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.
Congratulations to SAU Honors College students! We are so proud of you!
Congratulations to the Honors College Fall 2024 graduates!
Jason Saldana
SAU Honors College graduate Jason Saldana has joined the United States Air Force. He reports for training later this summer in San Antonio, Texas.
He will train to become a Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Specialist (SERE).
The Air Force defines that specialty as follows:
Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) Specialists are the only DoD specialty specifically trained, equipped, organized, and employed to conduct SERE operations for the duration of their career. They are the DoD's subject matter experts to prepare and support personnel designated as High Risk of Isolation. SERE Specialists are members of the Guardian Angel weapon system, focused on Personnel Recovery (PR) and provide support to the five PR execution tasks; Report, Locate, Support, Recover, and Reintegrate. SERE Specialist duties range from instruction of formal courses to direct operational unit support at Active Duty, Guard and Reserve locations in continental U.S. and overseas.
Recent SAU Honors College grad, Anna Corbitt, is the lead author of the article below. Way to go Anna!
Anna Corbitt
A. Corbitt, W. G. Schwartz, C. Farnell, J. C. Balda and H. A. Mantooth, "The National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission Test Facility," in IEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics, doi: 10.1109/OJPEL.2024.3405311.
Two honors students recently were awarded the Outstanding Student awards in their departments in the Dempsey Liberal and Performing Arts College
Isabella Bernard (right) receives award for Outstanding Student in Behavioral and Social Sciences from Elizabeth Gloyd
Irelyn Coker receives award for Outstanding Student in Modern Languages from James Ulmer
Congratulations to both for an outstanding academic career in the SAU Honors College!
SAU Honors College graduate, Diana Mukweyi gave a talk today at SAU. She was sponsored by the Department of Biology.
Today, Diana is an IONM or an Inter Operative Neurophysiological Monitor. She monitors the progress of neurological surgeries of all kinds and alerts the team in real time if the surgery is having ill effects on the patient.
Her fascinating talk ranged over a wide variety of surgical events, from spinal cords to open brains. She described how she came to be an IONM and showed the several pathways toward such a career.
Before her talk she said she was moving to Kansas soon for a position that would allow her to travel, something she has always wanted to do. Her next stop will be in California.
It's always nice to see the progress of our grads. Thanks for dropping by!
News from one of our grads! Shatina Hunter Williams
December Graduation
Southern Arkansas Honors College
Left to right: Stephanie Tabor, McKenzie Brown, Kayla Hawkins
Left to right: Blake Barber, Kofoworola Afolabi, Gillian Wells, David Gustafson
Opeyemi Miracle Daramola
The Honors College is proud to send off its latest class into the future. Congrats to all
After a trying year, our 23 honors students graduated. We congratulate them.
They are:
I Feel Like a Silent Movie Actor
In 1929 a minor disaster occurred, the birth of talkies, or movies as we now know them. It was not a disaster for the general public but it was for many silent movie stars. Some were unable to perform in the talkies because of their accents, others disdained the new medium entirely, while others could not cope with the new requirements for sound: microphones or directors not being able to shout instructions while filming. Even Variety, Hollywood’s journal, argued that “movie stars should be screened and not heard.” Famous actors lost their fame and fortune nearly overnight. I’m sure you have not heard of John Gilbert, Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Pola Negri, Vilma Bánky, or Clara Bow. All of them either failed to make the transition to talkies or refused to do so. Bánky’s Hungarian accent ended her career. (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynnM8xgb3ew). Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin did make the transition successfully. MGM even advertised Garbo’s talkie debut writing “Garbo talks.” (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ybS7cebuU)
So why would I feel like a silent movie actor? It’s long past 1929. Why does Covid play a role in my case? Think about it. Since I began teaching I have stood in front of a class and talked. Sure, the props have changed. It has been many a year since I scratched out words on a blackboard using chalk. No more chalk dust on my clothes either. Now the boards are white and I use markers instead. Projection, however, has been the major change. I have gone from overhead projectors, to LCD panels on top of those overhead projectors, to projecting from a web page to my laptop in class. Yet, even with all of those differing methods I was still standing in front of the class talking and sometimes answering questions.
Last March everything changed and today those changes are still evident. Who would have imagined wearing masks and a whole industry emerging selling them in all kinds of colors and patterns? Plexiglass, too, now it’s everywhere. Zoom? Who had ever heard of Zoom? Dr. Berry and I were chatting the other day. He called our situation a “new normal.” He’s correct. I cannot imagine SAU taking down the plexiglass it has installed. We may need it still and may need it again, I’m sorry to say. There will be another virus. Online classes have been around for a while now. In 1992 I even chaired SAU’s first online committee; that’s when I first began to write web pages. Those early plans for online education at SAU were shelved. The connection speeds were still too slow, the computer memories were too small, and our classrooms were not yet ready. Slowly, though, online education did creep in using various forms and mediums. Dr. Rankin, for instance, gave live lectures from a TV studio on campus. Before Covid online courses and programs already existed at SAU. I even heard some students say they liked to take the online courses because it meant they could stay in their rooms and in their pajamas! Other students, however, found that the online experience was not for them because it demanded too much self-discipline or because there were still too many glitches in the network and the computers attached to it. Me, I liked teaching the way I had all my career. In fact, I even vowed never to teach an online course before I retired.
As you might imagine, I broke my vow. I had to. It was either adapt or retire. I chose the former. SAU gave us faculty a few days to convert our classes to an online format. The Task Force was formed to provide direction about how we should respond to Covid. We wore our masks, we washed our hands, we stayed home, and recently we got vaccinated. We had no choice. Covid is that dangerous.
Adapting was not easy and it was work. I had to write down the words I used to speak in class. That took time. I had to learn to use BlackBoard. Before that I even used SurveyMonkey to give tests. I like Blackboard better for testing and all of its classroom management capabilities although I’m still not taking advantage of many of those. I discovered that there were aspects of teaching online that I liked or even enjoyed. One was being able to communicate directly with students after grading their tests. I could easily send them an e-mail encouraging them for their performance or urging them to study harder and better. One thing I really liked about being online was being home and not having to get dressed and drive to work. On a two-hour trip to Texarkana with a fellow faculty member I noticed my voice was giving out. That, too, was a consequence of being online. I was no longer used to talking for long periods. When I taught in the classroom that happened too but after a week or so my voice would adapt and get stronger. So, the short story is I adapted to a serious historical situation.
You were forced to adapt too. Many had to go home and had to learn online. Once you returned in the spring you had to accommodate to hybrid, online, or face-to-face classes. Masks had to worn always and personal distance had to be respected. But here you are: SAU Honors College graduates. You made it. Now what?
We don’t call graduation commencement for no reason. You may see your college years ending but in reality it’s the rest of your life that’s beginning; that’s commencing. Some of you have jobs already, some of you are still looking and deciding, some of you will pursue more education either here or elsewhere. What all of you will find, though, is a different world than you imagined four years ago when you first came to SAU and the Honors College. Like the silent movie stars or the grizzled college professors you too will have to adapt to that changed world. On April 15th I made my first move back into that changed world. I spoke in public at SAU for the first time since March 2020. I spoke to high school students who may someday attend SAU and join the Honors College. We met in Grand Hall. There was around 20 of them and they were appropriately socially distanced and masked. I had my mask on too. Dr. Berry had addressed the group a few minutes earlier and had taken off his mask to talk to them, so I did the same once I began to speak. I was very mindful, however, of keeping my distance from them. I quickly fell into my usual patter, you have all heard parts of it before: Why are manhole covers round?, What is honors?, What GPA you need to stay in the Honors College, What are the benefits? And so on…
Although my spiel was familiar and practiced, it still felt strange. At the end. I automatically masked up. As I left, I had trouble recognizing students who greeted me because I could only see their eyes. I knew not to shake hands or get too close to anyone. While speaking to the high schoolers, I made sure to wear a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and Birkenstocks. When I went home those came off and I went back to my gym shorts and t-shirts. I have only worn a Hawaiian shirt twice since March! Now I live in t-shirts all day long and walk around barefooted most of the time.
Yet, there are bigger and more serious changes ahead and some have already taken place while others still await us. Travel, what’s that? David and I worked hard to increase student travel and the educational opportunities it provides. Now, travel is almost completely out of the question. I will miss attending NCHC for the first time since I became honors director. I don’t wish to risk flying to Orlando and it’s 14 hours by car. You may have or will soon have experienced something similar. Maybe your job interview took place remotely. Maybe that campus visit to a grad school could not take place. Maybe you zoomed in instead.
Notice that none of us anticipated these changes. No one did, really. Yet, here we all are in a new world, a lethal one at that. Like the silent movie stars we will either adapt or fail. I expect all of you to adapt. That’s why you chose to attend SAU. Education is not so much the learning of facts and figures, it’s learning how to cope with change. It’s possessing the tools and the mental wherewithal to assess the new environment and then thrive in it. You now have those tools, use them.
Now think about the honors students who enrolled in 2020. Unlike you, they were forced to take Honors Seminar online. They and I did not meet three times a week in Honors Hall. They were not exposed to my limited sartorial choices. I did not get the chance to interact with them as I did with you. You might remember me telling you that the bulk of our interactions over four years would take place that first semester in Honors Seminar. This class and I missed that opportunity. So, that’s the main reason I want to meet the next class of honors students face-to-face in Honors Seminar. We will not meet in that small classroom in Honors Hall. Anyone can see why not; it’s too small an area. Instead, the class has been moved to Overstreet 302, a much larger room. I’m sure we will still be wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
So, your class had to face a drastic change late in your tenure at SAU. The 2020 entering class was hit with the same problem at the outset of their time at SAU. Their honors experience will be much different than yours, to be sure. The 2021 entering class will have their own unique set of experiences as well. Things change, and we either change with them or we fail. I’m sure, however, that all of you will adapt. I’m also sure that the visions you had about your futures when you first set foot at SAU are different now. Recalibrate, deal with the changes that come without you intending them to. The old silent movie stars that succeeded learned to deal with being in the talkies, your 72 year-old honors director did not take the easy way out and retire. Instead, he broke his vow, put his shoulder to the task, learned to use new tools, and, remarkably, discovered that teaching online was not so bad.
David and I apologize to you for having to cancel the annual senior recognition reception and for having to leave the honors office unmanned. Nevertheless, we congratulate you on your achievements. We feel you are among the best SAU has to offer the world. Commence again now and expect that you will again face surprise challenges. You adapted to this one, we’re sure you can now adapt to any.
Finally, do try to keep in touch with us and we’ll try to do the same. Good luck and good fortune in the future. We’ll miss you but that’s part of our job, to send you off to your futures, even if those were not what any of us expected they would be.
