Editor’s Note: This series explores how the Renee Crown University Honors Program has changed since its overhaul in 2005, and where those involved wish to see it head. 

At some universities, graduating with honors is just another distinction. An added line to your resume. An extra set of multicolored cords to drape around your neck as you trudge across the looming commencement stage.

But at Syracuse University, graduating with honors is more than a flimsy piece of paper — it’s a commitment to excellence, say administrators, students and alumni in SU’s Renee Crown University Honors Program.

“SU has some wonderfully talented students, and enabling them to flourish requires an investment in their development that’s significant in the currencies of time, caring and material resources,” said Samuel Gorovitz, founding director of the honors program.

After the honors program was revamped in 2005, a new model demanded greatness from its students. It told them to aim higher. Push harder. Be brilliant.

Those close to the program say that in order to be successful in the honors program, an investment must be made by both students and faculty. If the two parties are willing to put in the effort, the student will receive an interdisciplinary education that exceeds that of their peers.

Nearly eight years after the overhaul, the improvements are evident. “It is fundamentally qualitative, not quantitative,” Gorovitz said. “No two students are alike. Every one of them requires a personal investment.”

It’s these investments that lead students to venture onto the high seas, become Oxford Scholars and transform the way students interact with alumni.

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A voyage out to sea hooked Anna Kahkoska.

As a Colorado native, Kahkoska had never been to Cape Cod, Mass., much less on a research vessel studying oceanic processes while simultaneously floating above the continental shelf. The trip was a part of her interdisciplinary honors course, HNR 200: “Oceans and Shipwrecks,” and it would become one of 12 she would take during her four years at SU.

It was the unique variety of honors courses that kept her interested in the program, said Kahkoska, a senior biochemistry major. But it was her performance in them that sparked the curiosity of her professors.

Gorovitz and Cathryn Newton, who later co-taught Kahkoska, offered to mentor her, and she gratefully accepted. They encouraged her to pursue a number of prestigious scholarships and joint master’s and doctorate programs instead of simply trying to get accepted to medical school — no small feat in itself.

And so began an all-encompassing mentorship involving a constant open line of communication, allowing Kahkoska and her professors to develop a relationship extending far beyond the classroom.

After a yearlong process of mock interviews, editing application essays and unwavering encouragement, Kahkoska began receiving acceptance letters from some of the nation’s most competitive programs, including Johns Hopkins University.

“I would have never known to apply to those kind of programs if I hadn’t had professors who were watching out for me, paying attention to where my strengths were,” she said.

Kahkoska accepted an offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and said she owes her success to the rigorous mentoring she received in the honors program. The program is demanding, but there’s nothing that compares to having people who care so deeply about one’s future, she said.

The support from honors faculty got her through every stage in the process: “I have felt it from across the country when I walk into an interview room.”

***

For former College of Arts and Sciences Dean Newton, the honors program exemplifies a commitment to students.

Newton, a world-renowned scholar in both paleontology and shipwrecks, has spent the majority of her life as an educator at SU, where she has relentlessly pushed her students to take their initial goals to the next level.

One of the many advantages to being in the honors program, she said, is that faculty don’t just say they will individually advise students — they actually do. This begins in the classroom — or on a field trip in the Atlantic Ocean— where their experiences shape each other’s intellectual lives, she said.

But some of the most fulfilling opportunities come outside of the structured class periods. These are the times when she helps students refine their essays and interviewing skills for competitive fellowships. Or when seniors are scrambling to complete their capstone projects that they’ve been working on for more than a year.

During the last 30 years, Newton has proven her commitment to the entire program, not just individual students who pass through her classroom. As former dean, she commissioned the overhaul of the honors program and its mission, and was the brainchild behind the Life Sciences Complex.

“Committing to an honors student is a commitment for life,” she said. “These are people that one doesn’t lose track of.”

***

At a time when most journalism students were working on a final story to fulfill their capstone, alumnus Clay LePard thought he’d try his hand at producing an interactive project.

Advisers suggested LePard find a way to digitize the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications alumni gallery — since it consisted solely of still photographs from the 1990s.

The result of his brainstorming can be seen on the third floor of Newhouse III, where an iPad sits secured to a podium, facing a flat screen mounted on the wall across from it. This software connects to a website where visitors can watch videos of famous alumni discussing their experiences at SU.

LePard traveled to popular alumni destinations on the East Coast and conducted a series of interviews with SU icons like Mike Tirico and Sean McDonough. Some would talk about their extracurricular activities on campus, while others would reveal why they became journalists in the first place, he said.

Both the honors program and Newhouse provided funding for travel expenses and equipment, totaling several thousand dollars, LePard said. Newhouse footed the bill for expensive hardware such as the iPad and television monitor, but it was the honors program that approved his capstone proposal and encouraged him to pursue an innovative way to share the alumni’s stories.

“You can have an incredible story, but if you don’t have a way to convey it that’s interesting to your viewer, it means nothing,” said LePard, who graduated with a broadcast and digital journalism degree in December 2011.

The product wasn’t fully functional until after LePard graduated, but is now used by Newhouse guides when accepted students tour the complex.

LePard, who now works as a television reporter in Illinois, said, “I have something tangible I can look back on at the university and say, ‘I helped contribute this.’”

***

After Alex Weiss became the first SU student in history to make it to the interview stage for the National Institute of Health Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program, his professors created an extensive plan.

Weiss was ordered to dress in formal attire and perform mock interviews with select members of the honors faculty. He would pretend they’d never met and they would hurl difficult questions at him. When it was finished, Weiss was told to leave the room. Those professors gave him a long list of things to work on.

Then it would happen all over again.

This relentless preparation and special attention helped Weiss secure the fellowship — which is more difficult to get than a Rhodes scholarship. Weiss, now an alumnus, received full funding for his entire graduate program at Oxford, all expenses paid and a $3,000 a year stipend to fly back to the United States.

The honors program was a chance to follow his interests while being pushed academically in ways he never thought were possible, he said. The program facilitated his insatiable interests in multidisciplinary learning, which were always at the core of his academic pursuits, he said.

“The administrators and professors who support the program expect you to be a self-starter,” he said in an email. “They expect you to not only participate, but to enhance the experience for the other students in the program.”

Published on April 17, 2013 at 2:56 am

Contact Liz: egsawyer@syr.edu | @3sawyer