Fall 2016 newsletter

Honors at OU

InsideHonors Awards

History of the Honors CollegePresidential Teaching Fellows

Alumni Spotlight

Fall 2016

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Honors College

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Honors College at 20

IN THIS ISSUE...FEATURES

04 Honors Awards

12 Honors Alumni Spotlight

21 Honors at 20

26 Honors Abroad

28 Presidential Teaching Fellows

UPDATES

09 Honors Student Association

10 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships

for New Americans

11 OU Scholars Program

32 Student-to-Professional

Mentoring Experience

35 Alumni Association

DEANDavid Ray

ASSOCIATE DEANRich Hamerla EDITORWill O’Donnell

CONTACT US1300 Asp Ave.Norman, OK 73019-6061

(405) 325-5292 | ou.edu/honors

DESIGN AND PRINTINGUniversity Printing Services

PHOTOGRAPHY Select images courtesy of Shevaun Williams & Associates, Lisa Tucker, and Hugh Scott

ON THE COVERHonors students Hannah Kraemer, Jesse Coker, Victoria Bergman and Jeff Terry

50Y E A R S

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C. A

ND CAROLE KERR McCLEND

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ONORS COLLEGE

Honors at OU

This publication, printed by University Printing Services, is issued by the University of Oklahoma. 400 copies have been prepared and distributed at no cost to the taxpayers of the State of Oklahoma.

The University of Oklahoma, in compliance with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, gender expression, age, religion, disability, political beliefs, or status as a veteran in any of its policies, practices or procedures. This includes, but is not limited to: admissions, employment, financial aid and educational services. Inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies may be directed to: Bobby J. Mason, University Equal Opportunity Officer and Title IX Coordinator, (405) 325-3546, [email protected], or visit www.ou.edu/eoo.

Fall 2016 Honors at OU 3

I n the fall semester of 1996, the OU Board of Regents approved President David L. Boren’s proposal to elevate the university’s already strong Honors Program to college status. Now entering its 20th

year, the college provides the environment of a small, very fine liberal arts college inside our large flagship public research university. (In this context, it is important to remember that liberal arts in the classical sense include math and the sciences as well as humanities and the arts.) More specifically, the Honors College provides a space – an actual physical space – where OU’s most highly motivated and talented students can find each other, where they can find friends with common interests and tastes as well as friends from all majors and colleges.

The Honors College sponsors one large formal program, the Honors Curriculum, and numerous informal programs. Students must apply for admission to the Honors Curriculum and complete the requirements described on our website at www.ou.edu/content/honors/apply.html. Currently there are about 2300 Honors students in an undergraduate student body of 22,000. The Honors Curriculum is dedicated to providing academically gifted students with the opportunity to develop their intellectual potential to the fullest. The Honors College offers challenging and enlightening courses taught by its own faculty members as well as faculty from other colleges of the university. Students in the program can enjoy the opportunity to enroll in the small sections (usually 19 students or fewer) of Honors courses and also may enjoy intersession courses, summer study at Oxford University, and research internships with faculty in science laboratories or on humanities projects. The Honors College also encourages students to participate in the Oklahoma Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program seminars and in OU-approved study abroad programs. Students completing the Honors College curriculum requirements will have a degree designation of cum Laude (3.4-3.59), Magna cum Laude (3.6-3.79), or Summa cum Laude (3.8-4.0). These are the most prestigious undergraduate degree designations attainable at the university.

As you will see in the following pages, the college enters its 20th year in a position of strength and vitality. In this year, two of our 10 faculty received prestigious university-wide awards, two other faculty signed book

contracts with major university presses, and two faculty members are in the final stages of publishing their second books based on original scholarly research. Two of our recent alumni were awarded prestigious and very competitive Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. OU has produced 29 Rhodes Scholars; no other university in Oklahoma has had more than three. OU is the only university in the nation, public or private, whose students have won Goldwater, Mitchell, Truman, Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright and National Security Education Program scholarships in the same year.

One of our newest and most exciting programs provides for Presidential Teaching Fellows in Honors. With generous private funding, the program provides additional stipends to current OU faculty who have a demonstrated record as excellent teachers, and enables them to teach HON-prefix courses and to be housed in the Honors College for a period of two years, while providing funding to their home departments to cover the Fellows’ responsibilities during their two-year Fellowship. In 2016-17, five of OU’s most outstanding teachers are serving as Presidential Teaching Fellows in Honors.

Nancy West, dean of the Honors College at the University of Missouri, published a brilliant article titled “What’s the Point of an Honors College, Anyway?” in the Jan 27, 2014 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. I fully agree with her conclusion, and cannot improve upon it: “The ‘point of an honors college’ is its idealism. Honors represents higher education at its best and most aspirational.” In the following pages, we describe some of the ways the OU Honors College will celebrate its 20th anniversary, and some of the ways we aspire to provide higher education at its best. If possible, please join us in celebrating our anniversary and helping us constantly improve. The Honors College faculty and staff are committed to working closely with Honors students to help them obtain the highest quality education possible, and to work with them both in small Honors classes and through directed research, organized discussion groups, and informal conversation. Should you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me. My door is always open to current students, prospective students, and our many distinguished Honors alumni.

DEAN’S MESSAGE

4 Honors at OU Fall 2016

The Vice-President for Research Award for Best Social Science and Humanities Research Poster Presentation Brianne RobbinsPoster: “The Impact of Reading Romance on the Expectation of Mindreading from a Romantic Partner”Faculty sponsor: Jennifer Barnes

The Vice-President for Research Award for Best Physical and Life Sciences Research Poster Presentation Malachi PhillipsPoster: “Differences in Amyloid Fibril Models of Alzheimer’s Disease”Faculty sponsor: Ulrich H.E. Hansmann

The Roland Lehr Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research: Jordan LarsenPresentation: “Arabella Buckley’s Epic: The Mutualistic Evolution of Morals”Faculty sponsor: Piers Hale

The Roland Lehr Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research: Christy StraussPresentation: “The Impact of Psychosocial Factors in Predictive Models of College Retention”Faculty sponsor: Robert Terry

The Phi Kappa Phi Award for Distinguished Undergraduate ResearchSamantha HeinrichPresentation: “Seismic Response and Fragility Analysis of Oklahoma Bridges”Faculty sponsor: P. Scott Harvey

The Phi Kappa Phi Award for Distinguished Undergraduate ResearchTyler Helps Presentation: “Enhancement of a Bluetooth Battery Management System” Faculty sponsor: John Dyer and Jacob Henderson

HONORS AWARDS

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH DAY AWARD WINNERSUndergraduate Research Day is a blue-ribbon

event, this year held April 2 at the OCCE Thurman J. White Forum Building. At this annual conference and celebration of undergraduate research, the Honors College hosted students who were funded in their research or creative activities from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and students in general

who wanted to show what they had discovered in their fields. This one-day conference showcased outstanding undergraduate research and creative activity for an audience of other students, faculty, and parents. Thanks to all the students and faculty who participated, and congratulations to the award winners in each category!

Piers Hale, Jordan Larsen, Samantha Heinrich, Christy Strauss, Assistant Dean Rich Hamerla, unidentified faculty co-sponsor, and P. Scott Harvey


Feature

Kenneth Nicholas, Sharon Kessler, Shawntal Brown, Thomas Davis, Jacob Rapp, Angie Tran, Assistant Dean Rich Hamerla, Mirelsie Velazquez, Weston Speer, Barbara Safiejko-Mroczka, Lawrence Weider, Krishna Manohar

The Honors College Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Research

Caroline BennettPresentation: “Damn Right Sex Sells: An examination of how Black female Hip-Hop artists embrace negative images of women to appeal to male gaze”Faculty sponsor: Shannon Bert

Shawntal BrownPresentation: “Symbolic Racism and Perceptions of Police Brutality”Faculty sponsor: Mauricio Carvallo

Thomas DavisPresentation: “Subcellular and Tissue Localization of the Arabidopsis thaliana HHPs”Faculty sponsor: Sharon Kessler

Amr Elghondakly Presentation: “Predicting Thermodynamic Parameters and Metal Binding of RNA Bulge Loops”Faculty Sponsor: Susan Schroeder

Nicholas KantackPresentation: “Performance Characterization of Porous Silicon Schottky Solar Devices”Faculty sponsor: Ian Sellers

Krishna Manohar Presentation: “In vitro studies of gingival fibroblasts exposed to nicotine and hyperglycemic conditions”Faculty sponsor: Barbara Safiejko-Mroczka Jacob RappPresentation: “Catalyst Selection by Transition State Affinity Chromatography”Faculty sponsor: Kenneth M. Nicholas

Dillon T. Roberts Presentation: “Porous Silicon Fabrication through Dual Feedback Electrochemical Etching”Faculty sponsor: Lloyd Bumm Frank Weston Speer Presentation: “Novel Hatching Techniques to Explain Population-specific Hatching Cues of Salinity and Light for Artemia Franciscana”Faculty sponsor: Lawrence J. Weider

Angie TranPresentation: “Mixed Narratives: Development of the Vietnamese Identity in the United States”Faculty sponsor: Mirelsie Velázquez


Feature — Honors Awards

GOLDWATER SCHOLARSHIPSThe Barry Goldwater Scholarship

and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Sen. Barry Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years of service in the U.S. Senate. The purpose of the foundation is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue research careers in these fields. The Honors College is pleased to announce that three OU Honors students have received the Goldwater Scholarship: Casey Cai, Jesse Coker and Patrick Vallely!

Casey Cai is a biology and mathematics junior from Tulsa and is working with OU assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry Anthony Burgett to synthesize and

modify natural products that may inhibit the growth of certain human cancer cell lines. Cai participated in the Cancer Prevention Research Training Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center last summer. She plans to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. in mathematical biology, then conduct research in mathematical modeling of cancer growth and treatment while teaching at a research-intensive medical school.

Jesse Coker is a biochemistry and economics senior from Nolensville, Tennessee with a 4.0 GPA. He has worked on developing antibiotics capable of combating even the most resistant types of bacteria and spent the last two summers at Vanderbilt University in the Fesik Laboratory, a lab dedicated to discovering anti-cancer therapies. He plans to obtain a doctorate in structural biology or chemical biology and conduct

research in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, focusing on drug discovery for orphan diseases.

Patrick Vallely, an astrophysics senior from Boulder City, Nevada, has a 4.0 GPA and has worked on several projects with Edward Baron, George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy — most recently examining a small group of unusual supernovae. Vallely has received two Research Experience for Undergraduates grants and developed a solar cell computer model, which resulted in co-authorship on a paper that has been published in “Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.” After obtaining a doctorate in astrophysics, he plans to focus his research on Type Ia supernovae and teach at the university level.

Congratulations Casey, Jesse, and Patrick!

SMIST AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING HONORS FRESHMAN

Each year two outstanding Honors freshmen are awarded a scholarship for earning a 4.0 GPA. The scholarship is renewable for each four years of undergraduate work provided the student maintains a 4.0 GPA. This year, the Smist Scholarship was awarded to Honors first-year students Jake Mazeitis and Rebecca Mitchell. Congratulations Jake and Rebecca!



TRUMAN SCHOLARSHIPJeremy

Allen, an OU Honors junior from Oklahoma City who is triple majoring in economics, environmental sustainability and Chinese and serving as next academic year’s vice president of the Honors Student Association, has received the highly competitive Truman Scholarship. Allen is the ninth OU student to be awarded the $30,000 scholarship for his leadership potential, intellectual

ability and likelihood of “making a difference.”

“The University of Oklahoma is extremely proud that a Truman Scholarship has been awarded to Jeremy Allen,” said OU President David Boren. “He is a worthy recipient and is an outstanding scholar and student leader.”

Recipients of the Truman Scholarship are awarded the opportunity to participate in professional development programming to help prepare them for careers in public service leadership, along with the $30,000

prize. Allen previously received a scholarship to study in Xi’an, China, last summer. Following his time at Shaanxi Normal University, he spent the 2015-2016 academic year at Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, through the Boren Award for International Study. Once he earns his bachelor’s degree from OU in 2017, he plans to pursue a law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and then begin a career with the Environmental Protection Agency. Congratulations Jeremy!

FULBRIGHT GRANTSThis year a record 10 OU students and alumni were

awarded Fulbright grants. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program bestows grants for individual research projects or English Teaching Assistant Programs for students wanting to study in different countries.

Congress established the Fulbright Program directly after World War II in hopes of encouraging international education and access to education worldwide. Congratulations to the following OU students who received Fulbright grants for 2016-2017!

Elyse Freitas, Thailand, biology research Katie Garbarino*, Russia, English Teaching Assistantship

Jacob Henry*, India, linguistics research Megan Hulshizer‡, Germany, English Teaching Assistantship Regennia Johnson, Spain, English Teaching Assistantship Rachael Montgomery, Germany, English Teaching Assistantship

Andrea Pemberton*, Israel, anthropology research

Genevieve Schmitt, Jordan, linguistics researchElana Slater, Turkey, English Teaching Assistantship Kiersten Strachan*, Taiwan, English Teaching Assistantship * = OU Honors student‡ = OU Honors alumna

HONORS FACULTY AWARDS This year, two Honors faculty members and an

Honors Presidential Teaching Fellow were honored with awards for excellence in teaching. Julia Ehrhardt, associate professor of American studies, and Aparna Mitra, associate professor of economics and Presidential Teaching Fellow, received the Regents’ Award for

Superior Teaching. Sarah Tracy, associate professor of the history of medicine and food studies, was named Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professor. Congratulations to Professors Ehrhardt, Mitra and Tracy!


THE HONORS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNALEach spring, THURJ publishes the best undergraduate

research papers from the previous year written by Honors students as determined by an editorial board of their peers. Published papers cover as many topics as there are disciplines at OU, resulting in a publication that is as wide as it is deep. All published authors and artists/designers contributing cover art receive a $100 prize, and published authors are honored in an end-of-year reception. Congratulations to the following authors and artists whose works are featured in THURJ Volume 15!

Sarah Capps, Women of the Wild: Women, Outdoor Sport, and Changing Gender Roles

Jesse Coker, A Grand Evasion: How Corporations Deprive Workers, Government, and Society by Widespread Tax Avoidance and Between a Poor and a Poorer Place: Why Welfare Should View the Labor Market as the Problem Rather than the Solution to Poverty

Alanna Courts, Le Prix du Sucre

Jordan Larsen, Arabella Buckley’s Epic: Uniting Evolutionary Epic & Spiritualism to Account for the Evolution of Morals from Mutualism

Chase Miller, Space and the Psychology of Personality Types: How Personality Influences Reactions to Architectural Space

Auston Stiefer, El curandero actual: Preserving Indigenous Identity through Mexican Folk Healing’s Chants

Lisa Fielder, Dinner and a Date: The Misguiding Nature of Expiration Dates and Their Influence on Consumer Food Waste Behavior

Alissa Rice, But Where Are All the Women? Examining the Often Overlooked Role of Women in and against Islamist Extremism

Matthew Herndon, cover photo and design

Jesse Coker, Matthew Herndon, Sarah Capps, Brian Johnson, Lisa Fielder, Chase Miller, Jordan Larsen, Auston Stiefer



Honors Student ASSOCIATION

2016-2017President: Victoria BergmanVice President: Jeremy AllenProgramming Coordinators:Jeffrey Terry, Jamie Franzese, Jordan Larsen, Jake Mazeitis, Robert Bellafiore

2015-2016President: Derrick JonesVice President: Jeff TerrySecretary: Jamie Franzese Treasurer: Dana Branham Programming Coordinators:Victoria Bergman, Daniel Cartwright Jamie Franzese, Stephen Lacina

2014-2015President: Jeremy AllenVice President: Derrick JonesSecretary: Audra BrulcTreasurer: Cici Yanjia ZhouProgramming Coordinators:Derrick Jones , Alice BarrettSean Templemore-Finlayson

2013-2014President: Anoop Bal Vice President: Kunal Naik Secretary: Evan Fry Treasurer: Jeremy Allen Academic Chair: Stephen Lacina Service Chair: Josh Davis Social Chair: Parisa Pilehvar

2012-2013 President: Helga SkaftasonVice President: Uyen K. Pham

2011-2012President: Kathleen EvansVice President: Helga Skaftason

2010-2011President: Charles KnutterVice President: Kathleen EvansSecretary: Kaitlin WartaTreasurer: Mathew LeService Chair: Cassi ToneySocial Chair: Anita Motwani

2009-2010President: Andrea FowlerVice President: Chuck KnutterSecretary: Erin DwinnellTreasurer: Allen WangService Chair: Victoria StolfaSocial Chair: Mars ChapmanPublicity Chair: Kathleen Evans

2008-2009President: Rachel RomanoVice President: Andrea FowlerSecretary: Tina ChenTreasurer: Peace Ossum

TESTIMONIALS FROM STUDENTS

“At its best, the Honors College makes it possible to enjoy all the benefits of a smaller college – familiar faces, professors who actually care about students, and an intimate community – while still getting the benefits of a large university. HSA is crucial to making the Honors College what it is… For the student who wants an intellectually stimulating experience fostered by those who can promote their academic and personal growth, the HSA is the perfect organization.”

“I’m from Mississippi, so when I arrived on OU’s campus fall of my freshman year I literally didn’t know a single person… HSA events helped make me feel welcome at OU, and I’ve made some great friends at HSA events. I even met my best friend at the HSA cookout.”

“Back when I was a freshman in 2012, a lot of honors freshmen didn’t view Boren Hall as a community space. Instead it was a place only for class and study. HSA has radically changed the Honors College from an academic district to much more: a place where Honors students can feel at home.”

The Honors Student Association, the official student organization of the Honors College, promotes fellowship among Honors students and faculty, encourages volunteerism and,

most importantly, commits students to become active members of the Honors College community. Some goals of HSA include helping students to graduate cum laude, participating in service projects such as the Big

Event, facilitating closer relationships between Honors College students, faculty, and staff, and planning and participating in campus activities to promote Honors College courses and programs.

Welcome to the incoming HSA executive board for the 2016-2017 academic year, and special thanks and recognition go out to all executive members who served on the HSA since it was revitalized in 2008!


Two extraordinary OU Honors College alumni have been awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.

Mubeen Shakir (OU’s 29th Rhodes Scholar) and Akash Patel (founder of Aspiring Americans) are among the prestigious Class of 2016. The program’s website states that the Soros Fellowships for New Americans “provide opportunities for continuing generations of able and accomplished New Americans to achieve leadership in their chosen fields and to partake of the American dream. The program was established in recognition of the contributions New Americans have made to American life and in gratitude for the opportunities the United States afforded the founders of the Fellowship, Paul and Daisy Soros.” Akash Patel and Mubeen Shakir are the first fellows to have graduated from OU. The only other universities to have multiple graduates named as fellows are the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard, MIT and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Congratulations to Akash and Mubeen!

Akash Patel was born in London to Indian immigrants who moved to the United States in the early 1990s in search of better opportunities. Patel was less than 2 years old when he arrived in America, but was not afforded citizenship until the age of 23. Patel’s family lived as undocumented immigrants for 16 years until they could adjust their status. As part of his honors research project at OU, he founded Aspiring Americans to assist other undocumented students in Oklahoma, raising over $200,000 in

grants, scholarships and in-kind resources. Aspiring Americans also provides training and workshops about maximizing all educational opportunities for students in Oklahoma regardless of citizenship status. In addition, Patel has served on the Oklahoma City Public School’s Lau Planning Committee and the Superintendent’s Diversity Council to ensure that all diverse students groups have equitable educational outcomes.

Patel graduated from OU in 2013 with bachelor’s degrees in political science, philosophy and constitutional studies. At OU, he received the prestigious Carl Albert award, Top Award for Graduating Senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, NAFSA Awards for Special Service to International Education, Human Rights Award from the Oklahoma Universal Human Rights Alliance, and the Ambassador of Hope Award from the Ruth Joyce Colbert Barnes Foundation. In addition to founding Aspiring

Americans and serving as its first executive director, Patel worked as an education policy intern with the Center for American Progress, a teaching assistant for the course “Politics in America” at OU, and as campaign manager for Michael-Brooks Jimenez for the Oklahoma State Senate. Now, he is pursuing law degree at the University of Michigan in order to combine his community organizing experience with a legal acumen to advocate for all those who do not have a voice in the immigration and educational systems.

Born in Oklahoma City, Mubeen Shakir is the youngest son of Indian Muslim immigrants who came to the United States in the 1970s and founded the

for New AmericansPaul and Daisy Soros Fellowships

Akash Patel

Mubeen Shakir


first mosque in Oklahoma City. Medicine became a permanent interest in Shakir’s life at the age of 9 when his father was diagnosed with leukemia and his grandfather suffered a debilitating dementia, requiring constant care from Shakir and his family. His father passed away after a 10-year battle with the disease, simultaneously illuminating the limitations of modern medicine as well as all it had afforded his family in a health system where many lack the same access to care.

Shakir graduated in three years in 2014, winning the university’s highest honor and receiving a Rhodes Scholarship. As an undergraduate, he actively volunteered with a free health clinic, led mentoring

programs at the Boys and Girls Club of Oklahoma City, and conducted cancer stem cell research. Shakir went on to earn master’s degrees in medical anthropology and public policy at the University of Oxford. He has worked at the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission on substance use disorders and is a leader of the Harvard Medical School Racial Justice Coalition. Now a first-year medical student at Harvard, Shakir hopes to improve health systems at the city, state and national level, helping to build a more equitable health system and just society.

OU SCHOLARS STAFFDirector – Christina Norman

Assistant Director – Anne Hedrick

Senior Academic Counselors – Dana Anderson and

Hannah Oxsen

Academic Counselors – Holly Thomas, Jonathan Fincher,

Sarah Flanagan

Administrative Assistant – Mary Ann Voreck

Staff Assistant – Jessie Youngblood

T he OU Scholars Program is a talent-based academic scholarship program for direct-from-high school freshmen. The mission of OU Scholars is to empower students to be effective and successful

during their first year at the University of Oklahoma in a way that leaves them touched, moved and inspired. Qualified applicants are awarded one of five levels of scholarships: Regents Scholar, Award of Excellence, Distinguished Scholar, Valedictorian/Salutatorian Scholar, and University Scholar. Recipients of an OU Scholars, National Award and National Merit tuition waiver receive a unique advising experience through the OU Scholars Program during their first year. Scholars advisors understand the concerns of academically talented students and the various issues involved in advising and counseling those students.

Founded in 1963, the program was administered by University College before moving to the Honors Program in 1987. OU Scholars began advising National Merit students in the spring of 1998. Today, the OU Scholars Program is the largest source of four-year, talent-based academic scholarships for direct-from-high school freshman entering the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, 1627 students (35% of all freshmen!) received academic scholarships and were advised through the OU Scholars Program.

OU Scholars Program


RACHEL ACKERMANN, J.D.

Rachel Ackermann came to OU as a National Merit Scholar double majoring in English and political science and graduated from OU summa cum laude in May 2008. She was an Honors College Ambassador and was active in the Honors Student Association, Sigma Tau Delta, and Redliners A Capella Singers. One of her very few regrets about her time at OU was not spending a full semester abroad, but she did participate in the Summer in Santa Fe program, a wonderful experience where she learned much about the geography, history, art, culture and food of a part of the country to which she had never been. She recently returned to Santa Fe for a “babymoon” with husband, Adam, also OU class of 2008, double major in international business and management.

In 2006, Ackermann was selected to participate in filming an episode of a miniseries with Honors College Professor and former Dean Steve Gillon for the History Channel. The episode focused on the Kent State shooting in 1970. Professor Gillon wanted current college students to be a part of the episode to provide comparison to the now-middle-aged participants who were college-aged themselves at the time. For spring break that year, she flew to Ohio and filmed interviews with witnesses and survivors of the shooting as well as current Kent State students. It was a powerful learning and emotional experience, and she got to see herself on TV later that year!

Never considering the Honors College optional, Ackermann valued the camaraderie that the smaller setting provided inter-personally. In a large state school like OU, the smaller academic community challenged her to stretch her mind both deeper

into subjects she was already interested and wider to include subjects she had never considered but found fascinating. After graduating from OU, Ackermann pursued a law degree from Baylor University. She passed the bar exam and currently works as a prosecuting attorney for the City of Fort Worth, Texas.

LESTER ASAMOAH

Lester Asamoah majored in international security studies and minored in Middle Eastern studies, graduating from OU in 2015. He was active in the President’s Leadership Class, Sooner Speech, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Campus Activities Council Speakers Bureau, Student Government Association, Black Student Association, and Students for Social Justice. Asamoah was named a McNair Scholar and Leadership Fellow of the College of International Studies. He studied abroad twice, first after his freshman year in May 2012 in Arezzo, Italy, with the President’s Leadership Class, and for the second time in fall 2014 with the Council on International Educational Exchange in Amman, Jordan.

Asamoah cites leading a reading group on The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a great experience and one of his favorite memories of the Honors College. It was beyond rewarding to discuss issues of race, poverty, and inequality with a highly engaged group, and some of the issues discussed became highly salient that semester because of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon incident on OU’s campus. The rigors of Honors classes and the intellectual discussions gave Asamoah a foundation for graduate education. His current interest in economic development is owed, in part,

Alumni Spotlight

HONORS ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT


to Dean David Ray’s Politics of US Economic Policy course, and his ability to appreciate classical works is owed to Prof. Zev Trachtenburg’s course, Great Books of Western Civilization.

Since graduating from OU, Asamoah was selected for the Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship. The fellowship provides full funding for graduate school, a domestic and overseas internship, professional development, and upon graduation from a graduate program (American University), Asamoah will enter the US Foreign Service, planning to enter in the Economics career track. Asamoah is currently a master’s candidate in international development at American University where he focuses on economic development.

JOHN-PAUL FERGUSON, Ph.D.

John-Paul Ferguson graduated summa cum laude from OU in 1999 with majors in history and political science. While at OU, he was active on the forensics squad doing speech and drama. He was also in the Student Action Network, an umbrella organization of like-minded progressive student organizations, and helped found The Undercurrent, an independent student newspaper. Ferguson spent much of his spare time in more informal student activities, such as learning to program in then-new “Linux” and setting up a radio transmitter, which resulted in a visit from FCC agents who confiscated all the equipment. He enjoyed his undergraduate time in Norman because it was like growing up without television -- students had to make their own fun.

Ferguson believes that the Honors College stopped him from dropping out of college. After drifting around campus until the spring of his sophomore year, he became a clerk in the Honors College office right as the first cohort of faculty was hired in the fall of 1998. Melanie Wright and Carolyn Morgan were both appalled that he wasn’t enrolled in the Honors College; Morgan wouldn’t let him leave her office until he filled out an application! That fall, he left the speech team

and signed up for a double course load (including his first, and possibly favorite, course with now-Dean David Ray). He’s known tenured professors like Julia Ehrhardt and Ben Alpers since they were newly-minted Ph.D.s and has used commas correctly ever since taking Ehrhardt’s first class, Autobiography in America, on a whim and receiving the first draft of his returned term paper with several pages from Strunk & White’s Elements of Style stapled to it. It was in Honors classes, especially Sidney DeVere Brown’s colloquium on the Meiji Restoration, that he really learned how to write research papers and grew acquainted with every nook and cranny of the Bizzell Library stacks. In his view, the Honors classes he took were among the very best that he had while an undergraduate. The faculty and directors bear a heavy share of the responsibility for him being where he is today.

After graduating from OU, Ferguson earned a master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins’s School for Advanced International Studies and then, after stints working in Denmark and at the World Bank, earned his doctorate in management from the Sloan School at MIT. Today, he is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

ERIN GORANSON, M.D.

Erin Goranson graduated from OU summa cum laude in 2002 with a degree in microbiology. She was proud to be a part of the Presidential Leadership Class during her freshman year. A back injury ended two years of playing on the Women’s Golf Team but also catapulted her into research opportunities. She worked in Tyrrell Conway’s E. coli lab at OU and spent a summer in Charleston after sophomore year and a summer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, after her junior year, participating in bench research seeking to identify a gene that caused neurodevelopment and polycystic kidney disease symptoms in a rat model. As an upper-class student, she enjoyed volunteering at the VA Hospital in Oklahoma City, gaining pre-medical

Alumni Spotlight


experience and working with veterans. She also found fellowship and a church family through Reformed University Fellowship, and of course was a die-hard OU sports fanatic, attending as many home games as possible!

The people of the Honors College made an enormous impact on Dr. Goranson’s time at OU. Former Honors Dean Robert Con Davis-Undiano took the time to get to know her on a personal level, and his warmth and interest in his students were a huge part of developing the culture of a small liberal arts school education within the greater OU atmosphere. Sarah Tracy was a tremendous role model, and her What Is Science? course showed how human error and biases plague what are interpreted as cold-hard facts. She took Carl Rath’s history course on The Beatles, which proved to be one of the best and most challenging at OU. The tight-knit community of the Honors College promoted meaningful relationships with esteemed professors who helped her to identify her strengths and give her the confidence to pursue her goals. Graduating with Honors allowed her to compete with any medical school applicant.

After graduating from OU, Goranson was thrilled to return to the Mayo Clinic Medical School on a full scholarship. She gained experience in Global Health, Inc. with trips to Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. She was then matched at a top pediatrics residency at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Goranson received a distinction in Global Health, which included a 10-week stint in Nepal. She won the Family-Centered Care Award during her third year of residency. After returning to Oklahoma, she was humbled to win the Oklahoma Primary Care Association Doctor of the Year Award due to a staff education program she developed at Variety Care. Goranson is currently a pediatrician at St. Anthony, practicing in the new HealthPlex North located on Western and Memorial (right by Top Golf!). Her proudest achievement is her delightful toddler, Darcy. Sooner born and Sooner bred, Goranson hopes that Darcy will graduate with the Honors College Class of 2037!

ANDREA GREEN, AU.D.

Andrea Green, communications sciences and disorders major, graduated summa cum laude in 2010. While pursuing her undergraduate degree at OU, she was a College of Allied Health Ambassador and was active in: OU-Health Sciences Center Student Senate, College of Allied Health Student Association, Alpha Eta Honor Society, the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, and the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association. In addition, she volunteered at Big Brothers Big Sisters, the J.D. McCarty Center and The Children’s Center Hospital. She participated in the British Media Study Abroad class through the Gaylord College of Journalism, visiting London, Bristol, Paris, and Cardiff during the May intersession.

In the Honors College, Green was an Honors Ambassador, a member of the Honors College Dean’s Advisory Board and an Honors College Peer Mentor. One of her most cherished experiences while at OU was working with the Honors Student Association. From 2006-2010, the HSA was still growing rapidly and was composed of a close-knit group of students. She had the privilege of developing close relationships with her peers, many of which have grown into lifelong friendships today. Through the HSA, she had the opportunity to network with state leaders, host fascinating lectures and roundtables with faculty, establish tutoring programs at local elementary schools, and participate in a variety of different volunteer initiatives with other local organizations. Working so closely with the Honors College and HSA allowed her to develop relationships with faculty and staff that truly made it her “second home” on campus. Green’s experiences in the Honors College prepared her for graduate school by helping her to develop critical thinking skills through rigorous coursework. Learning alongside other Honors students also challenged her to make the most of her education at OU and continuously strive to approach problems with an open mind. The relationships she formed through the

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Honors College also helped her to refine her leadership skills, which was an invaluable asset as a graduate student and now as a young professional. Graduating with Honors allowed her to be a part of a strong community of scholars, leaders, and colleagues who will go on to make a difference in the world.

After graduation, Green attended Vanderbilt University to obtain a doctorate of audiology (Au.D.). She became involved with the national Student Academy of Audiology, which represents audiology students from over 75 graduate schools in the United States, and was elected by her peers as the national SAA president for two consecutive years, an accomplishment that no other student has achieved previously, or since. Her involvement in the SAA allowed her to sit on the American Academy of Audiology Board of Directors, network with leaders in the profession, and represent the profession at events both nationally and internationally, including the Special Olympics Winter World Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. She obtained a faculty position at the University of Miami, serving as the pediatric clinical lead at the University of Miami Children’s Hearing Program, a comprehensive clinic designed to serve the various needs of children with hearing loss. She was recently recognized by the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce as the 2016 HYPE “Rookie of the Year,” an award which recognizes a young professional who has excelled in their first 15 months of employment.

BETH HUGGINS

Beth Huggins graduated from OU summa cum laude in 2014 with degrees in chemical and biomedical engineering. As an undergraduate, she was active with the Campus Activities Council, The Oklahoma Group, Sooners Helping Sooners, Global Brigades, Camp Crimson, College of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Council and the Honors College Informal Reading Groups program.

She had the opportunity to study Turkish politics and international economics while studying abroad in Turkey.

The Honors Reading Groups were one of Huggins’s favorite activities at the Honors College. In spring 2014, she participated in a group that read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. An eclectic group of literature lovers passionate to understand the thoughts and words of the selfless creators who came before met on April 17, 2014 and discussed the beauty and freedom of Marquez’s magical realism. That same day, Marquez died thousands of miles away without the knowledge of the deep gratitude for his work. Huggins remembers this moment being so surreal yet romantic -- a true testament to literature’s ability to expose lessons of life and death.

After graduation, Huggins moved back to her hometown in super small town Oklahoma, working at her older sister’s diner to save money to try and fund her own trip abroad for an international development project. During that time, she unexpectedly found a research topic of personal interest -- single, working moms in the restaurant industry. For 8 months, she conducted research to help with employee retention and to discover how humans find value in their work. It was purposeful to both Huggins and the women with whom she worked. Huggins eventually made her way to Nepal where she currently works for an international nonprofit organization called Conscious Impact. Beginning as a grassroots volunteer response to the 2015 Nepal Earthquakes, the organization now hosts international volunteers to help support sustainable, long-term rebuilding in Nepal.

JAY KUMAR

Jay Kumar graduated summa cum laude in 2012, majoring in medical sciences and receiving minors in medical humanities and general business. He was active in a number of campus organizations and activities such as the Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth, the Academic Integrity Council,

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The Oklahoma Group, Global Medical Brigades, Leadership Scholars, Crimson Club and the President’s Leadership Class. He took classes in Classical Archaeology in England as part of Honors at Oxford study abroad program.

Kumar has cherished memories of late-night chats in the Dean’s office with Dean Ray and other Honors students about everything from classes to politics and economics. He remembers the Honors College courtyard as his “Narnia,” a beautiful common meeting place for friends past and future, and the Nancy L. Mergler Library for the couches, large tables, glass walls, and copies of The New Yorker left behind courtesy of Dean Ray. For him, it was the best place to study, sleep, then study some more. The Honors College allowed him to have the best of both worlds: going to a massive state school with the best football program on the planet, while still benefitting from the experience of a small liberal arts college.

Kumar is currently a joint M.D./M.B.A. candidate at Harvard University. He values the lessons learned in his Literature and Medicine Colloquium and the Medical Humanities program as they apply to his clinical training and has benefitted from using principles learned at the Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth to launch a couple of startups. Today, he works with students from Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a breath-based diagnostic test for lung cancer and has co-founded a company called Astraeus Technologies. This year, the team won the Grand Prize in the Business Track at the HBS New Venture Competition and the First Place Prize sponsored by Boston Scientific at the M2D2 100K Challenge. Kumar has been named one of Medtech Boston’s 40 Under 40 Healthcare Innovators.

JEFFREY MANKOFF, PH.D.

Jeffrey Mankoff graduated summa cum laude in 2000 with degrees in international studies and Russian and a political science minor. He went on to pursue his master’s and doctorate degrees in diplomatic history from Yale. While pursuing his undergraduate degrees, he was

active in Hillel and The Undercurrent, an independent student newspaper, and spent a year studying abroad at Moscow State Linguistic University.

One outstanding memory of his Honors experience was an American Character seminar with Julia Ehrhardt. Most of his closest friends at OU were his floor mates at the Honors House. He appreciated the ability to take smaller, more interdisciplinary classes and to get experience doing research, which prepared him to some extent for graduate school.

Mankoff is deputy director and senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Russia and Eurasia Program, a think tank in Washington, D.C. focusing on foreign and security policy. He is the author of Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009) and a number of different academic articles and book chapters. He is a frequent commentator on international security, Russian foreign policy, regional security in the Caucasus and Central Asia, ethnic conflict, and energy security and has given congressional testimony before the House of Representatives. He served as an adviser on U.S.-Russia relations at the U.S. Department of State as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. From 2008 to 2010, he was associate director of International Security Studies at Yale University and an adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition to his policy research, Mankoff teaches courses on international security and Central Asia at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He has held academic fellowships at Harvard, Yale and Moscow State universities.

ROBIN MARIL, J.D.

Robin Maril, women’s studies major and Judaic studies minor, graduated from OU summa cum laude in 2006. During her time as an undergraduate, Maril was active in Alpha Omicron Pi and at Hillel Jewish Student Center and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She was an intern at the OU’s Women’s Outreach Center from 2004-2006. She also interned the summer after her sophomore year at the Jewish Women’s Archive

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in Boston, her first time in a major city and a great experience.

Maril took Julia Ehrhardt’s Food and Culture class her second semester freshman year and it absolutely informed the rest of her undergraduate career. She changed her major from journalism to women’s studies the next semester and ended up taking every course Ehrhardt taught, including independent study. Ehrhardt’s classes directly challenged her perception of history and the status quo. Her time in the Honors College not only gave her an expanded sense of the world, but also equipped her with the skills she needed to navigate and succeed in it. Access to small, intensive classes undoubtedly helped her to be better prepared academically for law school. Beyond academics, having the opportunity to work closely with engaging professors who genuinely cared and believed in her was invaluable. This sense of personal investment by people she really respected instilled a powerful combination of confidence and humility that has been fundamental to her success.

Maril is grateful every day to go to her dream job as associate legal director for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. She’s able to help shape and support policies that have truly changed lives. Prior to joining HRC, she served as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C. Maril received her law degree from Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, where she was named a Rubin Public Interest Law Fellow. She also has to brag about her two-year old son, who is the funniest little man she knows.

KRISTEN PARTRIDGE

Kristen Partridge graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1999. She returned to earn a master’s degree in human relations/organizational leadership in 2008. During her time as an undergraduate at OU, she was the chair of the Campus Activities Council, a student adviser for the President’s Leadership Class and a member of the Crimson Club, Student Alumni Board, Union

Programming Board and the PE-ET Top Ten Senior Honors Society.

Partridge believes that her time in the Honors College sharpened both her academic abilities and her appreciation for the college experience. She loved being surrounded by students who were curious and willing to go to great lengths to expand their thinking. Being in Honors courses with such brilliant professors and motivated students shaped the way she views education: as one amazing nosedive into the deeper waters of learning after another. Among her favorite courses during her undergraduate experience were Search for the Modern Utopia with former OU President Paul F. Sharp and a course that was team-taught by Ben Alpers and Julia Ehrhardt about the American experience. She also had the privilege of taking an Honors discussion section of Understanding Theater with Greg Kunesh, liking the course and professor so much that she went to work for him as a student assistant in the Musical Theater Department for three years and completing her Honors Research and Reading with him as an adviser. For that project, she wrote a manual for incoming freshmen about fully experiencing OU. Kunesh and a handful of other professors used the manual in their Gateway to College Learning Courses. Kunesh’s wise mentorship was a turning point for her in terms of her career -- she decided not to teach high school literature but instead to work in higher education.

Partridge now serves as the associate vice president for Student Affairs and associate dean of students at the University of Oklahoma. For the past eight years, she served as director of Student Life and, before that, as adviser to Campus Activities Council and the Union Programming Board. Since working at OU, she has had the chance to take a group of President’s Leadership Class students to Arezzo, Italy and pretend it was her own study abroad experience, attending every class and lecture and taking notes to get the full effect. Kristen recently won OU’s Sullivant Prize for Perceptivity, an award created by the late Edith Kinney Gaylord to honor the late longtime Oklahoma journalist Otis Sullivant, who covered Oklahoma and national political news for several decades and was known for his ability to analyze and accurately predict political trends. “A leader and mentor to staff and students across campus, Partridge manages a diverse staff and plays a key role in the advising of OU’s top student leaders. Her

Alumni Spotlight


personality and passion for student development have inspired the entire Student Affairs staff to selflessly serve OU students.” She considers herself fortunate to work at an institution that promotes the full student development experience and sustains such an amazing group of faculty, staff and administrators.

PARISA PILEHVAR

Parisa Pilehvar graduated from OU magna cum laude in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. As an undergraduate, she was involved with the Union Programming Board, Crimson Club, The Oklahoma Group and the Honors Student Association. In the summer of 2013, she studied abroad as part of OU’s Journey to Turkey program with Presidential Teaching Fellow Joshua Landis and Firat Demir.

Some of Pilehvar’s greatest friendships were built at the round table outside of the Nancy L. Mergler Library at the Honors College. There is something about that table and the Honors College setting that, for her, attracted the best post-class conversations, study parties, and philosophical debates. Although the subject matter was morbid, her favorite course in the Honors College was Death, Dying, and Religion Colloquium with Professor Marie Dallam. It was fascinating to discuss the many dimensions and perspectives of death with peers who were presumably very far from the experience themselves. Prof. Dallam gave the class a safe place and support for exploring a topic that is often taboo in Western culture. Pilehvar feels that the Honors College gave her a concentrated dose of everything a higher-education institution should give its attendees: diversity of perspectives, intellectually challenging courses, multidisciplinary learning, and the opportunity for students to follow their own curiosity. Going through the Honors curriculum with students from a variety of personal and academic backgrounds has helped her on the job by showing her the value of looking at a problem from many angles before settling on any solutions.

After graduating, Pilehvar joined Teach for America with the Oklahoma corps, teaching fourth grade in North Tulsa. While some might scoff at the idea of a fourth grade teacher using much from her Honors credentials, Pilehvar does her best to model her elementary classroom off of the courses she enjoyed as a student in the Honors College. As much as possible, content is driven by student interests, instruction is guided by class discussion, and expectations for student achievement are set high in anticipation of students rising to the challenge. Her biggest source of pride is her students’ admirable work ethic and academic gains.

TRACIE SIDDIQUI, J.D.

Tracie Siddiqui is a 2004 summa cum laude graduate of letters with minors in Middle Eastern studies and French. While at OU, she volunteered at the Women’s Outreach Center and the Number Nyne Crisis Hotline. She also participated in the Honors College Women’s Book Club.

She was able to spend a summer in Paris studying French, a summer in England with the Honors at Oxford program, and a summer in Morocco studying Arabic.

The Honors College shaped a surprising amount of Siddiqui’s life. She met her future husband freshman year -- they both lived in the Honors dormitories and had an Honors philosophy class together. She is also still very good friends with a woman she met in the Honors dorms. They both live in Maryland just a few miles from each other, and their children go to preschool together! Her favorite professors were Julia Ehrhardt and Melanie Wright, and her favorite class was Ehrhardt’s American Character course. In addition to looking good on a resume, graduating with Honors meant that Siddiqui was given the opportunity to study with really smart people in small classes taught by world-class professors. It was like going to a small college, but with the resources of a huge research university (and at a reasonable price!)

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After graduation, Siddiqui went to law school at Georgetown. She now works in a large law firm in Washington, D.C., as an attorney specializing in trademark law, including domestic and international trademark counseling, clearance, portfolio management, and licensing. She feels fortunate to work with cool clients, to help them to develop their brands, and to have a job that is easier to explain at cocktail parties than a lot of things that attorneys do. She lives with her husband and three children (ages 6, 4 and 1 ½) in the Maryland suburbs just outside of D.C.

SARAH SWENSON

Sarah Swenson came to OU as a National Merit Scholar, graduating summa cum laude in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in zoology/biomedical sciences and a history of science minor. She was on the Academic Integrity Council and Campus Activities Council. The majority of her extracurricular time was spent volunteering and pursuing research in a few different subjects. Toward the end of college, she trained with a community disc dog group. She also worked as a Peer Learning Assistant and a Teaching Assistant. She was named to Phi Beta Kappa and PE-ET honor societies, selected as the recipient of the President’s Awards for both Outstanding Freshmen and Sophomores, and has been named a Rita H. Lottinville Scholar. Sarah was a recipient of the prestigious Carl Albert award and was the 28th OU student to be named a Rhodes Scholar, enabling her to pursue a master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Oxford.

For Swenson, the Honors college was an intellectual home base. She tried to take as many Honors classes as possible. The courses were challenging, discussion-heavy environments full of interesting people and inspiring and thoughtful professors. Through the Honors College, she had the opportunity to participate in the Honors in Italy study abroad program in Arezzo, Italy. She discovered a joy of teaching and writing and has since had several opportunities to share her love

for learning with other students and communicate her ideas and research through articles. She values the relationships she made with great mentors through her Honors coursework, many of whom she still keeps in touch with today.

Leaving OU, she felt well prepared for the critical thinking, discipline, and open-mindedness that graduate work required. The support and reassurance of her mentors got her through many rainy days in Oxford when it seemed like her thesis would never come together. Swenson is currently pursuing a medical degree at the Mayo Clinic.

LAURA WIEDERHOEFT

Laura Wiederhoeft graduated summa cum laude from OU in 2010 with a dual degree in letters and French. During her time at OU, she volunteered with OUr Earth, played oboe in the OU Civic Orchestra, and participated as an active member of the Honors College. She also branched out to the wider Norman area, getting involved with the local music and arts community through performance and teaching. During her junior year, she was privileged to spend the spring semester at the Université de Limoges in Limoges, France. Even though she spent little time in actual university classes on account of a student strike protesting a particular curriculum change, it was a unique cultural moment to witness and an experience she wouldn’t pass up if she had the chance.

Wiederhoeft has fond memories of the Honors College reading groups. These gatherings provided a space for rigorous conversation without worry over grades, exams, or papers. Coming together as curious readers, the participants got to know each other and Honors College professors on both an intellectual and personal level. Those book clubs provided opportunity for growth that still serves her today. The relationships have lasted as well; some of her closest friends from college are people who sat alongside her in those gatherings. The Honors College taught her the value

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of a rich intellectual life. In the Honors College, discussing books and politics was the ‘cool’ thing to do -- and that mattered to her as a college student. She still carries that spirit with her and believes she has a stronger sense of curiosity and engagement with the world because of the foundation set at OU. She is grateful to be a lifelong learner, a value instilled by the environment at the Honors College.

Since finishing school at OU, she has spent time making music, teaching, working in the restaurant industry and contributing behind the scenes at a performing arts center. She has traveled widely and lived in several different regions of the country. Wiederhoeft is proud to be a recent graduate of Duke University School of Nursing, having studied to become an RN with a focus on women’s health, social determinants of health, and care delivery systems. She currently works as a nurse at The Birth Place at Duke Regional Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, and also dances with Footnotes Tap Ensemble, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

SHAGAH ZAKERION

Shagah Zakerion, class of 2010, majored in public relations with a double minor in political science and women’s and gender studies. She served on Campus Activities Council as Film Series exec, chair and then special events coordinator on the executive committee. She participated in the President’s Community Scholars and blogged for Boomer Bytes. She also served on the Women’s and Gender Studies Student Association. During all four years of her undergraduate work, she served as an intern for the Norman Music Festival, turning that experience into a part-time internship for the Norman Arts Council. She fondly remembers studying abroad at Oxford through the Honors at Oxford program and appreciates the internship opportunity she was given in Washington, D.C. as a Cortez A.M. Ewing Fellow.

Zakerion was among the first in her family to attend a four-year university. She remembers feeling

lost her freshman year and credits the Honors College as having saved her from the monotony of freshman life. Some of her favorite memories were sushi dates with Prof. Julia Ehrhardt, book clubs with Dean David Ray, and simply studying in the Honors College lounge. During the last few advising sessions of her Honors thesis with Ray, he asked her, “What will be left behind if the best and brightest continue to leave Oklahoma?” He challenged her to explore her passions here in Oklahoma instead of Washington D.C., where she had hoped to take her post-graduate career.

She decided to return to her hometown of Tulsa to impact change and began work in 2011 as an assistant at Tulsa’s Young Professionals, one of the nation’s largest and most impactful young professionals’ organizations. Since then, she was afforded the opportunity to apply for and become the executive director of the organization. Now in her fifth year with TYPros, she has been a critical part of transforming Tulsa into a community that attracts and retains the talent that was once being hemorrhaged. Being a part of that change and providing opportunities to the city’s young people is her biggest achievement since graduating from OU.

SHARE YOUR NEWSAre you an Honors alumnus or

alumna? We are currently soliciting

profiles for future Honors newsletters

and would love to hear your stories.

If you’d like to share, please contact

Will O’Donnell at (405) 325-3040 or

[email protected].

Alumni Spotlight


HONORS AT 20

BECOMING A COLLEGE: THE HONORS PROGRAM 1987-1997

On Sept 11, 1996, a motion was put forward to the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents to elevate the university’s Honors Program to college status. Recognizing a nationwide trend in the creation of honors colleges at undergraduate research institutions and acknowledging the need to revitalize undergraduate education at OU, President David L. Boren affirmed that designating the existing program a college in its own right would “strengthen the University’s programs to challenge academically its outstanding students... showcase [the] institution’s excellence in undergraduate education, enrich the quality of honors instruction, and provide exciting opportunities for talented students.” Interim director of the Honors Program, Carolyn Morgan, spoke to the Regents on the strengths of the program and, after a round of voting, the chair declared the motion unanimously approved. The decision to elevate the Honor Program to college status was an acknowledgement of the years of hard work done by Honors directors and administrators to provide OU’s brightest, most talented and driven students with an academic and intellectual home on campus. Giving college status to Honors also assured that future generations of OU students would receive the very best in terms of resources, programs, and academics, further strengthening Honors and the OU community as a whole.

THE HONORS PROGRAM (1963-1987)The Honors Program was founded in 1963 by

OU President George Lynn Cross, and Professor Paul Ruggiers served as its first director until 1969. The program provided small classes in Honors courses taught by outstanding professors for students who desired increased academic challenges. It continued in much the same vein under directors Geoffry Marshall (1969-1974) and Gwenn Davis (1973-1987). Between 1978 and 1987, around 40 to 60 OU students were graduating each year with the designations conferred by the program, either Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors. An overwhelming majority of those students earned undergraduate degrees from the College of Arts and Sciences, although others received degrees in Business,

Professor Paul Ruggiers, first director of the Honors Program

Feature


Engineering, Education, Environmental Design and Fine Arts. About 20 Honors courses in various disciplines and two to three colloquia, often interdisciplinary, were offered each semester during this period. Special library cards enabled Honors students to check out certain journals and to check out books for four instead of two weeks. Prior to 1987, the OU Honors Program permitted Honors students to contract with their instructors (faculty and graduate teaching assistants) to do additional work, thus upgrading any undergraduate course to an Honors course for them. The Honors Program, consisting of only a part-time director and clerical staff, offered no special activities and had no student organizations or associations. Enrollments and costs were low. As of April 1987, the Honors Program was housed in Room 43 in an often-overlooked corner in the basement of Bizzell library.

REORGANIZATION AND REVITALIZATION (1986-1996)

Citing a need “to provide academic challenges for academically talented students,” then-Provost Joan Wadlow convened a small task force in fall 1986 to make recommendations on how to improve the quality of the Honors Program at OU, envisioning a program to rival those at top universities in the United States. With a $90,000 staff budget, part-time assistant director, counselor and clerical staff, the Honors Program was reorganized by Nancy Mergler beginning in 1987. With Mergler as director, the Honors Program grew in terms of staff, students, and opportunities. David Gross was named assistant director, and Jeff Bloomgarden joined as academic counselor, later to become director of the OU Scholars Program. Founded in 1963, the OU Scholars Program was administered by University College before moving to the Honors Program in 1987. The Honors Program also added a secretary, four student clerks, and a student terminal operator. Moving from Bizzell Library to New Cate Center (today, David L. Boren Hall), the Honors House was established in 1987 with the goal of creating the ethos and atmosphere of a small residential college along the lines of such colleges at Oxford and Cambridge or small liberal arts colleges, housing around 200 Honors students. The Honors Program suite of offices and conference rooms, lounges, teaching areas,

and offices of the Honors Student Association were located in Honors House. Under Mergler, the Honors Program curriculum was enhanced to create a series of Honors-designated sections of regular courses and special seminars limited to 20 or fewer students and taught by OU’s best teachers and scholars. Over the course of a single academic year (1987-1988), the number of Honors courses offered to undergraduates swelled from 18 courses in 11 different disciplines to 48 courses in 25 different disciplines. Honors coordinators in as many academic disciplines were tasked with giving advice on faculty advisers for Honors Reading and Research and on application procedures to graduate schools and career planning. Coordinators were knowledgeable regarding honorary societies and departmental sources of scholarship funding.

Mergler’s efforts to reorganize the Honors Program also resulted in a revitalization of many of the program’s events and organizations. The Honors Student Association was founded that fall with Honors student J. P. Blackwood serving as its first president. HSA offered Honors Program T-shirts, said at the time to

Feature — Honors at 20


be “the most beautiful T-shirts to come out of the University of Oklahoma.” Student-produced Honors newsletters first circulated with help from a laser printer borrowed from the Psychology Department. The following spring saw the first-ever Undergraduate Research Day on Saturday, April 9, 1988. “Get ignited; get excited; good things do happen at OU!” read the call for papers and presentations. Over 40 presentations covered topics as varied as microbiology, social work, mathematics, and the humanities. The OU Student Woodwind Trio performed during lunch. Six students were chosen as giving outstanding presentation during Research Day and were awarded $250 each by judges Mergler, Gross and Bloomgarden.

The fall of 1988 was the first semester that essays were required for entrance into the Honors Program. Visiting scholars Cornel West and Stanley Fish were brought to OU by the Honors Program to give public presentations during the summer, and West returned in November for another presentation. In May 1988, 46 students who graduated with Honors were recognized for the first time with a specially designed crimson Honors hood at commencement in lieu of the gold Academic Distinction hood. Enrollment grew rapidly with over 350 freshmen enrolled in the program in Fall 1992. Admissions requirements to the Honors Program had to be raised in 1993 to limit enrollment in light of the resources available.

The Honors Program began offering its first scholarship in 1990. Awarded to two Honors freshmen on the basis of merit, the Honors Energy Center Internships offered winners a three-year summer internship and stipend during their undergraduate career. There were 64 Honors Program graduates in 1990-1991, and the Honors degree designations changed to the Latin “cum laude,” “magna cum laude” and “summa cum laude” in May 1991. In fall 1991, the Honors Program took over administrative responsibility for the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, providing salaries/stipends up to $750 and covering expenses up to $250 for Honors students engaged in undergraduate research. Since the reorganization of the Honors Program had begun, more and more students were named recipients of prestigious national scholarships and grants, including two Truman Scholars in spring 1990 and four Goldwater scholars in 1992.

By 1994, over 1300 undergraduates at OU were enrolled in the Honors Program. The average ACT score of incoming Honors freshmen was 31.4, and 350 freshmen were recipients of either a National Merit, National Achievement, or National Hispanic Scholar award for academic merit. From 1987-1994, the OU Honors Program “accomplished a great deal with less money and staff than other campuses.” When Mergler became senior vice president and provost of the university in 1995, she asked Morgan to be interim director of the Honors Program and to oversee the transition from program to college.

FROM PROGRAM TO COLLEGE (1996-2000)When David L. Boren left the Senate to become

president of the University of Oklahoma in 1994, one of his top priorities was to provide intense intellectual challenges at a comprehensive public university that would equal those available at smaller private institutions. To that end, he requested that the OU Board of Regents elevate the program to college status.


Steve Gillon, first Dean of the Honors College


Doing so would showcase the university’s excellence in undergraduate education, provide opportunities for talented students, promote continuity and cohesion in the curriculum, facilitate independence and experimentation, strengthen the identity and visibility for Honors as well as the campus as a whole, and aid student recruitment and fundraising. Steve Gillon was named first dean of the Honors College at Boren’s recommendation. Gillon, a Philadelphia native, taught at both Brown and Yale universities before becoming a faculty member at the Center for American Studies at Oxford.

Communication doctoral candidate Carla Larson attended Gillon’s interview for the position of Honors College dean -- “He’s very student-oriented, and we will have opportunities to help serve students as a college.” Gillon’s goals for the Honors College included creating a college environment at the Honors College, attracting the finest faculty in the country, and fund raising. Creating a college environment warranted the addition of new faculty offices and student lounges at the Honors House. A combination of public bond funds and private gifts, including an anonymous $5 million donation from an OU graduate, made renovations of the Honors House (later renamed David L. Boren Hall) possible. These renovations also included a new library, computer lab,

and courtyard space. Gillon said he wanted the Honors House to be an intellectual center of gravity where students spend time.

“To be the dean of the new Honors College, to be responsible for recruiting new faculty and having the ability to have an impact is the opportunity of a lifetime,” he said. “It’s exciting to work at a university whose finest days are yet to come.”

The major and most important change to the Honors was the addition of endowed professorships supervised by the dean of the college. Professors Ben Alpers, Julia Ehrhardt, and Ari Kelman of Princeton, Brown, and Yale universities respectively, were the first three hired in 1998 as full-time Reach for Excellence professors in direct competition with several Ivy League schools. Professor Sarah Tracy was hired later that same year to design and implement the Medical Humanities program and serve as its director. During Gillon’s tenure, other Honors College programs were established, including the Writing Center and Writing Assistant Program, Honors Research Assistant Program and what has become for many OU students a defining intellectual experience, the Honors at Oxford study abroad program.



INTO THE NEW MILLENIUM (2000-PRESENT)Thanks to the vision of university leaders and the

hard work of very able administrators, the Honors College had a strong foundation going into the new millennium. By the year 2000, 1700 undergraduates were enrolled in the Honors College each year, and the University of Oklahoma ranked first in the nation per capita among public universities in the number of National Merit Scholars enrolled. Almost 10 percent of the entering freshman class had been selected as state Regent’s Scholars for ranking in the top one-half of a percent nationally in standardized academic test scores. Gillon stepped down in 2003 to focus on his role as Official Historian of the History Channel, and Robert Griswold (chair of OU’s History Department) became interim dean. Robert Con Davis-Undiano, professor of English and executive director of World Literature Today, was named Dean of the Honors College in 2005 and served until 2009. Current dean of the Honors College, David Ray, was appointed in 2009.

Since becoming a college, Honors has only continued to expand and excel. The University of Oklahoma continues to recruit more National Merit Scholars than any other public university, thanks in large part to the Honors College and associated programs such as Medical Humanities and Honors at Oxford. A strong tradition of undergraduate research continues at the Honors College with the Honors Research Assistant Program, Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Program, First-Year Research Experience, Undergraduate Research Day and the Honors Undergraduate Research Journal. Beginning in 2008, the Honors College began to sponsor the Informal Reading Groups program. With origins in the Political Science department where over a decade ago students and faculty began to meet to

discuss a single book over the course of a semester, the groups were organized and expanded by the Honors College. Generous donations from supporters of the Honors College have allowed the program to grow to more than 40 groups during the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters, and now the program is open to all students, staff and faculty in the OU community. Student-led organizations such as the Honors Student Association and the Informed Citizens Discussion Groups continue to thrive.

The tradition of excellence continues. Last year, in the fall of 2015, the Honors College at OU was recognized as one of the top 20 Honors programs at a public university in the nation based on A

Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs. As the Honors College celebrates its 20th anniversary, an enormous thank you goes out to all the students, faculty, staff and administrators who over the past 20 years have contributed to building one of the finest Honors programs in the country.



HONORSAbroadALEX NONGARDMy favorite word to describe study abroad experiences

is “opportunity.” It’s a little cliché, but that’s what the experience is about - the chance to try new things, meet new people, and make memories you’ll never forget. More than that, it’s an opportunity to create a new you. I’ve grown a lot over the past few months and have seen more of the world than I ever imagined. I come back enlightened, at least a little bit, about how the rest of the world functions. This experience has made me a better citizen, student, and person, and I am thankful for the “opportunity” to pursue it.

LUCY MAHAFFEYMy time at Honors at Oxford will stay with me the

rest of my life. I saw sites I had previously dreamed about, like the lamp from Narnia, the tree where “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was concocted, and filming locations for Harry Potter. I ate microwave oatmeal with a stick at 2am as I pulled an all-nighter to write a paper (which, I believe, turned out well!) for an unforgettable Oxford professor. I gazed out on the green quad of Brasenose College at 5am as the sun rose and I finished my paper – and I was completely and utterly happy. I experienced the fantastic things so often talked about in travel stories: adventure, friendship, food, unexpected journeys, and insight into my own life as well as the world around me. None of that would have been possible without Dr. Melanie Wright, funding from the University of Oklahoma, and the fantastic encouragement and support of the Honors College. One small part of my heart will forever remain with the ducks, flowers, scones, and cobblestones of Oxford and the memories that surround it.

RYAN FRITZJourney to Latin America was, without a doubt, one

of the most enriching experiences of my life. I found myself plunked down in a country where I knew none

of the language and very little of the culture. Very soon though, I found warmth and familiarity. I immediately became friends with many of the OU students with me on the trip, and the very first night I found myself sitting under the patio canvas of a local restaurant with three OU students and two local residents (old friends of one of the OU students). As we looked out across the ocean through the sporadic rainfall that became so charmingly characteristic of the tropical climate and shared jokes and stories through imperfect English, I felt incredibly comfortable in this new environment. My friend Pabel would give me a saying in Portuguese, and I would repeat it to someone sitting next to me. Even with my terrible pronunciation and slow speech, strangers would always light up and respond. Some of my most interesting conversations were held primarily with dramatic hand motions, one word sentences, and heartfelt laughter. Our professors were incredible guides to Brazil. Through their connections, we met a range of religious leaders, political activists, community leaders, and more. We wandered through ancient churches, experienced the joy of hang gliding, and explored parts of Brazil usually closed to the typical tourist. One of my favorite afternoons was spent playing with local children in the favela in which our professor had spent six months living and studying. When I returned home, these were the types of experiences that convinced me that I had left a part of myself in Brazil, and in turn gained a new appreciation for the beauty of a distinct culture.

JESSE HAREI had the opportunity to travel to Arezzo, Italy

as an Honors student and member of the President’s Leadership Class. The class I took, “Activism, Art, and Leadership,” sought to incorporate the great works of the Renaissance era with the political activism of the modern age. This course epitomized experiential learning, as our class was able to visit museums such as the Uffizi and Accademia galleries of Florence while also meeting with


some of Italy’s most prominent activist groups like the Five Star Movement and Rondine. Led by two of the most reputable and talented professors at OU, Honors College Dean David Ray and OU Arezzo President Kirk Duclaux, this class provided students with an academic experience unlike any other on campus. It’s one thing to learn with the aid of a textbook, but studying aboard provides a much different dynamic. When immersed in a new country, one is not reliant on a textbook, but can actually engage with the native populace resulting in a much richer, more memorable educational experience. The University of Oklahoma provides its students with

incredible opportunities for study abroad. For a Sooner looking to maximize his or her college experience, studying abroad is a must.”

WILL GOREEI spent the spring semester of my junior year on

exchange at City University of Hong Kong. The experience of living in Hong Kong for a semester changed my outlook on the world and made me more aware of the richness and deep histories of other cultures. I also had a lot of fun. In addition to living in Hong Kong, I also traveled to Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.

OU students pose at the statue of Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

OU students practice samba drumming

View from the Dragon’s Back trail, a popular hiking trail on the east side of Hong Kong

Honors students Will Goree and Jeremy Allen with Honors alumni Nikhil Mutalik and CiCi Zhou in the Yehliu Geopark in Taiwan.

(From left to right) Honors students Jack Counts, Jesse Hare,

Christiane Campbell, Drew Rader, and

Kendall Hughes making pasta in Arezzo, Italy during the PLC study

abroad trip.

(From left to right) PLC Honors Students Jack

Counts, Kendall Hughes, Anthony Mayberry,

Burkley Brining, and Jesse Hare posing in front of the

Roman Coliseum.

Alex Nongard representing OU at the 500-year

anniversary of the life of the painter Hieronymus Bosch,

outside St. John’s Cathedral in Hertogenbosch,

Netherlands

OU reunion in Utrecht with Alex Nongard and Allison Nguyen, who was studying abroad in Spain

OU students attend the Mad

Hatter’s Tea Party at Brasenose

College, Oxford

The final evening at Oxford with Dr. Melanie Wright’s “Environments of Fiction” course


DAVID K. ANDERSONDavid Anderson, associate

professor of Renaissance literature, studies the poetry and drama of the English Renaissance and the relationship between literature and religion. He is particularly interested in William Shakespeare, John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, John Foxe, and George Herbert, as well as Reformation history, the Western theological tradition, and the work of René Girard. Beyond that, he is interested in the shifting, overlapping, and contradictory conceptualizations of freedom in the early modern period and also in Milton’s political theology, and his place in the Protestant theological tradition. An avowed Stratfordian, he names King Lear, Coriolanus and Much Ado About Nothing as his favorite works of The Bard.

His first book is titled Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England: Tragedy, Religion, and Violence on Stage and was published by Ashgate Press in 2014. It considers how the 16th cultural crisis surrounding religious violence is reflected in the tragedy of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Anderson’s next project, tentatively titled Shakespeare, B.C.: Ethics, Religion, and Historical Contingency in the Greco-Roman Plays will explore the theological implications of the pre-Christian setting of Shakespeare’s Greco-Roman plays. He has published articles on John Donne’s poetry in Renaissance and Reformation, on King Lear and sacrificial violence in ELH, and on Marlowe and damnation in Texas Studies in Literature and Language. An article on political theology and As You Like It is currently out for review.

A native of Ontario, Canada, Anderson has a bachelor’s degree with honors from Queen’s University (Kingston), a master’s degree from Dalhousie University (Halifax), and a doctorate from McGill University (Montreal). He has previously taught courses at McGill, Trinity College (at the University of Toronto), and Ryerson University. Beginning in fall 2016, he teaches the Honors Perspectives course “Literature and Suffering” and the Colloquium course William Shakespeare, Renaissance Playwright. Prof. Anderson lives in Oklahoma City and enjoys reading, playing golf, and cooking. His cooking specialties include curry, enchiladas, and boeuf bourguignon.

DOUGLAS D. GAFFINDoug Gaffin is a David Ross

Boyd Professor of Biology and a Presidential Teaching Fellow as of fall 2015. From 1995-2002, Gaffin was director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Zoology at OU, and from 2002-2012 he was dean of University College. He spent spring 2013 at the School of Engineering and Informatics at the University of Sussex, England, as a Visiting Professorial Fellow. His teaching and research focus on the navigation systems of insects, namely scorpions, stem from his brother’s work toward a patent on a vision system, itself inspired by the navigation system of bees. He gives many scorpion presentations to classes, civic groups, elementary schools, retirement homes, recruitment events and other groups, and has done a TED Talk for TEDxOU.

Gaffin’s research has appeared in print in countless publications, including Journal of Arachnology, Journal of Comparative Physiology, Euscorpius, and textbooks from Faber & Faber, Oxford University Press, and McGraw-Hill. An upcoming article for PLoS ONE will describe

Presidential Teaching Fellows


a navigation algorithm for aerial drones using satellite imagery, a system inspired by the navigation systems of certain bees and wasps. Gaffin has presented papers at meetings in the U.S. and abroad and has been invited to lectures and seminars around the country.

Gaffin earned a bachelor’s degree at UC-Berkeley and a doctorate in zoology/neurophysiology from Oregon State University in 1994. He taught biology at a high school in Northern California before earning his doctorate. Before coming to OU in 1995, he taught at Oregon State. He has won numerous research grants and awards for excellence in teaching, including but not limited to “Most Inspiring Professor” at the Scholar Athlete Banquet, Outstanding Faculty Award from the OU Pan-Hellenic Association, Alpha Phi Omega “Leader of the 20th Century,” OU Regents’ Award for Superior Teaching, and Pi Beta Phi Outstanding Faculty Award. As a Presidential Teaching Fellow, Gaffin has taught a research-based “Culture of Science” course, the Honors Colloquium “Beyond Darwin: Selection in Thought, Religion, and Politics,” and “From There to Here, Here to There,” a course on navigation systems in scorpions and bees. He teaches “Beyond Darwin” and “Sensory Manipulation” in fall 2016 and “Scorpions” in spring 2017.

Gaffin lettered in volleyball in college and still enjoys playing. Before attending Oregon State, he cycled from

San Francisco to Canada, visiting graduate programs along the way. He and his wife, OU biology professor Mariëlle Hoefnagels, hold season tickets to OU’s fine arts productions. He enjoys travelling, especially to his wife’s native Netherlands, or to anyplace involving hiking, camping or kayaking.

ALLEN D. HERTZKENow in his 30th year at OU,

Allen Hertzke is David Ross Boyd Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow in Religious Freedom for the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage. He also served as founding director of OU’s Religious Studies Program. An internationally recognized expert on religion and politics, he is associate scholar of Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project and Distinguished Senior Fellow for the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University.

Hertzke is author of Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights; Representing God in Washington, which has been issued in a Chinese language translation, and co-author of Religion and Politics in America, a comprehensive text now in its fifth edition. As a result of his work coordinating the Global Conference on Religious Freedom in Istanbul, he is editor of The Future of Religious Freedom: Global Challenges (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Religious Freedom in America: Constitutional Roots and Contemporary Challenges (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015). Most recently, he co-edited a two volume project, Christianity and Freedom: Historical Perspectives and Christianity and Freedom: Contemporary Perspectives, just issued by Cambridge University Press. As Visiting

Students use UV lights to hunt scorpions for Gaffin’s lab.


Senior Fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington DC, he directed the study, “Lobbying for the Faithful: Religious Advocacy Groups in Washington DC.” Between 2008 and 2010 he served as lead consultant for the John Templeton Foundation to develop strategic recommendations for advancing religious freedom around the globe. In 2012 he was selected by Pope Benedict XVI to the prestigious Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Hertzke earned a bachelor’s degree with high distinction in social science from Colorado State University and a master’s degree in resource economics from Cornell University. From 1977-78, he undertook course work in theology from the Washington Theological Consortioum and earned a doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986. A winner of numerous teaching awards, Hertzke has lectured at the National Press Club, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, Harvard University, Princeton University, Georgetown University, Notre Dame University, the University of California-Berkeley and before numerous audiences in China. For the Honors College, he taught a course over contemporary religious autobiographies called Spiritual Quests in fall 2015. In spring 2016, he taught the Perspectives course Religion and Constitution and the Colloquium Real Democracy, and in Fall 2016 teaches “Faith and Politics in America,” which will focus on religious lobbying, mobilization, voting and social movements.

Hertzke and his wife, Barbara, are actively involved as sponsors for engaged couples at St. Thomas More University Parish, helping the couples to develop good communication and training other sponsors. As a native of Colorado, Hertzke loves hiking and misses the Rocky Mountains, traveling to Colorado, New Mexico, and upstate New York when he has the opportunity. He also loves traveling to Italy, which he does once a year, especially to Rome, Arezzo, and Assisi.

JOSHUA M. LANDISJoshua Landis joined the

faculty in 1999 and is associate professor of Middle East Studies in the College of International Studies. He is also Director of the Center for Middle East Studies, which he founded in 2006, and co-host of “World Views,” a weekly radio program on KGOU. Landis is past president of the Syrian Studies Association (2011-2013), has received three Fulbright and other grants to support his research, and won numerous prizes for his teaching.

Landis has written numerous articles in scholarly journals and books and short articles for journals, think tanks, and magazines, publishing frequently in journals such as Foreign Policy, Middle East Policy, and Foreign Affairs. In addition, Landis writes “Syria Comment” (joshualandis.com/blog), a daily newsletter on Syrian politics that attracts over 100,000 readers a month. He is a frequent analyst on TV and radio, most recently appearing on PBS News Hour, the Charlie Rose Show, al-Jazeera, Frontline, NPR and BBC radio. He travels frequently to Washington, D.C. to consult with government agencies and speak at think tanks. Most recently he has spoken at the Woodrow Wilson Institute, Brookings Institute, United States Institute for Peace, Middle East Institute, and Council on Foreign Relations.

Landis received a bachelor’s degree with honors in European history and French from Swarthmore College, a master’s degree at Harvard University’s Center for


Professor Landis’ blog Syria Comment attracts over 100,000 readers per month.



Middle East Studies, and a doctorate in Near East tudies at Princeton University. In his three decades plus as an educator, Landis has held teaching and lecturing positions at the International College in Beirut, Lebanon, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Wake Forest University. Since 2006, he has taught an annual mini-course on Syria and its Neighbors for the National Security Agency. He teaches the Honors courses International Relations in the Middle East, Political Islam, The Arab Spring and The Middle East since WWI.

As a child, Landis grew up in Saudia Arabia and Lebanon. He has lived over 14 years in the Middle East, four years in Syria and most summers in Damascus until the revolution began. He speaks Arabic and French fluently and has studied Turkish, Ottoman, and Italian. Landis enjoys birding, tennis, and debate, and his favorite places to visit are Vermont and Lebanon.

APARNA MITRAAparna Mitra, associate

professor of economics, researches labor economics, economics of race and gender, economics of aging, economic development, and the economics of education. She joined the faculty in 2000. Mitra is active in both the Southern and Southwestern Economics Associations, having served from 2004-2005 as president of the Southwestern Economics Association. She is currently Southwest Regional director of the Association for Social Economics.

Mitra has written a number of book chapters and scholarly articles, including “Going It Alone: Single-Mother Households in the United States,” which appears in the book The Economics of the Family, and “Son Preference in India: Implication for

Gender Development” in Journal of Economic Issues. A forthcoming work titled “Race, Ethnicity, and Caregiving to the Elderly” will appear soon as a book chapter. Mitra is proud to have co-written a paper with Honors alumnus Mark C. Bickett to appear in Applied Economic Letters titled “Demographics of the Minority Elderly in the United States” and to have worked with a number of former Honors students to publish their Honors theses or present them at various conferences. She has been a consistent faculty mentor for the Honors Research Assistant Program and Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and has directed Honors research and reading for dozens of OU students.

Mitra received a bachelor’s degree (1987) and a master’s degree (1989) before earning a doctorate in political economy from the University of Texas at Dallas (1995). Before coming to OU, she lectured and taught at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington. She taught graduate courses in Nebraska, Hawaii, and Okinawa, Japan. Mitra received “Most Inspiring Faculty” award from OU student-athletes in 2011, the Patten Award for Outstanding Teaching from the College of Arts and Sciences in 2013, a Regent’s Award for Superior Teaching in spring 2016, and taught a Presidential “Dream Course” in 2009 entitled “Economics of Discrimination” with visiting professors Barbara Bergman, professor emerita of economics at University of Maryland and American University, and Paula England, professor of sociology at Stanford University. Mitra teaches the Honors Perspectives course “Inequality and Labor Market Institutions” and the Colloquium “Economics of Discriminations” in fall 2016.

Mitra enjoys reading, bird-watching and classical music from both the West and India. Mozart and Vilayat Khan are among her favorite composers. Her favorite travel destinations are Oahu, Hawaii; Goa, India; and the English countryside.


T he Student-to-Professional Mentoring Experience is a networking event that introduces top-achieving

Honors students to highly-accomplished OU alumni and corporate business leaders in the students’ field of study. The corporate-style dinner gives up to 20 qualified Honors students the opportunity to establish vital contacts and gain indispensable insight into career placement as they transition from student to professional in competitive, specialized job markets. This semester, STPMX continued building partnerships with different individuals and groups of professionals, including OKC Physicians and Health Care Professionals and members of the Oklahoma City Memorial

and Museum Foundation. Past events were held which introduced Honors students to executives from BancFirst and OKC Lawyers and Judges. The following are excerpts from letters written by Honors students Jesse Hare and Daniel Rennix:

JESSE HAREThe Student-to-Professional

Mentoring Experience is one of the most dynamic programs offered by the OU Honors College. Designed to help Honors students cultivate their professional skills, STPMX provides pupils with the opportunity to network with the state’s most distinguished individuals. The event regularly features illustrious figures such as government officials, corporate

executives, and leading academics -- all of which are wholly committed to serving OU students. Coupled with a single executive, students partake in mock interviews, résumé critiques, and dialogues concerning their respective career prospects. These exercises are intended to simulate the professional situations students will likely encounter once they graduate and enter the work force. Through its dedicated staff and thoughtful regimen, STPMX provides students with an unparalleled opportunity to hone their professional skills and gain firsthand knowledge from some of Oklahoma’s most successful executives. It is through STPMX that the OU Honors College adds another facet to an already first-rate educational experience.

Student–to–Professional MENTORING EXPERIENCE


DANIEL RENNIXThe BancFirst STPMX

event this past fall was the best networking event I have ever attended. First, the physical setting was highly conducive to actual conversation, which is essential in order to create a real basis for a future relationship when meeting someone for the first time. The informal conversations for the 30 or so minutes before sitting down to dinner allowed those of us who arrived early some time to introduce ourselves to all the professionals there. With STPMX, every single professional there was highly interested in having dialogue with all the students, and it was especially helpful that Dean Ray mingled amongst us and helped with introductions. Additionally, the room we were in was relatively small, so there wasn’t anywhere to hide; students were “forced” to introduce themselves and talk.

Another strong point of STPMX is its size. Another way of looking at this would be to observe the professional-to-student ratio: at STPMX, it was about 1 to 1. When I went to the BancFirst STPMX event, I left with five business cards, and I would feel no discomfort in contacting any one of those professionals today, even though I haven’t spoken to any of them since that event. That’s how strong of a connection I was able to make with each of them, and from what I could tell, every other student left with a similar result.

If you are an OU graduate or

a professional who would like to support this important new Honors College program, please contact director of external relations Lisa Tucker at (405) 325-9088 or [email protected].

Through its dedicated staff and thoughtful regimen, STPMX provides students with an unparalleled opportunity to hone their professional skills and gain firsthand knowledge from some of Oklahoma’s most successful executives.


Aug. 28 The Maltese Falcon Sep. 4 Do the Right Thing Sep 11. Chungking Express

Sep. 18 The Third Man Sep. 25 Akira Oct. 2 Bringing Up Baby

Oct. 16 A Short Film About Killing Oct. 23 Accattone Oct. 30 The Host

Nov. 6 Network Nov. 13 Persona Nov. 20 Close-Up Dec. 4 Pather Panchali

@OUClassicFilmsFor additional information and/or accommodations on the basis of disability,

email Will Goree at [email protected] or Ethan Holaday at [email protected]. The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution.


The Honors College ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

S ince the Honors Program was elevated to college status in 1996, nearly 3,000 students have graduated cum laude from the University of Oklahoma. Honors

alumni represent a multidisciplinary body of engineers, physicians and healthcare providers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, educators, scientists, artists and more, all sharing the legacy of academic excellence fostered by their time at the Honors College. It is both a privilege and a responsibility to preserve this rich heritage of academic excellence. To all those who have lived and learned in the classrooms, Wanda Winn Shi Courtyard and Nancy Mergler Library within

David L. Boren Hall, WE SALUTE YOU!, and rally your spirit of loyalty and camaraderie to see that the Honors College continues to form great minds, critical thinkers, and good citizens over the next 20 years and beyond.

We are excited to announce that the HONORS COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION will launch in spring 2017! To fulfill a cornerstone of the college mission, the Alumni Association will foster friendships, provide support for alumni and student communities, and advocate for a small liberal arts-like learning experience within the University of Oklahoma. Members of the alumni association can “support the habit” of excellence by mentoring students and fellow alumni, by sharing talents to provide valuable resources for personal and professional growth, and by creating memorable experiences that enrich the connection between alumni and the Honors College. There will be opportunities to host an Honors alumni function in your hometown and to support the advancement of new and existing programs such as Honors at Oxford, considered a “crown jewel” of study abroad programs at OU, and the Student-to-Professional Mentoring Experience, a popular one-to-one mentoring and networking opportunity for upper-class students preparing to enter the workforce.

Additionally, to create an effective and meaningful experience for members of the alumni association, the HONORS COLLEGE ALUMNI COUNCIL will form in 2017 and will be composed of established Honors alumni who can serve for a minimum term of three years

and attend biannual meetings at the Norman campus. The Honors College Alumni Council will support the qualitative growth of the Alumni Association and collaborate with university leaders to enhance programs and activities that directly benefit alumni, students and faculty. Members of the council will boost alumni outreach efforts to encourage solidarity and engagement between the OU Honors College and the academically diverse and geographically dispersed alumni community. Additional information on the formation of the Honors College Alumni Council is forthcoming.

Finally, we invite you to come home to Oklahoma and to David L. Boren Hall to celebrate “The Honors College at 20” on Friday, Oct 28, 2016, the first reunion event in the 20-year history of the Honors College. It will be an evening to remember and the first of many more to come as we build a dynamic and purposeful Honors College Alumni Association!

We encourage all Honors alumni to contact the director of External and Alumni Relations to self-identify and share your current contact information. An initiative to identify and register all Honors alumni will launch in January 2017, but if you’d rather not wait, send Lisa Tucker an email ([email protected]) with your contact information today. In doing so, you will be able to pre-register for the “The Honors College at 20” event.

We promise we’re not selling anything and we won’t call during dinner. We are, however, inviting you to be an important and valued member of this gifted multi-disciplinary community so that, together, we can impact the future of the Honors College in positive ways. The possibilities of furthering the developmental and social exchange between alumni and friends is limitless. Stay tuned for more information to come in spring 2017!

Lisa Tucker, Director of External and Alumni RelationsOU Honors [email protected](405) 325-9088

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle

LIVE ON, excellence. LIVE ON, university.

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Fall 2016 newsletter