New SAU Full Honors Courses
Thank you, Dr. Sronce, for welcoming the family and friends
of our soon-to-be graduates.
We always appreciate your kind words about the Honors
College.
Thank you also to our very able Administrative Assistant, Mrs
Lynndon Watson. She has become a regular Radar O’Reilly here in the honors
college. If you remember M*A*S*H* the TV series and movie, you’ll
remember that Radar readily anticipated his colonel’s thoughts ahead of time.
Lynndon is nearly on par with Radar after only a few short years. FYI, that
scares me.
Let me also thank the managers of this fine facility. I
assume that most of you know that most of this building used to be the SAU
president’s residence. In fact, I spent my first night at SAU back in July 1980
in a bedroom down that hallway. My SAU house was not yet ready when I arrived.
Dr. Antoinette Odendaal is the Honors College’s
assistant director and is also responsible for today and for much more in the
day-to-day operations of the College. She’s a chemist and is also responsible
for much of SAU’s success in placing students into Medical Schools.
Also present, but not for much longer, is our Graduate
Assistant, Suzannah Alonso. I say not much longer because she, too, will
graduate soon and begin a career as a teacher. So, you should consider both as
staff and as another honoree today.
Just so you’ll know, I have been at SAU since 1980. I became
the director of the Honors College in 2009. Today, I decided to wear what has
become my uniform: sandals, shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt. Just so you’ll know,
this is the first time I have done so at this ceremony. When I traveled to
Honolulu in 2004 I never wore an Aloha shirt (that’s what they call them
there). I felt it would be inauthentic on my part.
Today, I want to share some of the latest news and events
about our students and the College. But before I launch into that let me say
just a few words about honors education in general.
Hopefully, much of what I’m about to say our graduates will
already know. So, these words are not directed to them but to the rest of you.
What is honors education? One way of defining it is as the
ideal college experience where young minds learn and experienced scholars teach
and model for them the essential knowledge and skills they will need after
graduation. Hopefully, all of us have done our jobs. Our students certainly
have or they would not be sitting here today.
More specifically, honors is about academics,
extracurricular opportunities (especially travel), and community service.
Honors courses are not harder; but they are deeper, broader, and more complex.
They are also more fun and interesting. I hope our students agree.
Those courses are the focus of my talk. Let me tell you
more. We have two types of courses: contract courses and full honors courses.
The majority are contract courses. In those, honors students are in the same
room as non-honors students taking the same course with the same instructor but
after having contracted to elevate the course to honors level. The Honors
College policy about contracts states: “Simply adding a research paper should
be avoided. Projects that are interesting and engaging are best.”
Elevate to honors level? That depends of the instructor. For
example, in the Human Genetics course each honors student receives a 23 and Me
kit. They swab their cheek cells, send them to the company, and get back a
report on their genome. They then present a report to the class and a written
one to their instructor. Honors has an opt out mechanism for any students who
would rather not know what information their chromosomes carry, no one has ever
done so.
The courses that I want to concentrate on today are our new
full honors courses. Before Covid we already had a slate of full honors courses
and several of those are still around. But SAU and all other colleges and
universities had to drastically tighten their budgets to cope with the
stresses, financial and otherwise that Covid imposed on them. Here our
traditional slate of full honors courses had to be suspended for budgetary
reasons. Of course, those courses were not the only casualty. Our travel budget
went to zero.
Slowly, and like after a major storm, colleges were slow to
recover and to restore offerings. One day at our monthly meeting, Dr. Lanoue
our former provost, suggested that it was time to revive our full honors
courses. Even better, he offered to pay faculty to teach them! He has moved on
from SAU but, thankfully, Dr. Sronce has continued this effort. How should
these courses be structured, we all wondered.
After much planning the honors brain trust decided that
these new courses should not carry prerequisites. That would allow any honors
student, regardless of major, to enroll. To fill the courses we instituted a
new policy on a rolling basis. Every new entering class would be required to
take at least one of the new full honors courses prior to graduating. Honors students already enrolled would not be
required to take the new courses but each successive entering class would.
Today, five years later, all students must meet the requirement.
The first course offered was in 2023: Ancient Egypt taught
by Dr. Svetlana Paulson. It served as a very successful test case. Many
students enrolled. The next spring brought a killer course in terms of
enrollment. It was Dr. Krista Nelson’s Psychology of Serial Killers. In fact,
Dr. Nelson will be offering this course again in the fall of 2026. It should
fill up again for some reason. A second course was also offered in spring 2024,
the Sustainability of Natural Resources. Because of its low enrollment I took
the course as well. The main thing I learned was that everything you see in
this room will one day be in a landfill. That was a sobering thought for me.
Positive Psychology, offered by Dr. Brianna McCartney
debuted in fall 2004. At Harvard, that course has long been one of the most
popular. Here, it was popular too. Often, when people think of psychology they
think of pathological behaviors, crime, or interpersonal conflict. In contrast,
positive psychology looks at topics that make life worth living including
happiness, accomplishment, and meaning.
Our first three course semester followed in spring 2025. Dr.
Shannin Schroeder returned one of our traditional full honors courses to the
schedule: World Literature II. Not long one of our grads, Clai Morehead, gave a
talk on campus. She had just earned a PhD and is en route towards earning her
MD, both at UAMS. She said that Dr. Schroeder’s course was her favorite at SAU.
Good praise indeed.
The next two courses offered that same semester were more
hands on courses but both had a solid academic background. Dr. Haydar Zghair
taught 3D Printing and Mr. Nathan Lambert taught Electric Guitar Making. Zghair,
Lambert, McCartney, along with Odendaal and myself traveled to San Diego for
the annual nationwide honors meeting. All of us presented a panel on these same
courses I am talking about. Since, four of us have submitted a proposed article
the journal Honors in Practice. Hopefully, they will see fit to publish
it.
This semester we offered 3D Printing and Electric Guitar
Making again. For fall 2026 The Psychology of Serial Killers will be on the
schedule (Krista Nelson) along with a new course Technology, Control, and Human
Freedom.
Faculty propose courses and they are analyzed and evaluated
by the honors brain trust and honors students. Eight courses were submitted for
fall 2026 but only two could be scheduled. Like everything else, honors courses
are not free, so a minimum number of students must enroll for the course to
“pay for itself” in terms of tuition dollars.
Let me clue you in on one more source of full honors
courses, the online courses offered by Honors Arkansas, the statewide
consortium for collegiate Honors in the state. In May 2026, during the
intersession (the three weeks between spring and summer classes), Honors
Arkansas will offer a course called CRISIS. That course will teach students about
“crisis management focused on how high-stakes decisions are made in Arkansas.”
I believe honors has weathered the storm and is repairing
the damage from Covid. The silver lining is that our new courses are open to
all honors students and focus on interesting and important topics. Perhaps had
we not experienced that storm those courses would not have been born. But they
have been born and now you know more about them.
There is another silver cloud. These courses have allowed
the Honors College to develop a committed cadre of instructors that we can turn
to improve honors education. Look at the inside first page of your program to
see their names. The Honors College could not work without their dedicated
service to us, to SAU, and to students such as these graduates in front of you.
Now let’s turn to the important part of this gathering.
Giving stuff away. Students, be sure you have a ticket for the door prizes.
Also, before we break up you will need to drop by the honors
office before you walk to pick up your Honors Medallions. We usually distribute
those at this ceremony but due to the early date this year and to J1 (our new
administrative system) those cannot be made until we are sure of the graduation
list. So, watch your email a few weeks before graduation.
Thank you to all who came to the graduation ceremony for Honors College Students and Congratulations to all students graduating.
