Gestalt2012-2013

Gestalt 2012-2013Issue 4

Gestalt |gə- sh tält; - sh tôlt| (also Gestalt)

Noun: an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts; an in-stance or example of such a unified whole.

ORIGIN 1920s: from Ger-man Gestalt, literally ‘form, shape.’

Mission Statement

“The purpose of ORU’s Honors Program is to provide academically gifted students an educational expe-rience at a level that (1) transcends both the rigor and scope of the gen-eral curriculum and (2) integrates the ethical responsibilities of using God’s intellectual gifts for the heal-ing of humanity into the concept of the “whole person” education.

Gestalt Mission Statement:

Our purpose is to further the mis-sion of the Honors Program by providing information vital to the success and growth of the students and academically elite community.

Inside this IssueA Scholarly Adventure 2

Top 10 3

Missions and More 4

Above and Beyond 6

Giving Back 7

A Sad Farewell 8

Great Job! 10

1

Relax everyone. It’s finally Summer!!

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A Scholarly AdventureBy: Victoria Jenson

When I walked into the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel in Ama-rillo, TX, my eyes landed on a large Texas state seal, hanging proudly on the wall adjacent to the front desk. Paired with the many state flags waving above businesses along the highway, my initial observation dur-ing my first visit to Texas to attend the Great Plains Honors Conference was certain: Texans have no short-age of state pride. I too developed my own sense of pride during the trip. It was not an excessive pride in my own state (Iowa doesn’t have an incredible amount to brag about), but I developed an appreciation and respect for the clever, innovative group of people I belong to as an honors student.

I had the opportunity to attend and present at the Great Plains Honors Conference along with sophomores Vanessa Sweet and Tara Traxler, as well as Dr. Gweth Holzmann who accompanied us on the two-day trip. One the first evening I presented my research on Thomas Nast and 19th century artists and attended the opening dinner where I was able to meet a few of the nearly 150 honors students from schools across Okla-homa, Arkansas, Texas, and Kan-sas. The next morning we had the privilege of hiking Palo Duro Can-yon and seeing awe-inspiring views of the wide Texas plains and vast, rugged canyon. When we returned,

we listened to the award-winning origi-nal research projects and many oral pre-sentations. Tara described her research on the effects of synthetic film scoring on the music industry, and Vanessa shared her analysis of redemption in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Because the conference is open to all undergraduate honors students, the pre-sentations covered nearly every conceiv-able topic (and then some I would have never imagined): science, art, psycholo-gy, engineering, literature, law, and many more. A few of the fascinating presenta-tions I heard explored the personalities of Superman vs. Batman, examined our addiction to horror in literature and film, and studied the attitudes of Christian stu-dents toward conduct requirement con-

tracts.

Abigail Dew, Hannah Covington, and Noelle Smits also participated in an honors conference this month. They spent a day in Oklahoma City with Dr. Meyers for the Undergrad-uate Research Symposium hosted by Southern Nazarene University. Hannah Covington was excited to share her paper, “The Roar of War: Form, Content, and the English Sol-dier Poets of WWI.” An English Literature major fascinated by war literature and films, she shared her research on soldier poets who wrote from the trenches during World War I. The symposium is much smaller than the Great Plains but still has an assortment of student presentations

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A Scholarly Adventure (Ctd.)

exploring science, theology, litera-ture, and humanities.

In addition to meeting creative students and learning about their

areas of interest, presenting a paper at a conference sharpens your research, writ-ing, and public speaking skills. Many students, including myself, present ex-panded editions of term papers. The conferenced provide a platform to share what you have learned from the projects you have poured countless hours into, ensuring your paper doesn’t go straight from your desk to the trashcan at the end

of the semester. The Great Plains Honors Conference and Southern Nazarene University Undergradu-ate Research Symposium are both annual conferences, so start making plans for your presentation for next year so you can embark on a schol-arly adventure of your own.

Top 10 Reasons to Join the GestaltBy: Victoria Jensen

In preparation for the upcoming school year, we asked Victoria to give us the top ten reasons she loves writing for the Gestalt. Here are all the reasons you should join, too!1. Be more involved the Honors Program.2. Share a story.3. Get to know students and faculty.4. Sharpen your writing skills.5. Give back to the program that funds your scholar-ships.

6. Bolster your resume.7. Conduct interviews with fascinating students, profes-sors, guests, and alumni.8. Serve the HP students.9. Take advantage of the opportunity to pretend you’re Bob Woodward.10. Be a part of the real Dream Team.

We can always use writers and a graphic designer. Let us know you’re interested by emailing your resume and a sample of your work to hpnewsletter@oru.edu.

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Missions and MoreBy: Allison Boswell

As always, we at the Gestalt strive to better connect the honors students. Summer is a time of fun in the sun that every sleep-deprived, pale from staring at a screen for hours college student looks forward to, but it is also often a time of dis-connect from our amazing friends here at ORU. In order to repair that a bit, we decided to ask everyone what they have planned for this summer. We got a lot of wonderful stories about missions, including Spring Break Teams, and reports of some amazing accomplishments throughout the program. So here are the journeys your peers are em-barking on for the summer. I hope this helps you to keep them in your

hearts and prayers despite the distance that separates us.

I’m going on the Brazil Basketball missions team for two weeks with ORU Missions. Missions was a fantastic expe-rience for me last year and I’m looking forward to another awesome chance to make a difference in people’s lives. As for summer, it’s going to be the best yet! :)

-Annamarie Gerick This summer I’m spending 8 weeks on

staff at Shepherd’s Fold Ranch in Avant, OK. I’ve been to camp at SFR every summer since I was 5 and I’m so excited to be able to invest back into a place that has been such a blessing to me. :)

-Jessica CollierI went on the medical mission trip to

the Dominican Republic this spring break. It was awesome! This sum-mer I’ll be doing research on mi-graines with a professor at the OSU Medical School here in Tulsa. Thanks!

-Samantha BeckI am the assistant team leader for

a month-long summer mission trip to Malawi, Africa! It is a new trip. ORU has never sent a team here be-fore.

We are partnering with Urban Promise to help start up a few new youth centers. We are spending two weeks in Lilongwe and two weeks in Blantyre. We will also be work-ing in an orphanage. Our focus is on children’s ministry.

-Nicole HopkinsI was on the Costa Rica spring

break team. The Christian Ticos (Costa Ricans) have service and community worship every night of the week except their day of rest. You can tell the difference it makes in their community. Everyone in the church is focused on serving their family and serving God. Their lives are completely centered around community. I would love to see the difference that would make in the U.S. if some of us would start meet-ing in small groups and worship God daily. I know it would change all of us, and that would change the world. :)

-Caleb LutzMissions over spring break was

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awesome. We got to work with a school in Miami and a sort of or-phanage and spend about 8 hours a day with kids. We were there to love on the kids and let them know they are special and worth loving, but almost more so we were there to encourage our contacts, by being extra hands to give the teachers and staff a rest, and to remind them that they are doing incredible work in the lives of these kids and literally changing lives. The His House min-istry is just fabulous.

As to Summer Plans, I’m look-ing forward to going to Spain to complete my Spanish minor. I think the best way to learn a language is through immersion, so I’m going to Valencia to surround myself with Spanish culture and learn about life on the other side of the Atlan-tic. Honestly, I’m a little nervous to be going somewhere where I don’t even know the language for 2 months, but I’m also super excited. Everybody who has gone before has said it’s a great experience, and I’m sure I’ll come home with plenty of ridiculous stories :)

-Joy StarkI get to go to Oxford this sum-

mer for two weeks to study Biblical manuscript and text analysis with the Green Scholars Initiative.

-Estara ArrantI will be participating in the Sum-

mer Apprenticeship Program coor-dinated by the Little Light House. Though this apprenticeship, I will be devoting one day a week to vol-unteering at The Little Light House while also becoming more familiar with vocations relating to children

Missions and More (Ctd.)

with special needs.-Julie Karnuth

I’ll be staying in Tulsa all summer, learning to cook, and working for the honors program! Wooo!

-Tara TraxlerI’m headed to Japan this summer with

missions for a month! It’s gonna be SWEET!! :D

-Rachel BensonPlans for summer: research internship

through the Oklahoma medical research foundation (OMRF) in the cardiovascu-lar biology department.

-Dave MurrayI’ll be going to South Africa this sum-

mer from June-August to work with a

Christian soccer academy there, and I’ll be helping out the ORU South Africa soccer missions team for about a week before they have to fly back to the States.

-John ChauI will be going on a month long

missions trip to Ghana, Africa this summer. After that, I will be a me-chanical engineering intern for Tul-sa Tube Bending until classes start. I am stoked!

- Addison CruzThanks for all of your responses.

As for me, I went to Chichicaste-nango, Guatemala for Spring Break missions and will be headed to Va-lencia with Joy for the next few months! I hope everyone has a won-derful summer and look forward to seeing everyone back next year!

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Above and BeyondTaking Learning to New Heights with Fellow’s Seminars

By: Victoria JensenYou know you’re an honors stu-

dent when your dorm room floor is littered with stacks of textbooks ranging from art to philosophy to mathematics to leadership, all ob-tained from many Fellows’ semi-nars. The interdisciplinary classes required for all Fellows and open to all Scholars cover an incredible variety of subjects. The courses are co-taught by two professors from different departments and combine information and perspectives from each professor’s area of expertise. Many of the classes rely heavily on student discussion and have an abundance of required reading.

Sophomore Christian Vaughan is passionate about learning all he can from his classes, rather than just meeting a requirement. As a Schol-ar, he has chosen to take multiple Fellows classes because, as he ex-plains, “The courses are much more challenging and interesting than the Gen Eds I’d have to take.” Vaughan enjoyed Philosophy of Science taught by Dr. Collier and Dr. Thor-pe: “I never imagined how much our culture has separated science and faith when they don’t need to be separated at all.” He also learned “how to read well but fast” in the reading intensive course, consum-ing about one book per week. Chris-tian suggests adding an additional course that incorporates business. As a finance major, he has notices

there are “many very smart students in the business department, but not a large presence in the Honors Pro-gram.” He believes many excellent professors in the business depart-ment are of the caliber of the current Honors professors, and an Honors business course would engage the business students and encourage them to get involved in the Honors Program.

Tara Traxler and Vanessa Sweet have taken a majority of the Fel-lows courses and share Christian’s appreciation for the seminars’ abil-ity to challenge them intellectually. They agree that the best courses are the ones where you can “explore your intellectual curiosity without

being stifled.” The Fellows courses give much more freedom to explore and discuss than other courses, but Sweet and Traxler believe some of the classes could use more flex-ibility and open-mindedness. “[The seminars] have developed my think-ing and expanded my worldview,” Vanessa says. Traxler and Sweet both chose History of Quantitative Thought taught by Dr. Vickery and Dr. Halsmer as the top class they have taken. Tara, a music compo-sition major, explained, “It wasn’t something I would have studied, so it stretched me.” If given the op-portunity to create another seminar, they would like to see one that ex-amines government and politics or in-depth theology, areas of study they believe are important to their well-rounded education.

All of the Fellow’s seminars can be substituted for a regular general education course, and 24 hours of honors credit are required to grad-uate with honors. Check out the whole variety of courses offered and sign up to take one next year:

Artistic Expression (Fellows only)Principles of LeadershipHistory of Quantitative ThoughtPhilosophy of ScienceScience and the ImaginationFaith and Civilization

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Giving BackDr. David Burkus Alumni Update

By: Victoria JensenI arrived in the office Dr. David

Burkus after he had survived a long morning caring for his sick one-year old child. With an energy drink perched on the corner of his desk, he was printing documents just in time for his first morning class. Life doesn’t seem to slow down after graduation and certainly hasn’t for this 2005 ORU graduate.

Traveling on a plane to Okla-homa as a soon-to-be freshman, Burkus took a deep breath and told God, “Well, here we go.” During the first week of classes, Burkus heard Ralph Fagin give a chapel sermon themed “Here We Go,” as a refer-ence to the “Raise up your students” commission given by God to Oral Roberts. The service was a comfort-ing conformation for Burkus that ORU was where God wanted him to be and is one of his fondest memo-ries from ORU -- “other than finish-ing,” he added.

During his freshman year, Burkus met Janna Korstad, daughter of Dr. John Korstad. The two married after graduating from ORU together and Janna has now completed medical school and will soon be finishing her residency. After double major-ing in writing and communication at ORU, Burkus continued to pur-sue his education at University of Oklahoma and later Regent Univer-sity where he received his Doctor of Strategic Leadership.

Burkus began serving as an ad-junct professor at ORU during 2009 and Oklahoma Wesleyan Univer-sity in 2010. In the fall of 2011, Dr. Burkus was offered a full-time professorship at ORU. Burkus had planned to become a consultant with his doctorate, but accepting ORU’s offer was “an opportunity to take a deeper step” at ORU. “ORU had a positive impact on me,” Burkus said, “and it’s really cool to come back and be the same thing.”

Dr. Burkus is found-er and manager of LDRLB (Leader Lab), an online resource for research about leader-ship, innovation, and strategy. Burkus began the website while he was studying at Re-gent; he was a student and sales representa-tive by day while run-ning a website with hundreds of thousands of viewers by night. Becoming a full-time professor of manage-ment has allowed Burkus to commit his full attention to his passions: business and leadership.

Participating in ORU’s honors pro-gram gave Dr. Burkus

an opportunity to be around people who shared his same desires and ambitions. Burkus reminds honors students, “Grades don’t mean any-thing.” He believes students should be “chasing for knowledge and a deeper understanding of the world” rather than trying to achieve a let-ter grade. Dr. Burkus provides an excellent example of one who has chased after knowledge, and now he has the opportunity to give back the understanding he has gained to students at his alma mater.

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A Sad FarewellSaying Goodbye to our Seniors

By: Allison Boswell

Both spring and this season of our lives are full of change. While this leads to exciting and new chapters, it also brings tear-ful goodbyes. The graduating senior class of the Honors Pro-gram has been with us for four long and challenging years, filled with all of the stress and delight that college life brings. We have all laughed and danced and played and cried together, but we can’t stay young and talented little brats forever. As we say fare-well to our much loved president, we also witness the parting of the academically gifted leaders who have brought us so far.

I remember coming into the honors program for the first event as a freshman. I managed to quench my fear and trepidation by drowning it in excitement, but my heart pounded quickly

as I walked into the game room. It’s intimidating enough to be dropped off with all of your stuff 900 miles from home not even knowing anyone’s name. Going to an honors program event, I felt that I was not only way out of my league; I probably wouldn’t even understand their brilliant speech refined by life-long A’s and hours spent reading. I took a deep breath before plunging into that first game night, but with the help of some very wel-coming upperclassmen, I soon grew comfortable enough to real-ize what I had here: a family. Two years later, at the end of my junior year, I am sad to see these people who mean so much to me leave, but I’m filled with the very same excitement I was then, not for me this time, but for them. The graduates of our fine program have a great adventure ahead of them. They have

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A Sad Farewell(Ctd.)

By: Allison Boswell

other families and will adopt more friends. They will go on to get married and have kids, but they will always have a special place in the heart of that scared little girl whose life has been deeply impacted by such wonderful people. I can only hope I will affect the next class in such a way.

Joseph Ninowski has been a great leader at ORU and in the honors program during his time here. He had a few words to share with the remaining classes.

During my time at ORU, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to be involved in a variety of organizations on campus that chal-lenged and grew me in many ways. However, the program that impacted me the most was the Honors Program, for a number of

reasons.

For one, this program was a great place to begin my journey through ORU. I met a ton of amazing people and enjoyed a fun and interesting environment as I adjusted to college life.

More importantly, being an HP student welcomed me into a culture that allowed me to be myself, especially at a time in my life when I was (and probably most people are) analyzing and questioning the truths and world-views handed down to me. Be-ing a part of the Honors Program gave me the ability to discuss these topics both socially and academically.

-Joe Ninowski

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Great Job!Congratulations and Thanks

By: Allison Boswell

The Gestalt and the Honors Pro-gram as a whole would not be pos-sible without some incredibly hard-working people, starting with you! I would like to give a big ‘congratula-tions’ to everyone who just finished another year of college in the most amazing university in this or any parallel universe. Have a wonder-ful summer and enjoy the much-deserved time off. Also, congratula-tions to everyone who is graduating and Lizzie Clark for receiving the 2012 Norvell Prize for the Best Anatomy & Physiology Student. Keep up the great work everyone! Thank you to all of the honors stu-dents who represented our program at the Great Plains Honors Confer-ence and Southern Nazarene Uni-versity Undergraduate Research

Symposium.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to the faculty who help make all of this possible, especially Dr. Meyers and Dr. Korstad, our honors pro-gram directors, as well as those who teach the honors courses and make our events possible.

Thank you to the Council for your hard work this year: President Zach Wells, Vice President Han-nah Covington, Events Coordinator Ashley Sweeney, Assistant Events Coordinators Raquel Cardenas and Daniel Dickie, Secretary Shannon McBeath, Treasurer Addison Cruz, and Chaplain Nicole Tucker. Con-gratulations to next year’s Honors Council: President Zach Wells, Vice President Charlie Tines, Secretary

Vanessa Sweet, Events Coordina-tor Shannon McBeath, Assistant Events Coordinator Hannah Cov-ington, Treasurer Daniel Dickie, and Chaplain Julie Karnuth.

Thank you all of the students who work for the honors program, whether in a research position or in the honors office. And last but cer-tainly not least, thank you to all of the Gestalt staff. You have been a pleasure to work with and you all deserve a raise!

The Honors Program is an as-tounding community made up of wonderful people and I wish to let each and every one of you know that it would not be possible with-out you. Thanks, and have a great summer!