All right. Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us here at Spelman colleges scholars preview day. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Come on in. My name is latrina Fisher and I serve as the Associate Director of admission for Spelman College. Hello, hello. So we're gonna just take a minute or two justice. Let the number slow down for from everyone joining us. Hopefully this was very easy to navigate you were able to find our links and get the communication you needed to be here. Hello, Miss Chloe Hello Mr. Bria Hello, y'all. These names are familiar. I'm glad y'all are here and joining us. So our numbers are slowing down just a little bit. So good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us here today for Spelman colleges, scholars preview day. My name is Katrina Fisher. And I serve as Associate Director for Spelman College. And it is my pleasure here to be with you all here this afternoon. So you all are tuning in to the first session of scholars preview day, which is these etho Why don't get the Honors Program info session. So here, you will find out all that you need to know about what makes our Honors Program special, unique benefits and all that we have in store for you. This session will be led by Dr. Michelle hight. We will begin in just a second. So before we do, I just wanted to provide you all some housekeeping notes now that my numbers have settled a bit. So this is a webinar so we cannot see the audience. But you all can see us. You all can use the q&a function to post questions. And we will either answer your questions inside the chat or live. If time allows, this session will be recorded. And will be available at the end of this week on our platform that you use to join us today. Okay, so feel free to come back here later this week to kind of replay this session if you missed any important details. So the last note is as we go throughout today's agenda, you can always access the program schedule. Through the event side. At the top of the screen, you'll see the button that says program schedule, click there and you'll see the entire day's agenda with the access links there for you. And those access links will be will come live at the time of the event. So without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Dr. Michelle Hite, who is an associate professor also the Honors Program Director and director of international fellows and scholarship. Thank you Dr.

Hyde. Thank you so much Miss Fisher. In addition to directing prestigious fellowships and honors program, I also am the uncf Mellon Mays coordinator as well. So that's important because for students who are interested in applying to be a professor who want to work as a professor One day, my job is to help you navigate the process for becoming a uncf Mellon, fellow and uncf support students who are in the humanities, some social sciences, and some creative fields pursue the profit story. So I want to share with you today we are talking about the honors program specifically. So I want to share with you some information about the honors program. So you can use the email that you see there to contact me if you have any questions beyond what we are gathered here today to discuss the photograph that you see there. Miss cook is the program coordinator and she's actually the one pointing to the students and trying to get them aligned for the photograph that I took. That is us at a conference in New Orleans before right before the pandemic struck. So the students are attending the African American honors Association Conference. And one of the things that the program supports is student research, and student presentations at conferences. One of the things that's important to our program is exposing students to the world that they are in culturally artistically when we do travel, and so we are actually at the Whitney plantation. And the Whitney plantation is the only sort of plantation tour that is centered on the lives of the enslaved. And so we did a guided tour there. So it's important for you to know that the Honors Program is actually an interdisciplinary program. And so I am an associate professor of English. And I work in community with the professors that you see here. Dr. Alvarez, Dr. brockie, Burton's de Sosa, green, Lewis, Neely and Wang. And we represent all of the divisions. So, art, humanities, the sciences, the social sciences, you'll see they're all of the divisions represented. And that is because we are an interdisciplinary program, we have students who are in all the majors, we have to make a very firm distinction between our program, which is a program that sits beyond the majors, and it is constructed as a liberal arts program, and not a program within the major. Most of our students, however, inside of their majors are also pursuing honors within the major. So you have an you can be an English major, and pursue an English honors degree, if you will, you can be in the psychology and you can be a psychology major, who is trying to get honors. In English, our there's an honor society that you can join, but it's competitive by admission, so you have to have a minimum GPA of maybe a 3.5 to even apply, and then you need letters of recommendation that is distinct from the honors program. So you are here today, because you have received an invitation to the honors program. And again, that is different from honors in your major.

So what makes the Honors Program at Spelman unique is that we basically see ourselves as an advising program for students who are engaged in an intellectual community. And, you know, a part of why in your application, the letter the the essay that you write is so very, very important. Because the, the intellectual community that we have formed at Spelman is very rich, and it is unique. So students who are in this particular program are in it, because they were people who could communicate a relationship to their intellectual selves that was meaningful. As a result, then that means that they could talk about why the world of ideas mattered to them beyond what you might see on their transcripts, as a result of their ability to articulate that. My job then is to guide those students. So they're about 250 in the program, and we work with them for you know, in however they come in, so that we can grow them so that the student can reach our highest potential. And so for depending on the student, that can be many different things. So some of our students who are in the sciences, for example, people who are in the Honors Program, they come in, and they bring in lots of credit. So some of those students graduate, and they become a part of the early, right. So in three years, some of our science students and they enter into medical programs where they can get like a work on their master's degree, often right through Morehouse School of Medicine. So you know, we work with those students. Then I've got students who come in, and they're very advanced in languages. They have an interest in doing anthropological research. One of my students currently is fluent in French, but she also is working on Arabic. And so she takes advanced courses in Arabic at Georgia State through a program called the arch that allows students to take classes at schools in Atlanta. So beyond even the AUC to work on those kinds of academic goals, so I mean, it's a very diverse group of students who have very diverse interests. Interestingly enough, some of my most interesting students are actually in international studies, that is a really interesting route that some students take because they're interested in medical school. But for those students, study abroad, is a very important part of what it means to be an educated person. And because International Studies requires at least two

study abroad trips, then those students route themselves in international studies. One of them now she'll be graduating this year, she applied for the Fulbright, so that during her full pride year, she can use that time to prepare for the MCAT so that she can then go to medical school. So in some ways, the fellowship becomes like a gap year experience. There are lots of students in the Honors Program who are humanities majors, who are pre med, there are at least two that I can think of right now or English, pre med. So my job is to work with them, and to help them realize whatever their highest potential is. So what we have then is this Habits of Mind program. So all students are in the program, unlike maybe your high schools where an honors program really is about taking classes that are designed to challenge you and to be more rigorous. Our program really only requires two classes beyond the first year. So there are two electives that students have to take. The primary work of being in the Honors Program is this Habits of Mind points program that I've described here. So the habits of mine program is described this way. The character of notably engaged intellectuals reveals a capacity for introspection and curiosity. Honors requires students to make evident the quality of their inner lives which are writing about, through an engagement with activities that sets in relief, this inner world. Our badging program is designed to assist you in making independent choices beyond the classroom that showcase seriousness of intellectual purpose, every student must make satisfactory progress in order to remain in the Honors honors program. So this is what it looks like to make progress. These are the kinds of things that students are encouraged to participate in. So beyond the classes, each class as you'll see on my screen is the far right. Students in order to make satisfactory progress, if you are a first year student, you have to earn 50 points. If you're a sophomore, 40 juniors or 30 seniors 20 points, what you see then on my left, are the the things that you are expected to do. Spelman is not a university, it's a college. So that means that there are no advanced degrees that are offered. And so that also means that we don't have graduate students in our community. So without those graduate students, undergraduates don't necessarily have the benefit of seeing what it might look like to pursue intellectual activities because of your own curiosity and interest. As the director of honors, I see it as my job then sort of serve as that graduate student would if you were at a university. So you could see that there are people who live out their curiosity without there being a grade attached to it or without an assignment. So what does it look like to live out one's curiosity? You know, Cornel West describes himself as a blues man in the world of ideas and a jazz man and the life of the mind. So a part of what we want to do is to sort of show you a trip around what that world looks like as an intellectually curious person. So what will happen, you know, is that department will host academics. So scholars will offer talks on their research. And so when they come if students attend those talks, you have to show evidence of your attendance, sometimes what and I'll show you an example. Students will take pictures of themselves at these academic lectures. So you attend academic lectures. You saw the photograph early or early on the very first slide of students attending the conference and we went to the museum. So attending disciplinary conferences, fellowship and foundation workshops. So I've managed prestigious international fellowships. So that means the big ones, the Rhodes the Marshall, Fulbright loose Schwartzman. Just going and learning about what those fellowships are, that can earn you points, learning about study abroad, going to activities about the from the library, cultural events, you saw me taking them to a museum on campus, we have a museum. So attending exhibitions at W, which is the foundation of course at Spelman African Diaspora in the world. Going that is a course that requires students to go to the museum, you can double count activities. But what you see presented before you are all the kinds of things that college professors expect undergraduates to be engaged in as people who have freely chosen to come to college, there is an expectation that you are interested in the life of the mind. What we find, though, is that many times students really kind of come to college with old habits. So what we do in the Honors Program is we underscore the importance of your participation in these activities and these events. So, right, we chart that pretty attentively in the Honors Program. So this is Annika Annika was the high point getter. From her freshman year, she's a sophomore now. And she actually again, she was a first year student, she was required to get 50 points. But as you see on her Pinterest board there, she says, so far, I have 100. I like to use Anya as an example, because it is possible to earn 50 points, she doubled that making progress towards the point earns you a jacket and the honors program. So there are all these things that you can earn, to sort of underscore the importance of what it means for these activities, meaning for us in the community, and to also showcase you as a member of that community. And being showcasing yourself in such a way is important. Because students who are not admitted as first year students into the program, and they want to be a part of our program, there's one other shot. It's the rising sophomore application. And in order to apply, those students need to get a letter of recommendation from a member of the Honors Program. As we like to stress. Students need to learn how to engage in intellectual community. And not use sort of a context for

stress, strong arming people, right? To make community so that you can actually get letters and talk about yourself as an intellectual and have people observe your work. It gives students who are in the program practice and writing good letters. So we have workshops on what good academic letters look like. So a part of what we do in our program is professionalizing. Right. So when the pandemic struck, it was important for our community, to underscore the fact that we remain the community and to shift our work. So we have a program that we call exploring intellectual community. So generally what happens is someone sends me an email complaining about one thing or another. And that usually leads to us deciding that we should bring more people into the conversation. So those sessions become exploring intellectual community sessions. So we have a space and Giles, at on campus. And that space is where we explore intellectual community. One of the things that we wanted we had planned was to have this screening of this Mati jokes atlantics. And Mattie job was, she won this important international film prize and she was the first woman of color ever to win it. And so our students screened them. film, they organize the screening, they organized it with a dw, because there are these writers circle opportunities that all students in a dw need to participate in. So there's opportunities for leadership that is also important for you when you prepare for prestigious international fellowships is that you need to be able to document the impact of your leadership. So we still have this activity. I even think we had it on that day on April 2. And you know, there were over 50 students that participated. And so we were able to, you know, for those students, they got to experience presenting. So the point is, there's a space for you for intellectual creativity, for leadership development and cultivation. For for, for me, this can be I mean, as as much as this is that we're in revolutionary territory. There's also lots of opportunity to sort of reimagine how our work can look. So we're spending a lot of time right now in the Honors Program, kind of taking advantage of that. Every class reads over the summer, the fire, the fire is upon us, is actually a work. It's a monograph by a political scientist. I don't remember where he is, the book is published by Princeton, he's not at Princeton. But the book is about Buckley and James Baldwin and their debate. So we read that over the summer, and because I think it's close to 800 pages, we only chose one book, oftentimes we do for one, that's a classic one that's entered, like an interdisciplinary texts, a work of poetry. And a fourth. That is usually that's generally sort of like a community peak. So this time, we did one book, and that's the current first year class there, that you see there. Um, as I said, you know, for me, I see this as an opportunity to really think about what students need. And so I became really interested in, you know, skill development, and thinking about the kinds of programming that we could create that would enhance student's skills. So one of the programs that we created was with super producer Floyd Floyd is a graduate of both Morehouse and Georgia Tech. And he came and he said he did some work with NPR.

And so he did a podcasting workshop and actually, that has continued. The people who founded the Spelman College official student podcast are members of both social justice program and the honors program. And so they're his Floyd's work with them has been important for their professionalizing as well as the sort of the sound of the podcast. So students who did this of course, their work, they were able to get points, as well as to develop their skills. The photograph that you see the larger photograph, there is a photograph that a Floyd for the Deborah Roberts exhibit inside of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. What another thing that became really important for me, as the Honors Program Director is to extend the advising at Spelman to include professional development. So yeah, no one should graduate from Spelman without a job without work. And so I've been working on these partnerships with institutional advancement. And that led to two relationships. The one is with carrier, and they are sort of in the H vac business. But the point is that in any industry, there's room for anyone who's a graduate of the liberal arts. So we have a five year deal with them. And we have student ambassadors, who receive a stipend. And then we have students who are part of a leadership training program that comes with a $5,000 scholarship and they get it in two parts. There. ambassadors get $1,000 in two parts, the elevates participants get $5,000 in two parts. And then those students who are in elevates they can interview for a chance to be a part of a summer internship program. On the right, on my right, at least there is a flyer for Bessemer trust Bessemer trust is sort of like a, like a boutique financial services industry, they literally only work with clients with who have a minimum of $10 million in assets. And so they did a series of presentations on their work. And they sponsored a contest for a $5,000 scholarship for five students. And, and then they made a donation to our program. So the points program was used to inspire students participation in those opportunities. So and again, and so that's going to continue, at least the carrier work will continue for the next few year for next five years, or four, I guess after this, and Bessemer trust was a was one time. But I'm also now working with delta. So the idea is that we work with the honors program, I view the honors program as an incubator for liberal arts innovation. So things that we do in the Honors Program, we learn things from what works with students, would help students, and then I have a partnership with students success. And the idea is to take the insights that we gain and share them with the larger community. So that's all I wanted to sort of say. So let me see what you're asking here.

So does your major and the intended honors program have to correlate? For example, could I major in health sciences with Honors in biology, it doesn't matter to the Honors Program, what you major in, I will say, honestly, that I'm honored that science students don't make the best students for the program. And it's not because I don't like them. It's generally because they become so obsessed about their classes, that they don't make good participants in intellectual community. So it's really hard to get them engaged. Now, what certainly got them engaged was that the Bessemer trust, they participated in all the Bessemer trust activities, because there was an opportunity to win that scholarship. So one of the things that seemed, you know, they they seem to get involved and find the time when there was encouragement, you know, a financial incentive to participate. But what I find is that they're, they're not necessarily involved. And that's unfortunate, because our program is interdisciplinary. How many incoming students are admitted, generally, we have a class of about 50, between 55 and 60 students per year, we have, our entire program has about 250 students. And my goal is to keep all of them. You want people to like your program, which is why, you know, we have that exploring intellectual community forum, as I said, because they're always complaining about something or another. And, but you want to address the that, and see how we can make a community that we all can value. So one of the things that came out of exploring intellectual community, is this program called wisdom honors grace. So the Honors Program is in community with the wisdom Center, which is run by Dean gudri, who's the Dean of the chapel, and students success and the bahner office. And so during the pandemic, no one is going to be put out of the honors program. So, you know, like with the points program that like that, for me is like the most important thing that students engage beyond the classroom. And so sometimes what that means is that you have to have the help of other members in the program. But I also think that if students are struggling with their grades, then what that means is we have to figure out how to intervene, but no real community puts people out because they struggle. So what we've done is, it used to be that if your grades slip below 3.2 then you receive The letter from the Honors Program and you were on probation or you could be expelled from the program. If you didn't respond. Now we send encouragement letters. And we invite the students to a meeting to discuss the success plan to figure out what we knew to do we need to do to keep you on track. So, but yeah, so generally, about 55 or 60 students commit, you know, because some people are admitted, and then they go other places. So ultimately, we end up with between 55 and 60. Is it true, we have to live in LLC one, that is true. So it's a living learning community, your first year, people want to live there, because there's air.

There's air conditioning in that dorm. And interestingly enough, I mean, I've been the Honors Program Director now for three years. And my predecessor was trying One of them was trying to get a two year on campus Living Learning commitment. And I did not want to, I didn't want to do that. But I respected her. So I figure if she wanted it, then it had to be something to it, right? To my surprise, those students really liked living there. And I had, like I said, I share a lot of students with the social justice program. And they've got this really nice new dorm, I think there's air there, too. And what I learned is that the students preferred living in LLC one, and I think it's because during your first year, generally students are taking the same classes. So you would think that because you have social justice in common, but they say that because their projects are all so different. They have a hard time sort of connecting. Whereas with honors, they had the honors class together, they had a dw together, and the ginette core fyp preparing for the first year writing portfolio. So yeah, so that's true. Um, if accepted to the Honors Program, are we bound to be in it? Well, I mean, you know, no, I mean, you can be in the program, what used to happen. So we also have a thesis and a capstone. And like I said, You want people to graduate from your program, you want them to like the program. And when I inherited the program, what would happen is, I had students who would be told no, if they wanted to, say, write their thesis in their minor area of study, as opposed to their major. Well, we change that once I became the director. And we have also like, expanded so that now you can do a capstone project, because you do what you want people to want to be in the program. So you know, right? I mean, the point is to figure out how you can grow and adapt, because it might be that there's some problem. And in that case, that was a problem with how the thesis was being imagined. How many points are required for a jacket, in the first year 25, you just have to make progress towards it. So in the first year, you have to have 50 total. And so if you make if you have 25. By December, then you get a jacket. When is the deadline to submit the Honors Program application? Oh, no, that's a question for our wonderful staff. Because for my understanding, I mean, like the way it used to be, it was rolling, right? It was a rolling application submission. Um, you know, how many spaces are available in the program? Like, generally no more than 60 it's very competitive. You should know this. I think that people take for granted. You know, just the way that blackness is read in the dominant culture. And, you know, students at Spelman, I say this to them, they're always very proud to say that we're the number one HBCU. Okay, yeah, that's something to be proud of. But to me, the impressive number is that 56 or whatever that is, you know, the one that is of all liberal arts schools, this HBCU is in the top 100 schools. What that means is that I see some of the best black women applicants in the world, not in the United States, in the world, in the world. And they apply because it's Spelman. So it is a it's a it's a very serious accomplishment to be admitted into Spelman and it is a serious accomplishment to be admitted into the Honors Program. Because of how competitive it is, and really, the emphasis, from my point of view and for our committee than the charge that they are given, is to study the writing. Part of what we're reading for is your ability to excel. In an honors level composition course, there's only one at Spelman, you, you only take one composition course not in two parts one, and either in the fall of the spring, generally of the first year. So we're looking for that. And we're also reading it closely. So to know that students can think well, and, and that they care about their intellectual lives, not about their grades, about their intellectual lives. So that's important.

You know, okay, so someone asked me if you could live in Abbey in the program? No, you have to live in LLC one. Is it possible to graduate with honors? Or take honors courses without being in the Honors Program? Yes. But you will not. So you can graduate with honors? Yes. And you can take honors courses? Yes. If you graduate from the EPA Waddell gifi Honors Program. You're distinguished because you graduate first. So there'll be listed first in the program, the graduate the commencement booklet. And you know, and then of course, like, generally, the top of the class is usually in the Honors Program. She's first in the book, and then they have all the Latin you can see, you know, I have all the Latin honors. So then after the jury crosses the stage from fly, they'll bothy, then the Bachelor of Arts recipients come forward. And yes, they have Latin honors, yes, they can they have may have taken honors classes, that sort of thing. What political science majors make a good fit for the program, major doesn't matter. You know, the most important thing is that, you know, all students understand that you are coming to a liberal arts school. And that is your, that's the most important sort of strong suit for you in even advocating for yourself, is that you will be introduced to all of the methods of the liberal arts, that's what the gen ed core is. So it's important to really understand the benefits of that, because you know, you're at a college, it is a college, we can't make juris doctorate. Graduates, because we don't give law school degrees at a college, you can't get a master's degree, you're not a specialist at the, at the college level. So it's important for students to understand that that's actually why I wanted to work more with career planning, because I needed students to sort of understand how the world articulates liberal arts. And so yeah, so make it really doesn't matter. Even like I was saying about medical school, you know, you don't have to be a science major to go to medical school. You know, and I've got several students in my program whose parents sent them to Spelman because they did not want any more of the science people who could not think, right, that's the emphasis of liberal arts school. Thank you. How does membership in the Honors Program benefit students? It benefits students in lots of ways. One is that I say this to students in my first year class. Now this is and this is true when I taught even before I even taught Honors Program students. I'm a very demanding professor. And as I explained to students, when I am spending time with you, it's my real time, time away from people I love and like, my work interests. Whatever it is, that's meaningful to me, personally, I'm giving it to you. And so I expect students work to honor that seriousness and that focus, but the good thing about people who are similarly demanding is that when you see me later, you are prepared, because there are people who are in my profession who are very serious about this life of the mind stuff. And, and so my philosophy is that when you challenge them, they will rise. And so that is what I expect. So when you have someone like that, who is driving expectations for you, it means you rise. So that's one benefit. The other is the sort of the intense advising that guides you towards possibilities that are either on campus or beyond campus that can help you articulate your your professional goals, your personal goals. Also, there are these unique scholarship opportunities, as I mentioned with Bessemer, trust, and carrier. There is the Oh, the one that I mean, even before that, like the students like the most is that honors program students register first, even before graduating seniors. So that's one of the chief benefits.

A lot of opportunities come to Honors Program students, because people who are in that program, it generally even with the grace of the pandemic, so the 3.2 is the sort of, you know, okay, like, we need to be concerned. But generally students though, they've got much higher GPAs than that. So usually, people will have a 3.2 is because they might have had, you know, they were in the wrong major in the beginning, and they sort of are recovering from something like that. But generally, because students in honors programs are qualified for internships, and scholarships, people often turn to the Honors Program, looking for students to fund or student opportunities. So there's that. The other thing is, I would say, for the intellectual community, do you personally think that a comparative Women's Studies major would benefit from this program a lot, and in what ways? And I said, like, you know, majors don't matter. But the person who did that, that exploring intellectual community film she's a, she's a comparative Women's Studies major. I've got one now who's working on a Master's of social work at Columbia, so we've got all kinds of you know, program students from all kinds of majors and certainly Women's Studies is among them. When you submit your application from Antone find out if you are admitted. Usually, like our it's it's rolling, you know, right along. I haven't started assessing yet. Once I do, and the committee does, we have a process and then the office our office starts notifying sending out notices notices. Shortly after that.