by Gina K. Logue
F
ew people are more fervent advocates of education than concerned parents. That’s why Raiko Henderson, stay-at-home mother of four, is a believer in the University Honors College. Henderson, a native of Seoul, South Korea, was adopted by an American family at age two and has lived in American Samoa and Seattle. In 1995, she accompanied her then-husband to Nashville, where she worked as a legal secretary while he attended law school at Vanderbilt. With a few transfer classes under her belt, she became an MTSU Honors student, graduating in 2001 with a bachelor’s in Economics with minors in Business Administration and English. But her fondest memories are reserved for liberal arts courses with wide-ranging discussions that took her imagination to new levels. “It was more than just going into a class, taking two or three multiple-choice tests, getting a grade and leaving,” Henderson says. “You really got to know your instructors.” She cites Dr. David Rowe (History), who retired in 2014, as “a really phenomenal teacher” and Dr. Jill Hague, former interim associate dean of the Honors College, and Dr. Will Brantley (English) as particularly memorable. “I initially donated to the Honors College to give back scholarship money I received when I attended MTSU,” she says. However, after she was invited to join the Board of Visitors and listened to students’ stories, she was inspired to do more. Henderson had intended to go for a graduate degree, but remarriage and the birth of her four children changed the direction of her life. Her keen intellect and probing mind are now devoted to making sure nine-year-old Sarah, seven-yearold Michael, five-year-old Samuel, and three-year-old Rebecca have the best possible preparation for life. The family lives in Henderson, Ky., a town founded by her husband’s ancestors. He works as an attorney across the river in Indiana, where the children go to school. One of Henderson’s big challenges has been Michael’s struggle with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Henderson is doing research to determine whether Michael also has dyslexia. “Part of me feels like I’d like to do something to help these children with learning disorders because a lot of them aren’t getting the help they need, especially if they’re severe cases,”
54 Honors Magazine www.mtsu.edu/honors
Henderson says. “Unfortunately, a lot of times [teachers don’t] catch it until third or fourth grade, and, by then, [the children] are so beaten down.” That’s why she wants the Honors College to establish scholarships for students with learning disorders by using a test-optional model for admission. “Rather than using standardized testing as the main criteria for acceptance, use graded schoolwork, interviews, and personal essays,” Henderson says. “There are many bright students who could contribute a lot to the Honors College who are unable to show their strengths on standardized tests.” Henderson sees the social stigma such youngsters face as another stumbling block on the path to quality education. And the children aren’t the only ones who need educating. “I see parents ignore their children’s disabilities and subsequently watch their children struggle because they are afraid that their children will be labeled as ‘stupid,’” she says. Henderson says children with learning disabilities frequently have assets that go overlooked by mainstream society, including the ability to think abstractly and to master a macroview of the world that others miss. Waning emphasis on the humanities is another of Henderson’s concerns. She fears that dismissing liberal arts as irrelevant or even expendable would be a terrible mistake. She sees the connection between in-depth classroom discussions and the world outside college as an obvious one. “Do the brokers on Wall Street worry about the social repercussions on actual people on the losing end of a trade?” she says. “Could they learn more from Jurgis Rudkus and the Joad family in books like The Jungle and The Grapes of Wrath, or do they simply follow the Machiavellian mantra that the ‘ends justify the means’?” That said, Henderson would like to see more students with business and vocational/technical-oriented majors graduate from the Honors College. She believes they could benefit from the collegiality and increased attention. “It’s really a self-contained little community within MTSU. When I see the students, I feel like they have a family there,” she says. As for her personal aspirations, that graduate degree she put on hold to care for her kids is still a possibility. “If I go back to get a graduate degree, which I would like to do, I’ll probably be the oldest person there,” Henderson says with a chuckle.