Honors Forums: Leadership, Scholarship and Diversity

Contributed by Betsy Hertzler, History MCC and Chair of the Honors Coordinators' Council

 

The Maricopa Colleges are fortunate to have an Honors Program on each campus that is designed to challenge and engage those students who have achieved academic success, either immediately out of high school or those who have returned to higher education. 

Because Honors students have proved that they are successful in the classroom, the Honors Program is set up to encourage the development of future leadership skills as an integral part of the Program. The district Honors Programs are committed to consciously encourage a spirit of inclusiveness and diversity as it is critical that Honors students be prepared to carry those values to the greater community in their current and future roles. 

The three academic hallmarks that are featured in each Honors experience are the inclusion of writing, oral communication and research talents.  Leadership carries with it the responsibility to think critically and weigh issues objectively based on empirical evidence. 

In addition many of the district Honors Programs require at least one hour of Service Learning to reinforce the concept of servant leadership. 

An additional component of the Maricopa Honors experience is the Honors Forum speaker series.  Every two years an Honors Study Topic is selected by Phi Theta Kappa (the international scholastic honorary for two-year colleges).  The topic must be timely, global, important and engaging.  The Maricopa Honors Programs use this topic as a focus for the nationally-known speaker series.  Tied to to the topic is the selection of six nationally-known speakers each year who will spend time on two campuses during their visit and make a formal presentation at Phoenix College that night that is open to the public.  We have been very fortunate is the list of speakers who have visited.  The speakers always comment on their visit as having been a positive experience because of the quality of the student interaction and the breadth and depth of questions asked and dialogue that ensues.

This year and next the Honors Study Topic is "The Paradox of Affluence:  Choices, Challenges, and Consequences".  The title itself includes diversity and inclusiveness.  What is affluence, as defined by whom? How can there be a paradox connected to affluence?  Has affluence been defined differently by different societies?  What consequences and choices follow the presence of material affluence?  Many historians would say that the demise of empires and civilizations of the past have been impacted by the pursuit of material affluence as an end in itself. 

One of our speakers in the fall semester told the story of Enrique's journey (the title of her book) that traces the travels of an immigrant from Central America through Mexico in search of his mother who had left years earlier in order to make enough money for her children to attend school and hopefully break the cycle of poverty.  In student reaction papers many of them discussed the value of looking at immigration through a different lens and how it had affected their perspective on immigration as a complex issue. 

Each campus has dedicated and talented faculty who are working with Honors students to provide them with opportunities to broaden their horizons through community service, civic engagement and assignments that elicit the importance for inclusiveness and the broadest possible outlook on any issue.