Honors Faculty....

Vol 2. No. 17

So, why do faculty teach Honors? To answer that, here are the voices of three who teach many Honors courses and come back to it time and time again. It is clear that the faculty find the experience as rewarding as the students do and that makes for an even more enriching experience.

Dr. Vera Whisman

Associate Professor of Sociology

I love teaching Honors courses because this is the place where I get to pursue my calling in life.

I’m a sociologist. I’ve found that sociology is a great tool for replacing ignorance, prejudice, and fear. I decided long ago that I was going to teach everyone I could reach how to think like a sociologist. That task is worthwhile, and meaningful, and important. And it is also so much fun: It’s a celebration of the love of learning—of ideas and questions and how to answer them and how that creates yet more questions. I’m helping students discover and nurture that in themselves. The beauty of it is that often it’s the students who end up in the course because it fit their schedule, who didn’t know that it was an Honors course, who benefit most profoundly.

• “I didn’t think I would like sociology.” 
• “I never thought about this stuff before.” 
• “I have really opened my eyes.” 
• “I just love this class.”

Those are the comments that mean the most to me, and Honors inspires students to make them.

Dr. David McGuire

Professor in Music/Music Recording and Visual and Performing Arts

I am drawn to Honors courses because they open the possibility of cooperative explorations with enthusiastic collaborators, and the electricity of genuine questions. In Honors, I am invited to reconsider the authenticity of my work by reinvigorating myself as a student: chasing down connections and implications, relishing clarity and expressiveness in the articulation of insight. Honors courses open the possibility of engaging a subject ardently, with conviction; they remind us that imagination is the last frontier.

Curt Nehring Bliss

Professor of Humanities, Former Honors Director

Teaching in the Honors Studies program invites me to design learning experiences that privilege and promote reflection as a core learning practice. So when I teach an Honors Introduction to Literature course, not only do we study critical reading, writing, and thinking strategies, but we also dive into a rich and rewarding exploration of who we are as developing readers, thinkers and writers. We get to interrogate our reactions (intellectual and emotional) to the texts we are studying; we get to unpack our biases, assumptions, and misconceptions about the texts, ourselves and our classmates; we get to identify, better understand, and engage with our strengths and weaknesses as learners. And because reflection (metacognition) has been identified as an essential component to assist with learning transfer, I feel confident when students leave an honors course, in any subject, they will be well positioned to be successful in their future learning endeavors.