talk about painting the murals. Kandidatov will speak about SAU's ESL program and investigate the possibility of hosting Cuban students. Finally, McNeel will report on her summer project in Mexico.
• Honors faculty and students will travel to Boston in November 2018 to attend the annual meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Council. Kardas, Wingfield, and student Laura Nash will present research on students' beliefs on what they consider to be the two most important college courses to take. Nash will also replicate a study on why students seek to travel overseas. Other honors students are also planning to submit work to the Council.
• Future Honors College travel plans include an overnight trip to Medieval Times in Dallas.
• Future SAU travel plans include a trip to China in May 2018 and another to Italy in May 2019.

Students:

• In May the Honors College graduated 33 students.
• The total enrollment of the Honors College is 151. That does not include 12 students placed on honors academic suspension, it does include 3 students placed on honors academic probation (e.g., GPA < 3.25).
• Applications for enrollment in the Honors College are arriving from high school students at the usual pace and thus far 8 have been accepted. The College also accepted 4 current SAU students, those are not reflected in the enrollment figure above.
• The Honors College provided partial funding for several student projects: to Yonghu Dai and Juping Wang for Spanish language videos for honors sections, and to Kate Sheehan for aquarium supplies for an honors student project.

Honors Research

• Kardas, Wingfield, and Nash will submit a faculty poster to NCHC titled: Honors' applicants perceptions about the two most necessary college courses. This research emanated from the College's application process. One of it essay prompts is: 1. What two classes should every college student take? Why? We noticed that a majority cited courses in financial planning. Coincidentally, faculty from the SAU College of Business contacted us and asked if Honors College would be interested in a full honors course in Financial Planning. So, plans are now underway to create such an honors section.