Push the students. Push the program.

This remains the focus of the Renee Crown University Honors Program at Syracuse University.

People familiar with the program agree it’s demanding. “The honors program is not for everybody, and it’s not for every wonderful student,” said Founding Director Samuel Gorovitz.

The honors program is designed for students who are looking for a unique — albeit intensive — educational experience, Gorovitz said. And though the capstone project has been criticized for its difficulty in the past, Gorovitz said he has seen the benefits students have gained in completing it.

“The people who complete the honors program typically go through stages of terror, suffering, despair, exhaustion and over and over again say afterwards, ‘It’s the single most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,’” he said.

Despite revamping the program eight years ago, those involved say there are still changes that can be made to its resources to improve students’ experiences.

Director Stephen Kuusisto said he wants to focus on improving three main facets of the program: student diversity and accessibility, inadequate facilities and funding opportunities available for scholars.

Kuusisto, who has been blind since birth, is a strong advocate for disability studies, and has spent the majority of his career helping to build interdisciplinary programs across the country. He would like to see SU move in this direction, he said, by first making the honors facilities ADA-accessible. These are public accommodations for students who are mentally or physically disabled, in line with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Although the student demographics of the honors program reflect SU’s overall enrollment, Kuusisto said he wants to explore new ways to continue diversifying the program. One way the program has tried to increase diversity, he said, is by inviting students from the POSSE Foundation — a college access and youth leadership development group that offers full-tuition scholarships to promising inner-city high school students — to join the honors program at SU.

The POSSE Foundation allows students who might be overlooked by traditional college selection processes for various reasons the chance to pursue academic excellence in multicultural teams — or posses — of 10 students. These students often come from financially and socially troubled homes, so they have experienced a kind of marginalization to which Kuusisto can relate, he said.

“I know something about what it’s like to come from a disadvantaged background, or one where prejudice or shallow cultural thinking may impede the way forward,” Kuusisto said.

To increase the connection between the honors program and SU, the honors department hired a new adviser to reach out to groups who were traditionally not recruited before, he said.

Like Kuusisto, Jessica Santana, a graduate student in the School of Information Studies, said she believes the program could do a better job of reaching out to more diverse students.

After noticing a lack of diversity in the accounting classes she took as an undergraduate in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, Santana developed an idea for her capstone project. She wrote a qualitative analysis of why Latino students who were enrolled in business school don’t pursue accounting.

“If I could change anything, it would be support for students who are in Whitman and the iSchool,” said Santana, who graduated from the honors program last year. “I was the only accounting major that actually went and graduated from the program.”

But those connected to the honors program say its most dire need is an endowment for better facilities. The department is currently located on the third floor of Bowne Hall, where it is extremely limited in space. The floor consists of only several academic offices, a small computer lab with eight Dell desktops and an even smaller lounge — no bigger than the size of an open-double residence hall room — for nearly 900 honors students to share.

This is problematic, Kuusisto said, because it hinders the ability for the rising number of honors students to effectively learn and grow.

Kelsey Monteith, a junior biochemistry major, agreed that the honors program would greatly benefit from improving its classrooms and computer labs. There are only two honors classrooms in Bowne Hall, she said, and they’re incredibly small. But the computer labs are even more crowded, especially in between class periods, when people flood through the honors facilities, she said.

“And a lot of them are quite outdated and break down,” Monteith said.

Prior to coming to SU, Kuusisto taught at Ohio State University. Their honors program was located in a beautiful Tudor mansion on campus that the university president formerly occupied, he said. When the president vacated the house during the Vietnam protests, it was retrofitted for academic use, with state-of-the-art classrooms, lounges, elevators, a library and an industrial kitchen where students could cook.

Although space is at a premium at SU, Kuusisto said he believes the university has the potential to move in this direction. “We need much more space for the quality of the education and intellectual activity students are currently engaged in,” he said. “I’d love to see us have the kinds of facilities that I know are out there.”

Kuusisto is in preliminary talks with the administration about expanding the honors program’s facilities to include a library and cafe, he said.

In a statement to The Daily Orange, Kevin Quinn, senior vice president for public affairs, declared SU’s overall support for the honors program due to its academic and intellectual enrichment.

“Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina and Associate Provost for Academic Programs Andria Costello Staniec have had preliminary discussions with program leaders about potential opportunities that could provide the Honors Program with improved space that would better meet its needs,” Quinn said on behalf of the university. “Those discussions are ongoing.”

Another area Kuusisto is looking to improve is the amount of funding available to students for fellowships, scholarships and internships. These are essential to making top students competitive in the workforce after graduation, he said, yet they are extremely difficult to afford.

“If you’re a poor student, or you come from a struggling middle class family, it’s not so easy to get an internship,” he said. “You’re busy signing on to work at Best Buy over the summer just so you can make ends meet. We want to be able to provide the financial support so you can go do an internship.”

But most of all, Kuusisto and other administrators want the honors program to be a place where students can thrive.

“I want more tools for students, not fewer,” Kuusisto said. “And that’s because I was a blind kid who went to college and got the kind of help and encouragement that made it possible for me to go on and have a very successful life.”

Published on April 18, 2013 at 12:31 am

Contact Stephanie: snbouvia@syr.edu | @snbouvia