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Campus News
     
Your faculty and staff news since 1965
April 19, 2004
Volume 39, Number 14
University Honors attracts New Mexico’s brightest

By Laurie Mellas Ramirez

OteroTaking advantage of the UNM Honors Program is a no-brainer for New Mexico’s best and brightest.

Small, interdisciplinary seminars with expert faculty, a low pressure grading system without traditional exams, no Friday classes and opportunities to hit the road at home and abroad are just some perks offered to high-achieving, motivated students.

The program emphasizes intensive reading, writing and discussion to encourage self-expression and critical thinking. Students must participate in a cross-cultural or multicultural experience and are challenged to become “a community of scholars.”

Honors Requirements:
Entering students must have a 3.5 GPA to register for seminars. Continuing students must maintain a 3.2 GPA. Students may take two seminars per semester. Acquiring honors distinction takes 3-6 credit hours at 100 and 200 levels; and 6-9 credit hours at 300 and 400 levels.
University Honors is not a degree program, but offers an “honors distinction” for diplomas. Many students also pursue departmental honors from schools and colleges. Honors seminars may be taken as electives or substituted for certain group requirements. Only three grades are offered: A, credit or no-credit, plus a qualitative and quantitative evaluation.

UNM’s core curriculum is designed to help students grasp the basics while majors and minors help in developing a focus. The Honors Program expands worldview.

“Talented and creative students in all majors use the program to broaden and enhance their academic programs. Often they make connections among the disciplines, which is very important if we want them to become world citizens,” said Rosalie Otero, Ph.D., director.

 
"Honors covers it all. The format is so condusive to thought sharing, becasuse there are projects and readings instead of tests for regurgitating facts. I feel like I'm in ancient Greece in the honors program because we exchange philosophies and opinions in ways that motivate us to think critically about our prejudices and preconceived notions," said Ambrosia Ortiz, a junior from Las Cruces who spent spring break in class on Route 66.
Otero has made significant improvements to the program in the past decade. She boosted credits required for the distinction from 18 to 24 along with the number of fulltime tenure and tenure-track faculty. She also instituted the prestigious Garrey Carruthers Endowed Chair with funding from the Burlington Resources Foundation.

“Cornell West was one of the first scholars to fill the chair. Since then we’ve had a variety of scholars from a range of disciplines – the performing arts to history to philosophy to political science. Also, having tenure track faculty makes us unique to honors programs across the country,” Otero said.

Courses at the 100 level or “legacy seminars” will grow next year. “We will have an umbrella theme such as ‘legacy of power’ or ‘gender, class and culture,’ and specific courses that span the ages for historical context, but we will also include more ideas and themes current today,” she said.

At the 400 level, students can take part in a colloquium and service-learning, student-teaching, honors or departmental honors thesis. The first two are six-credit endeavors, with the first semester set aside to design the learning activity or prepare course materials.

“Last semester we had a student in a colloquium who worked with prisoners on the impact of having a father in prison and what that means for their children,” Otero said. “Another student worked at Albuquerque High School to help young people explore self-esteem through writing and photography.”

Upper level students are also expected to write a thesis. Honors helps subsidize attendance of students whose papers are accepted for presentation at the Western Regional Honors Council, National Collegiate Honors Council, National Intercollegiate Literature and Social Sciences conferences.

Otero, who served as National Collegiate Honors Council president in 2002, said the best part of honors is the opportunity to explore topics outside an area of study. A student majoring in chemistry might exercise the right side of the brain by delving into tango music or Thoreau. Shakespeare connoisseurs could pursue an engineering or environmental science seminar.

“One of our biggest challenges is that we are the best kept secret on campus and we’ve been here for decades,” said Diane Rawls, Ph.D., lecturer III.

Rawls coordinates the Regents’ Scholars Program, nearly all of whom participate in honors. She also helps students apply for academia’s top awards. UNM has produced two Rhodes scholars since 1999. In March, UNM senior Sean Murray became UNM’s sixth student to be named a Truman scholar since 1998. A student in the UNM mechanical engineering program, he is also co-captain and right fielder for the UNM Lobo baseball team. He led the team in hitting last year with a .383 average. Murray’s GPA is out of the park – a whopping 4.22 this semester.

“The honors program allowed me to take courses in philosophy, ethics and politics.  It enabled me to pursue a liberal arts education – even though I am an engineering major – which I never thought was possible,” Murray said.

Tariq Khraishi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and one of Murray’s instructors, said, “I’ve been at so many higher education institutions. I’ve never seen a student that sharp, professional and dedicated; all the good things together in one package.”

Otero said honors courses give students “the ability to think, to learn how to be well-organized, write and speak well. These students are going to be leaders in whatever field they choose so they need to be well-informed and have skills that will make them better people,” she said.