Students reflect on Honors Program

One year ago, the first class of 115 students in the Honors Program entered Tech, the first to embark on a journey where no one knew exactly where they would end up. Now in its second year, students enrolled in the program have plenty of praise for it, but with some scattered issues.

First proposed in the fall of 2004, the program aims to enhance the educational experience of select admitted freshmen by introducing smaller classes and allowing closer contact with faculty. There is no separate application; prospective enrollees must only include two of the five optional essays with their standard application. Another goal of the program is to lure highly qualified applicants to Tech who may be thinking of attending other universities.

One of the successes of the program has been its intimacy and the open flow of ideas that it facilitates, according of last year's charter class members.

"[The Honors Program] is an intellectually stimulating environment. Classes are not necessarily more difficult; it just gives everyone the opportunity to freely discuss what is going on," said Will Boyd, a second-year Physics major in the program.

Howell Residence Hall has been designated as the on-campus home of honors students, at least during their freshman year. The building, which was originally used as a traditional Freshman Experience dorm, is now filled with honors students both male and female, each floor being one or the other. Howell was selected because it contains ancillary space such as a learning center that is useful for the program.

"I found that conversations that started during class in Honors English would carry over outside of the classroom and become one of the regular midnight debate topics in the Howell study lounge," said Sydney Shaffer, a second-year Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering major.

The director of the Honors Program is Greg Nobles, a professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society. He said he is very pleased with the trajectory of the program during its initial year.

"The students also developed a very strong intellectual and social community in Howell," Nobles said. "In general, the students -and the faculty members, too, I should add- seemed to get it in terms of the underlying goals of the program, and they made the program even better than we had originally imagined."

Having everyone inside the same dorm gives the students a great opportunity to get to know each other, but overcrowding has forced some of the honors students to reside in the adjacent Smith Hall.

"I'm not mad, just disappointed," said Bobby Geter, a first-year Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering major who said being locked out of activities like study sessions sometimes leaves him and the others who don't have keys to Howell feeling isolated.

On first learning that a subset of incoming freshmen would now belong to an Honors Program, many students expressed concerns of creating such a separated community and how it would benefit the majority of the greater student body who is not directly involved with it. But Nobles pointed to examples of how the Honors Program has already made contributions that non-Honors Program students can appreciate.

"We provided financial and logistical support to a group of very energetic and able Honors Program students who organized GT Trailblazers last year, creating an alternative Spring Break experience that took both Honors Program and non-Honors Program students on a working/hiking trip to the Appalachian Trail," Nobles said.

This alternative break was conceived by four honors program students: Boyd, Shaffer, Jonathan Saethang, a second-year Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering major, and Martha Lesniewski, second-year Materials Science and Engineering major.

"It's an alternative spring break trip with twelve students to do trail maintenance work on Appalachian Trail and combine it with outdoor activities," Boyd said.

Nobles added that the Honors Program also co-sponsors talks, which are open to the entire campus community. He emphasized a series of talks and small meetings, hosted by Alan Lightman, in 2008. Lightman is a physicist, writer and poet who is currently a professor at MIT.

Boyd expressed that isolation could still occur in a much more basic sense.

"The gated communities might alienate us from the rest of the Tech community," Boyd said. "If we're going to be living in the same dorm, students must make sure to get out and be connected with the rest of campus."

The role of the Honors Program in a Tech student's career, as a permanent fixture or a transient introduction, will also be considered in the upcoming years.

"You're required to take Honors courses, two each semester, in first year Seminar courses in each semester of your second year," Boyd said. "A lot of the core courses are offered with the Honors equivalent."

Beyond all the seminars and the activities outside of classes, those Honors sections of core courses have proven to be one of the most prized benefits of the program.

"I love the smaller class sizes," said Beatrice Wan, a first year Biomedical Engineering major whose course load includes honors introductory computing and biology courses.

As students enter their junior and senior years, there are fewer Honors courses to be taken and thus less to distinguish them from other students.

"If we don't do anything different, what gives us the right to call ourselves Honors students?" Boyd asks.

The seminar courses, called special topics courses, were also points that would need addressing, according to Nobles.

"Probably the biggest challenge we now need to address is making sure that the HP special topics courses, which are innovative and intellectually exciting, can be made to fit better within each student's overall course schedule and, above all, can be used for elective credit in the various curricula at Tech," Nobles said.

"At this point, I think the most important thing to know about the Honors Program is that we've tried to provide our students with both challenges and opportunities, and they've made the most of them," Nobles said.