The Honors College at Southern Arkansas University released its monthly report recently. The following items of interest were included in the report:
- Anonymous donor gives $3,000: An anonymous donor has given the Honors College a gift of $3,000 to be used for recruitment of first-year students.
- Recruitment: Thus far, 18 students have applied for admission and 5 have been accepted. The Honors College has not yet received complete application packets from the remaining applicants.
- Two-year schedule: The Honors College is working with the College of Liberal and Performing Arts to set up a two-year schedule of classes. The idea is to stabilize enrollment and to rationalize planning.
- Four seniors traveling to Greenville, SC by train: Four senior honors students will travel to Greenville, S.C., over Spring Break to make presentations of their academic work. To save money, they will travel by train from Meridian, Miss. They will also document their trip with a video. The students and projects are: Sydney Kilgore – 1000 Years of Suffering: The Ancient Tradition of Chinese Foot-Binding; Mary McMillan- Acts of Resistance in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative; Nitish Narula – Construction of Histatin-resistant Strains of Candida albicans, and The CRABS CLAW (CRC) gene tree: a phylogenetic analysis of the Eudicots; and Joshua Manuel – Whatever Happened To The [Wo]Man Of Tomorrow? Race and Gender Bias in Graphic Novels.
- Guest Speaker, Study Abroad: The Honors College sponsored a talk by Melissa Galvagni of EuroScholar on Feb. 23. Galvagni spoke about semester-long undergraduate research opportunities in Europe along with more-traditional study abroad programs worldwide.
- Donations to Silent Auction: The Honors College has already received several donations for its upcoming silent auction to be held in conjunction with the annual banquet. El Spotro, the artist from Prescott, has donated two small razorback paintings and The Loft has donated a free one-night stay.
- Equipment purchases: The Honors College purchased an incubator for Dr. Shawn Krosnick so that she could direct honors students’ genetics research. The incubator will allow them to precisely control temperatures required for plant growth. The Honors College also purchased a netbook computer so that Dr. Abdel Bachri could teach the use of Mathematica and other scientific software to honors students.
- State Farm Youth Opportunity Grant: Unfortunately, the $86,000 grant written last October for the Honors College was not funded. On the other hand, only 92 of the nearly 1,200 proposals were funded. They will try again soon.
