HONORS COLLEGE ISSUE 7 / NEWSLETTER
HONORS COLLEGE
FROM THE DEAN Greetings to our Honors Alumni, new and old and welcome to our first all-electronic newsletter! As you will see, much has been happening here in Honors. Our yearly enrollment hovers between 900 –1000 Honors Students. This means that 1 in 10 undergraduates at UAH is an Honors Student. This is an excellent size for us. It keeps us large enough to ensure that there are plenty of Honors course offerings, but small enough to keep the elite, intimate feel essential to an Honors College.
INSIDE 1 FROM THE DEAN 2 HAPPENINGS 4 FACULTY FELLOWS 6 STUDENT SPOTLIGHT 7 ALUMNI
Course offerings are another area of tremendous growth. Each year, we offer over 85 sections of Honors courses in over 30 subjects, including the entire calculus sequence plus differential equations, Honors physics lecture and labs, and a full complement of courses in arts, literature, and social sciences. We have also seen an explosion in Honors seminars. We offer over a dozen each academic year, and their topics are the envy of students all over campus. Honors has offered such courses as The Economics of Beer; The Philosophy of Star Wars; Boom, Kapow, Bravo! – Theater and Comic Books and Bhagavad Gita: Yoga Philosophy and Practice. Our service learning seminar on Poverty in the U.S. has continued a perennial offering, and this newsletter will feature a special article on a rapid prototyping course using Raspberry Pi devices. As I write this, Dr. Goebel is teaching the first Honors Study Abroad seminar on art, music, and literature in Germany. On completion, students will travel for two weeks in Munich and Berlin under Dr. Goebel’s excellent tutelage. Finally, the mention of Dr. Goebel brings us to the addition of our Faculty Fellow program. Fellows apply to work with Honors, teaching seminars and providing their unique expertise on things such as appropriate Capstones for engineering, upper division Honors math courses, or the creation of study abroad courses. I hope you enjoy catching up on all the happenings in Honors. As always, I must close by stating that it is my continuing privilege and delight to work with Honors Students on a daily basis. Their commitment to excellence and their spirited pursuit of knowledge gives me hope for a brighter future.
Dr. William Wilkerson Dean, Honors College
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HAPPENINGS D & D NIGHTS GET DOWN WITH THE GREAT GATSBY This year, the annual fall dance and social was titled “Get Down with the Great Gatsby” and the Community Leaders held it at the “Northside Speakeasy” (a.k.a., the Franz Multipurpose room). A roaring twenties theme paired with swing dancing brought over 100 people to participate.
WEEK OF WELCOME Week of Welcome was huge this year! Dinner with the Dean was a packed house, the Amazing Race involved over 20 activities at 4 stations around campus, including two water slides and lunch stations. Our Community Leaders added a color run to the picnic. And Jenga was popular everywhere!
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Role playing games, and especially Dungeons and Dragons, have become hugely popular among Honors Students. We have D & D nights every month, and both beginners and experienced players love to show up and play.
MENTOR RETREAT The Mentor retreat is always a success. This year, about 30 people rafted the Ocoee river, roasted marshmallows by the fire, and slept in the woods. Dean Wilkerson cooked a giant meal of Mexican food for all who attended.
STUDENT CONFERENCE This year’s common text for the Honors English Seminar was Robert Reich’s The Common Good. For the first time, students led their own conference on the text. For two days, students heard from guest speakers and presented their own responses to the text. “Roasting Reich” was a popular activity during those sessions. Special thanks to the conference organizers, both faculty and students!
TALENT SHOW We frequently brag that Honors Students are multi-talented. Well this year we finally got to see just how talented they were, as the Community Leaders hosted their first ever Honors Talent Show. Musical acts, stand up, even a staged light sabre duel made for an evening of great and diverse talent.
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FACULTY FELLOWS MOVE HONORS
TO THE NEXT LEVEL
To get UAH faculty more involved in Honors, the Honors College has created a Faculty Fellow program. The Honors College (and before that, the Honors Program) has always relied on faculty from other colleges and departments to teach Honors courses and special Honors Seminars. As we have grown, we have come to need faculty to contribute in other ways, and faculty have grown more interested in helping Honors. Enter the Honors Faculty Fellow program. Through an arrangement with other colleges and departments, Honors can now claim time and service for select faculty for up to two years. Honors Faculty Fellows teach a section of Honors 101: Introduction to Honors Research, Honors sections of regular courses (such as Honors Macroeconomics), and a special topics Honors seminar. They also assist with programs and tasks that are uniquely suited to their research and teaching backgrounds. For example, Dr. Rolf Goebel, Distinguished Professor of World Languages and Cultures, has developed and implemented our first Honors Study Abroad Course. Dr. Paul Collopy, of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, has reviewed all Honors Capstones in Engineering to ensure both their rigor and their feasibility. Our first Fellows class, Dr. Goebel and Dr. Collopy, are just completing their second year and will be replaced by an exciting new class: Dr. Brinda Mahalingam, Department of Economics and Computational Analysis Dr. Terri Johnson, Department of Mathematics Dr. Christine Sears, Department of History Between them, these three will devise new upper division Honors math curriculum, create history Role Playing Games for Franz Hall, and teach our first environmental economics seminar. And that’s just the beginning.
“...that’s just the beginning”
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Dr. Sears
Dr. Mahalingam
Dr. Johnson
DAVID CHAN named
Honorary Honors Faculty Fellow Prototyping and Designing with a Raspberry Pi The Honors College named David Chan as its first Honorary Honors Faculty Fellow. A Huntsville native, Chan left Huntsville to pursue his education at MIT, where he earned three degrees before his 23rd birthday. After nearly 30 years working in Silicon Valley, he returned to be close to family and take up the mantel of managing the Pei-Ling Chan Charitable Trust. Chan truly has a passion to share his knowledge with young people, and so Honors was delighted when he offered to teach a seminar on practical applications of micro-controllers. The course, entitled Rapid Prototyping with Raspberry Pi, encouraged students to develop projects using open source software and the almost limitless functionality of the Pi. Alumni donations graciously covered the cost of supplying the equipment to the students and the students designed and implemented some remarkable projects in only one semester. Chan likes the idea of anyone using the Pi because the equipment and the software allow students to do almost anything: “For example, a biology major could use it to better control an experiment or an arts major could use it to better collate research data. After all, micro-controllers are now ubiquitous and used in nearly every electrical device.” The students in the course were universally pleased with the opportunity and with Chan’s instruction. Of particular value were Chan’s many years in industry and design. One student – Thomas Salverson – put it this way: “Mr. Chan has so much experience that he can tell us how methods of industrial design have changed over the years and why the newer methods were implemented.” Thomas has continued to design and implement new uses for the Raspberry Pi. For his part, Chan found the class delightful and challenging to teach, and was truly impressed with UAH Honors Students. In fact, David Chan and the students had so much fun that we’re going to offer the course again this fall!
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Mr. Chan has so much experience that he can tell us how methods of industrial design have changed over the years and why the newer methods were implemented.
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Honors First Generation Students:
FINDING A NEW HOME IN A NEW ENVIRONMENT Allana Schafer never imagined she would snap a selfie in Berlin, Germany. As the first in her family to attend college, simply enrolling, attending, and succeeding were first priorities. Nonetheless, her participation in the Honors College sparked an interest in research. Dr. Carmen Scholz quickly discovered that Allana had unique talents in the lab, and before long Allana successfully synthesized a polymer that eluded the lab team for more than a year. With Dr. Scholz’s mentorship and Honors’ study abroad funding, Allana spent an entire summer in Halle, Germany, characterizing her new polymer. In her spare time, she traveled the country, including that side trip to Berlin. First generation students like Allana often face unique challenges before they arrive at college, such as, filling out college applications and financial aid forms, deciding potential majors, and ensuring that they have the right high school classes. These may come easily to students whose parents once navigated those waters, but many first generations students and their families must learn as they go. Once they arrive at college, first generation students can be beset with a sense of non-belonging and with the struggles that come from lacking both a ready support system and the cultural and social capital that helps second generation students succeed. While Allana’s success is special, it’s not unique. Although the more rigorous course demands and research requirements of Honors might seem more burdensome to firstgeneration students, Honors actually offers many opportunities for such students to flourish. A course like Honors Calculus may be more challenging than its regular counterpart, but its smaller size means students get help from the professor and other students, and its enriched content builds a stronger foundation for later courses. Honors Students are well 6
known for the support they give each other, and they make no exception for their fellow first generations students. The focus on community building, both through Honors courses and extracurricular events like Week of Welcome, provides ample opportunities for students to make friends and to develop that crucial connection that makes them feel at home in their strange new land. Additional advising, Honor Tutoring, and the Honors Mentor program all provide extra support. Rather than get lost in a big anonymous school (which doesn’t really characterize UAH anyway), as part of the Honors College, firstgeneration students can find personal attention in a tightly knit community. Other first-generation students, like Emma Leiser, agree that Honors has helped them transition successfully to college. “Honors makes it easier, because everyone is new to being in Honors. Even though there are lots of differences among us, we all support each other and we’re all trying to be Honors Students.” Emma is studying both English and Physics at UAH and has worked as a resident assistant in Franz Hall for two years. Soon, like Allana, Emma will travel to Europe for study abroad as a part of the first Honors Study Abroad seminar. After speaking with Emma, Allana, and other first-generation students, Honors has made a commitment to develop a special freshman program for students who are first generation. The program will allow such students to meet each other and work with more senior students who can advise them on their transition. We eventually hope to provide additional funding or support for such students to encourage them to apply to Honors and have the kind of college experience that only an Honors College can provide. With some work, we can make Honors even more welcoming!
ALUMNI The Honors Affinity Group held its first event: Hockey with the Dean. We filled the deluxe suite in the VBC, and even though the team lost, we had a great time. Dr. Dawson, UAH’s new president stopped by just in time to see the Honors alumni break into the UAH fight song. Way to show some spirit!
Donate! Many of the programs and events you read about here are made possible by donations from supports and alumni. Any amount is welcome: uah.edu/honors/donate
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U.S. Postage PAID Huntsville, AL Permit No. 283 Honors College 301 Sparkman Drive Frank Franz Residence Hall Huntsville, AL 35899 The University of Alabama in Huntsville is an EEO/AA/Title VI/Title IX/Section 504/ADA/ADEA institution in the provision of its education and employment programs and services. 03.20
An Equal Opportunity University
HONORS COLLEGE uah.edu/honors