May 7, 2014 | honors.missouri.edu

Seconds at a time

HC senior Max StormsThe Year in Review

explorateUniversity of Missouri Honors College Newsletter

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A view from the pros

Advice from HC professors

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As I look back over this year, I’m amazed by all that this honors com-munity has accomplished! Let’s start with our awards. Here are some numbers and names:

87 Honors College seniors and 8 juniors were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa this spring. Along with Drs. Gregory Triplett and Heidi Appel, associate directors in the Honors College, over 60 of our students were inducted into Phi Kappa Phi, a national honor society founded in 1897. 2 of our students--Samantha Franks and Kiersten Kuc--are off to partici-pate in the highly selective Fulbright Summer Institute Program in a few weeks. Dr. Steve Keller, an associate director in the Honors College, won the Faculty Alumni Award--and Drs. Rachel Harper, Nicole Monnier, and David Schenker, long-time honors faculty, won Purple Chalk awards. Nicole also won the Ann K. Covington award for Outstanding Mentorship. 2 honors faculty members—Drs. John Bennett and Leigh Neier—just received Kemper Awards. Dr. Loren Nikolai, Professor Emeritus in Ac-counting, was selected as this year’s Honors College Outstanding Faculty member and Zach Beattie was recently named “Student Entrepreneur of the Year.” Sasha Gubina just received a Boren scholarship. 3 gradu-ate students teaching honors courses were given the “TA Choice” award for outstanding teaching. Four of our students--Whitney Barr, Amanda Pelletier, Marina Steinhauer, and Drew Hensel--won the Hesbergh award for academic excellence. 9 honors students were named as new members of Mizzou 39, and more than 20 of our honors students, along with Rachel Harper, were inducted into one of the 6 secret societies at Tap Day. 14 Honors College students won the Inaugural Academic Dis-tinction award. Linda Bennett, Honors Council member, received a Trib-ute to Women award. Sarah Swartz and Sophie Winter received the Inaugural Vicky Riback Wilson Award. Edward Grattan was awarded a Critical Language scholarship and Shakked Halperin won a Gates Cam-bridge scholarship. Heidi Appel was nominated for Outstanding Under-graduate Research Mentor; Susan Geisert, Honors College academic ad-visor, was nominated for an “Excellence in Advising” award; and Kristina Wright, senior academic advisor, was nominated for the Chancellor’s Outstanding Staff award. And the list goes on and on. . .

But awards are only part of this year’s story. This summer, the Honors College is running its first Missouri Scholars Academy under the leader-ship of Dr. Steve Keller. It is also launching its new “Show-Me Scholars” program, designed for Missouri residents with 33ACT scores and above. Together, the Honors College staff and ambassadors also sponsored an amazing

Dr. West on the

Year in Review

variety of programs and events, including the “Honors Alternative Spring Break” to Francis Beidler Forest in South Carolina, where students repaired trails and paths. Under the coordination of honors faculty member, Gabe Fried, we launched a new lecture series on the Arts and Humanities called “Speaking of Culture.” We spon-sored a forum on leadership with YUMI CEO David Novak and started “Walk-In Advising” every Thursday with Megan Boyer in Schurz Hall. In partnership with the Residential Life community, the hon-ors ambassadors also put on a fabulous “Gatsby Ball,” where over 150 students danced the night away in flapper dresses and other types of 1920s costumes. Our Honors book clubs continue to thrive, as do our workshops for pre-health students, our “Food with Faculty” program, and our amazing honors newsletter.

And as we say goodbye to our seniors, we are awed and inspired by their plans for the “Great Afterward” of College. Many are off to prestigious medical schools, law schools, and graduate schools. One is spending a year in Costa Rica on a research project. Another will be leaving soon on a Fulbright scholarship to Morocco. Several have taken jobs at major newspapers to work as multimedia artists and print jour-nalists. And one of them, as she phrases it, plans to “spend even more time reading, writing, and traveling.”

Have a happy, healthy summer, everyone. I look forward to another amazing year.

in this issue

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Announcements & Upcoming Passport Events

Sports: Seconds at a timeHC senior Max Storms

9 Faculty: A view from the prosAdvice from HC professors

5 The Year in Review

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FacebookUniversity of Missouri Honors College

Twitter@MUHonors

explorate contributors

editorRachel Koehn

staff reportersSiyu Lei

Kate MaxcyJacob Renie

Kelsie SchraderCongrong Zheng

faculty advisorDr. Gregory Triplett

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explorateexplorate (ex-plo-raht) is a plural imperative form of the Latin verb explorare, “to ex-plore.” Drawing on the Hon-ors College motto, Explore. Dream. Discover., explorate invites students to seek out every opportunity available to them.

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1 Dr. West on the Year in Review

Cover photo by Kate Maxcy.

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AnnouncementsLearning By Contract Evaluations Due

Honors Learning by Contract evaluation forms for Spring 2014 are due by Reading Day (May 9th). Submit the Learn-ing-by-Contract Evaluation form to the Honors College for approval. The form must be signed by the Faculty Member overseeing your contract. Honors credit will not be awarded until the signed evaluation is submitted to the Honors College. It may take up to one month after grades are posted for the honors designation to appear on your transcript. Explore Ecuador

SAVE THE DATE! Explore Ecuador with Sr. Associate Director Heidi Appel January 2-16, 2015 in the class ECUADOR: Biology, Culture, and Sustainable Development (GnHon 2450H/2230H). For more info, contact her at appelh@mis-souri.edu.

NEW THIS SUMMER! GENERAL HONORS 1030H MEDICAL ETHICS

General Honors 1030H Medical Ethics1 credit hourMon-Thurs at 2pmFirst Four-Week Summer Session 2014 (June 2nd to 27th)

Taught by the distinguished Prof. Bill Bondeson, this course is designed for sophomores through seniors and will be examining interesting medical ethics cases. This is a fantastic way to prepare for the interview process for medical school! Honors Humanities Courses with Seats Available

Gn Hon 3120H Honors Humanities ColloquiumLetters as a Genre – Writing IntensiveMartha Townsend - English

Laments appear frequently in the popular press decrying the demise of letter writing (e.g., ”The Death of Letter-Writing,” New York Times, 11/10/13), and informal queries do suggest that contemporary students’ knowledge about letters is slim. They rarely write or receive letters, nor have they had an opportunity to study the impact of letters and letter writing in our culture or over time. This course seeks to fill that gap for students from across the curriculum by taking a rhetorical genre approach to answer such questions as: What makes letters different from other forms of communication? Who writes letters and why? Who reads them, and for what purpose? What is the impact of digital technology on letter writing? Is letter writing dead, as many journalists and critics suggest, or has the practice taken another form? And finally, why should we care? In this discussion-based writing-intensive course, students will write short, informal papers; a longer, formal research paper; and be invited to propose alternative assignments within the spirit of the material we are studying. There are no quizzes or traditional exams.

Gn Hon 3113H Interdisciplinary Topics in the Humanities: Big Ideas, Big Questions

Co-taught by an English professor and a Professor of Psychiatry, Depicting Mental Illness explores the intersections

between the fields of psychiatry, literature, film, and art. More specifically, it investigates how mental illness has been represented in these venues and has shaped them. Some of the central topics we will study are:

• The literary nature of madness • Depictions of the relationship between psychiatrist and patient • Sigmund Freud as novelist • The ubiquity of madness in nineteenth and early twentieth century art • The evolution of theories about mental illness and its “proper” treatment • The impact of violence on the mind • The gendered nature of mental illness • Present-day stigmas associated with mental illness

Depicting Mental Illness will be the second course offered under the new honors series,* Interdisciplinary Topics in the Humanities, 3111H-3114H, whose general topics are Narratives and Histories (3111H), Aesthetics and Perfor-mance (3112H), Big Ideas, Big Questions (3113H), and The Digital Humanities (3114H). Depicting Mental Illness will be offered under “Big Ideas, Big Questions,” which is designed to explore key issues, problems, and questions related to the humanities. Like all the courses offered in this new four-course series, Depicting Mental Illness can be used to fulfill an upper-level humanities credit for all honors students.

The Time is Now! MU Serves…Do YOU?

Researching courses for fall semester? Do you have some space in your schedule? Do you want to make a difference? If so, the Office of Service-Learning has just the perfect internship for you. You can credit through us or we will work with you to credit through your own department if that is an option available to you.

Civic Leaders Internship Program: Not-for-Profit

Through our credited program, you are given the opportunity to utilize your skills and strengths while working directly with those in need and helping community agencies carry out their mission. Internships range from 8-20 hours per week during the fall. An internship may be an excellent opportunity to move forward with your current service-learning agency, or explore other avenues and areas of interest within our community. Students must be a sophomore, junior or senior with a 2.8 GPA and a passion to serve!

Students will: - Serve with an agency that aligns with their personal interests - Practice skills and abilities relevant to future career goals - Create and implement unique plans and programs - Own and manage individual projects - Develop extensive problem-solving and teambuilding skills - Build an impressive resume reflecting professional growth - Earn credit towards degree completion If you feel a not-for-profit internship may be for you, we encourage you to visit https://muserves.missouri.edu/internships for more information and start the application process.

Thank you,

Your Service-Learning TeamDr. Anne-Marie Foley, Jason Kinnear, Kirsten Pape, Mike Burden, Julia Parcell, and Cara Gallup208 Lowry Hall Columbia, MO 65211 |Main: (573) 882-0227servicelearning@missouri.edu | http://muserves.missouri.edu

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average ACT30.026

average SAT1313.371

average MU GPA

3.646661

top 10 home statesmissouri

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Track is a sport of seconds, milliseconds re-ally. And in those few seconds can range any number of runners as they all compete for that prized spot on the podium. For Maximilian Storms, it was five seconds. Five seconds that made him the MU all-time fastest runner in 10,000-meter race. But he didn’t start out that way. Storms de-scribes himself as a good runner from a small high school who mostly received offers from smaller schools. “I was a good runner in high school,” Storms said. “Not really a great one, but the biggest school that recruited me was Mizzou… Coach was also from a small school, and so I think he had a soft spot for me.” Storms attends MU on a partial track scholar-ship and has greatly improved during his time here. In addition to holding the school record in the 10,000-meter, he also made the all-con-ference team and attended the NCAA Champi-onship. Shaving seconds off his time is what Storms lives for. “The coolest thing about running is that you can really see the results,” Storms said. “Like in basketball it’s harder to tell if you’re doing bet-ter. It’s not quantifying.” It should be added that Storms is an engineer-ing major, so numbers matter more to him than your average guy. “It really motivates you when you see your results. It’s so concrete. This is your time and this is your place,” Storms said. His journey here started nine years ago when Storms first toed the starting line during his freshman year of high school. He wasn’t very big, so he didn’t pursue contact sports like the other kids at school and instead followed in his father’s footsteps. “My dad ran in high school, and he runs a lot even now,” Storms said. “It was just kind of a good fit, and I thought I was a pretty good run-ner and decided to run instead of going out

Seconds at a timeBy Jacob RenieSPORTS

Max Storms in the 2014 Indoor SEC Championships at Texas A&M on March 1. Photo by Clayton Hotze.

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nitely a cool op-portunity to have to expand your horizons and get a well rounded education.” During his time here, MU has be-come a home for him. “Home is the best word for it,” Storm said. “I’m from Kansas City, so at the start of freshman year I would say Kansas City is my home, and by the end of freshman year it was Columbia.” So while he may no longer be rep-resenting MU on the track, he still remains a loyal “True Son” and can look forward to a few more years at home.

for football. I was only about 120 pounds freshman year, so it didn’t make a lot of sense.” Storms even likes training, which he said many times consisted of running over 120 miles a week in college. As a runner, he does both cross country and track for the university and said that while the training may be tough to balance with classes, he finds it very re-warding. “It’s fun. If it’s not fun it doesn’t make sense to do it in my opin-ion,” Storms said. “It’s a lot of hard work. If you’re not enjoying it, it’s tortuous.” Academically, Storms hasn’t missed a step. As a member of the university’s Honors College, he specifically likes how honors classes cover topics outside of the usual math and sciences courses his major requires. He also likes how he gets to work more close-ly with professors instead of just TAs. “I’m in the engineering school,” Storms said. “It’s definitely a good challenge. Academics are definite-ly the most important thing when you’re in school, and it was defi-

The Seventh Column

Mizzou Memories

As the final week of school draws to a close, I can’t help but smile at the memories I’ve made. I survived my first snow storm. I know for some it may be hard to believe, but I have actually never seen more than a half inch of snow on the ground before. Back home in Georgia we sometimes would cancel school just because the weatherman listed a chance of snowfall. I remember being “snowed” in for two days because our town didn’t have a single snow truck. Yeah, I saw one of those in person for the first time this year, too! I experienced the roar of Tiger fans at Memorial Stadium and jangled my keys on the third down with the rest of the crowd. I painted up with Tiger’s Lair and arrived six hours prior to game time for that coveted spot on the front-line. It was freezing I assure you, but totally worth it in the end. I completed three of the Mizzou secret seven in one night. Honestly, we were really bored and thought, why not. Some buddies and I climbed the fence onto Faurot Field, kissed the fifty, took a few photos, and got out of there. From there we preceded to take a swim in the fountain and ride the tiger. None of us were brave enough to streak the columns, climb Jes-se Hall, or discover the secret tunnels, and we had already yelled in Speaker Circle during orientation, but it was a successful night nonetheless. I played trivia. Tuesday night trivia is something of a tradition I have with friends back home, and when I got to have a trivia night at Bengals it made my week! I participated in intramurals and learned that no matter the stakes, someone is always going to take it too seriously. But intramurals are truly a blast! Just a great way to blow off steam and get a little exercise. I learned about gym rats. You know those guys and girls who never leave the gym. Their bulging muscles and over serious attitudes are a little bit intimidat-ing, but don’t worry. Strike up a conversation, they know so much and are more than willing to share. I ate at Shakespeare’s Pizza. It was all right, but the atmosphere is what really make you go back. I made great friends. Living just down the hall from everyone is what I’ll probably miss the most about dorm life. The game nights, movie nights, and just nights of hanging out in the lounge. You all do homework together, study together, go out together, eat together, and even grow up a little together. Yes, I can say the friendships are what truly made this year great.

By Jacob Renie

Storms running cross country in the 2012 Iowa State Invitational. Photo by Greg Hall.

find themselves ready to leave school and never look back until the next semester, a few Honors College professors re-flect on the school year and the overall benefits of teaching an honors class, and also offer a few words of advice to stu-

dents as they head into the future. Many professors may wish to look back on the past school year to examine how their classes went and what they can change to make them better. Many hon-ors professors, too, reflect on the advantages of teaching honors classes. Paul Wallace, a profes-sor of political science who has taught a large variety of honors courses in the past, said that his favorite aspect of teaching hon-

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Honors College professors offer feedback and advice to students

ors classes is the stu-dents. “All the students are very good, and some truly are excep-tional,” Wallace said. The smaller class sizes allow for more meaningful discus-sion, and much of the time, Wallace said he is not so much teach-ing as enjoyably in-teracting with his students. Another honors professor, Julie Mel-nyk, who has taught many Honors Eng-lish courses in the past, as well as this semester, agreed that “discussions

As another semester comes to a close at MU, students are in higher spirits. The cold, snowy weather has faded away, and the colorful flowers have be-gun to blossom. Summer is right around the corner, and students can feel it in the air. Just a few weeks (and a few hard tests) re-main until students pack their bags and leave MU for the sum-mer. While many students may

FACULTY

A view from the pros

By Kelsie Schrader

Professor Paul Wallace, Political SciencePhoto courtesy of MU News Bureau.

Professor Julie Melnyk, EnglishPhoto courtesy of Julie Melnyk.

Professor Heather Hunt, BioengineeringPhoto courtesy of MU Dept. of Engineering.

are generally livelier and deeper in hon-ors courses.” Melnyk added that she can give honors students more freedom in cre-ating their final proj-ects, encouraging them to use creativ-ity and to work out-side of their comfort zones. As a way of send-ing students off, pro-fessors also offer some advice to both returning students and to graduating seniors as they head into summer to bet-ter prepare them for their futures. Many returning students will face the options of taking summer classes, getting a job, searching for an internship or many other opportunities that may improve their resume and set them apart from oth-ers. However, they may also want to just “take the summer off” and not do any schoolwork—or any work in general—at all. They face the tough decisions of getting more credit hours under their belts versus relaxing

for a while, of searching hard for that prestigious internship versus taking the job they already have that may not necessarily set them apart. They face these and many other decisions, and many are trying to figure out the answers to all of these questions as they also prepare for finals week and the end of the semester. To help them along the way, these profes-sors have offered some words of advice. Professor Heather Hunt, a pro-fessor of bioengineering, simply encouraged students to study. Melnyk encouraged students to use the summertime to explore all of their interests, “not just the ones that look as though they will be useful in your career.” She fur-ther advocated for students to do the things they didn’t have time for during the semester—such as reading or traveling—and also said students should do one thing they have never tried before. Wal-lace, in turn, advised students to pursue their interests—whether they be in the form of an intern-ship, volunteering, or any other form. Graduating seniors, too, face tough decisions and questions. They, however, are leaving the world they once knew and enter-ing what is referred to by some as “the real world.” Gone are the days of being resigned to a class sched-ule. The seemingly carefree days of college have come to an end, and students are forced to take on the full role of adulthood. It only

seems like a big change because it is. But a few honors professors have come to soften the blow with personal advice that they have ac-quired through their own experi-ences in the same situation. Wallace said the “single most important advice” he could give to seniors as they prepare for their future is to develop “several op-tions in [their] areas of interest no matter how unconventional and continue to improve [their] quali-fications.” Melnyk, too, offered a small but important piece of ad-vice to all seniors as they prepare for the rest of their lives: “Never marry anyone you wouldn’t hire.” Hunt advised seniors to work for what they want: “Put forth effort on your own behalf. No one is go-ing to hand you everything you want.” Though the year has been long and—for most students—hard, it has been a learning experience. For those graduating, the experi-ence will be one they never for-get. For most first-year students, the year has been an entirely new experience that offered its fair share of challenges, new friends and fun. But for all students—and professors, too—the semester and the entire school year have gone too fast, and while all are excited to take a few months off, there is no doubt that they also look forward to the fall semes-ter, when they can return again to their home at MU.

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May 7, 2014 | honors.missouri.edu

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover.”

— Source Unknown