John Martinson Honors Program

April 14, 2025

Newsletter link: https://mailchi.mp/b79dad3e0405/this-week-in-honors

The End is Near!

It’s so close you can taste it, but that doesn’t mean things are winding down by any means.  First and foremost: Hooray!  We did it!  John Martinson, he who giveth great opportunity, came and went, and I think we showed our best.  We're growing, we're excited, and we're ecstatic that we're closer than ever to the Honors program we envision for you.  Thank you to everyone who participated in or attended Shark Tank.  It was a great success, with many amazing pitches by our students.  Also, there were shark cookies, which still makes me giggle.

Life of the Mind continues with Dr. Andrew Ravanelli, an SIUE honors alumnus, speaking on "Navigating a Scientific Career in Industry" on Tuesday,  April 22nd at 6pm in Lovejoy Library’s Abbott Auditorium (LL 0044)  For all of you honors STEM folks, this is very good stuff. Dr. Ravanelli is the head of Cell and Molecular Biology R&D for BioMonitoring at MilliporeSigma in St. Louis, so if anyone knows how to take an honors STEM education and make it successful, it's him.  But don't take my word for it.  RSVP to attend a meet & greet at 2pm and network for insights face-to-face before the presentation.  Networking absolutely cannot be underestimated.

On Wednesday, April 23rd at 1pm, judge your honors professors for best pitch at "10 Books That Will Change Your Mind".  Listen as each prof presents their pitch and vote to choose the book that piqued your interest the most.  There will be attendance prizes and desserts, of course.

Finally, April 29th at 7pm, our own Dr. Evelyn Malinowski will present "Interdisciplinarity, Sound Studies, and Honors Learning".  In addition to being an interdisciplinarian and dedicated Virginia Woolf scholar, Dr. Malinowski is a DJ, musician, vinyl collector, and musical critic.  They have actively participated in underground and experimental music for over 25 years, from radio DJing, throwing raves, and running an independent, vinyl-only label, to contributing over 90 music reviews on European and North American platforms. As a scholar and DJ, they hope to open up new horizons for sound studies, music and literature, and aural philosophy.  They are currently working on a book on panorama, anxiety, and music culture.

• From the Director
• This Week in Honors
• Advising Updates
• Service Updates
• Honors Student Association
• Outside of Honors

From the Director

So, a big round of applause for everyone who helped set up and/or participated in John Martinson’s and Nancy Witt’s visit to SIUE last Wednesday. John and Nancy, by the end of their long day, let us know that have been impressed by the work we are all doing and heartened by the early steps we have taken to expand, improve, and augment the honors experience at SIUE. They were particularly laudatory toward the students who presented at the ‘Shark Tank’ Honors Course Pitch. To all presenters: you were impressive. Thoughtful, incisive, and polished. Any of the pitches could be turned into actual classes. Kudos! My hope is not only to get the two winners up next year, but to work with others, too, to try to incorporate more of your work into the honors course rotation. In an ideal world, we would find folks interested in working with you all and teaching them all (in one fashion or another).

I highlight the Shark Tank to try to shine light on the way that the John Martinson Honors Program is trying to maintain a culture where we not only support your learning but increase opportunities for you to take active, intentional roles in your education. We are trying to maintain and amplify an institutional culture of collaboration and support.

We live in a highly interconnected world. Our lives our intimately impacted by institutions and systems working on large scales—thousands or tens of thousands of people interlinked, sometimes spread across continents. These institutions are highly bureaucratized, with folks engaged in specialized tasks that are separated both horizontally and vertically. We often don’t know exactly what the person in the office (or building) next to us is actually doing; we don’t have access to the same density and breadth of information and data as the leaders at the top of these institutions have. Our situation is, from the perspective of deep human history, an outlier. For most of our existence, homo sapiens lived in groups of less than a hundred. So, our world is strange. Our lives are impacted by folks we don’t know, who we would not be able to recognize even if we did meet them. Taken together, our situation is fertile for conspiracy thinking. Decisions are being made all of the time that we are not party to that will nonetheless impact our lives. It is also true, though, that we are also making decisions all of the time that are invisible to some others and that will affect their lives. If there are conspiracies, we are part of them. “It’s comforting to imagine that conspiracies run our world. To think that there is a hidden order to things … [but] there’s no hidden order—but then again, of course there is. It’s all of us. We’re all insiders, managing an intricate web of relationships, deploying hundreds of unseen gestures and soft power plays …. It’s at once mundane, and yet no less chilling … because it leaves you questioning the very fabric of reality, wondering what you don’t know …. But perhaps there’s some comfort in that uncertainty. After all, qui bono? Who benefits? For all you know, it might be you” (John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows). Invisible to you, people may be not only making decisions that hurt you, but others may also be making decisions that help and support you. Koenig calls this amicy. Let’s acknowledge that “none of us knows the full picture of what is going on. All we know for sure is that some mysterious force is working behind the scenes to keep our communities intact and our relationships running—sometimes smoothly, sometimes not” (Koenig, DOS). What matters is that when you look out into the mystery of the machine that is SIUE, you should know that some folks are working for your benefit.

Right now, the JMHP is in the middle of a sequence of working meeting with the faculty who will be teaching honors courses next year. We are discussing the aim of the program and how to enhance participation and meaningful discussion of topics in the courses. In a few weeks, in other sessions, we will be working on how to set broad expectation of workload in terms of reading, writing, and assignments. Many of you have identified real problems and inconsistencies in the JMHP and we are making moves to respond and improve your honors experience. Will we get it ‘right’ after just one round of faculty training/onboarding? Probably not. But that is why this training is going to become standard—an annual requirement (in some form) for all faculty who want to teach in the JMHP. We will keep trying, getting feedback, reflecting on it, and iterating. An example of amicy.

Dr. Jessica Hutchins has been playing a central role in this process. She has carefully redesigned all her courses to develop ‘discussion labs’ that provide students opportunities to learn how to have conversations about important, controversial topics. This work involves the ‘fishbowl,’ in which the parts of discussion—speaking, listening, making connections to the text/s under discussion, larger themes, reflection and synthesis, and folks’ diverse experiences—are slowed down and ‘isolated,’ allowing participants time to practice the art of discussion. The work she is doing is important in helping us all recover the skills and dispositions necessary for success in a career, participation in public life, and joy and delight in living. She is leading several of the faculty onboarding sessions we are running. When you see her, thank her for her amicy—for her pedagogic leadership and for prioritizing concern for the whole student in the JMHP.

Finally, mark your calendars: next Tuesday, 22 April at 6pm, SIUE alumnus, Dr. Andrew Ravanelli, will be featured in the next Life of the Mind event. He will be talking about how to navigate and thrive between the poles of health science, research, and business. Dr. Ravanelli’s talk will be in Abbott Auditorium. Hope to see many of you there and hope you all have great weeks!

This Week in Honors

• Graduation Breakfast with John Martinson and the Chancellor on May 9th at 7:30 am.  RSVP here! Graduates may each bring two guests.
• Graduation Regalia- There will be a thing, medallion or otherwise, and it will be announced in the newsletter.  Keep your eye on future publications of This Week in Honors for details and instructions.
• Discord, baby!  Community is more than face-to-face, and we encourage everyone to join our Honors discord!  Meet and chat on a variety of subjects, get informed at a moment's notice, and contact us at almost any time.  (We sleep sometimes.)  Recommended for introverts, any folk that want to be informed of all the goings on in Honors, and folks who like memes.

•  Save the Date: Fly High workshops will prepare you for life-skills, not just classroom skills.  Employers want people who can get the most out of what they are taught and can communicate effectively what they know to other people.  It doesn't hurt to be ready for your classes, either. :D

Advising Reminders

• We have returned to our regularly scheduled Walk-In hours.  Drop-In Advising for quick questions and support with your advisor can be done in-person or virtually.
  • Ian In-Person Wednesdays 9:30-11:30
  • Carol & Meagan Digital Drop-In Wednesdays 1:30-4:30
  • Everyone In-Person Fridays 2:30-4:30

Service Updates

• Attention SENIORS! The deadline for service submissions for graduation is 18 April at 11:59 PM! Submit your hours here.
• April 26th: An opportunity through an Honors alumnus!  We're happy to share a service opportunity with Waigand Wheels, a community service organization in Kirkwood, MO. They are hosting an event called the Speedway Spectacular on Saturday, April 26th, and are asking for JMHP volunteers! Volunteer work they are asking for ranges from setting up and breaking down the event, helping guests park at the venue, helping operate various raffles, tending bar, and helping with the derby races. This is a great chance to get service hours for a great cause! If you are interested, please send an email to Hannah Sheahan at hannah667@gmail.com.

Honors Student Association

• UHAC Results: On Monday, HSAB elected freshman Aubri Thompson as our next UHAC Student Representative! She will serve as a joint member of HSA and the UHAC through spring 2027, so feel free to get to know her during this time. 
• Elections Friday: This Friday, we will have our last Community Meeting of the year, our Election. Come see various nominees speak on why they should be elected, participate in a Q&A, and cast your vote! All Honors Student Association members are eligible and encouraged to vote. 
  • The meeting will be held Friday, April 18^th beginning at 5 PM in the MUC International Room. 
  • If you are unable to attend Friday's meeting and would like to vote, an absentee ballot is provided for you at the following link: https://forms.gle/7YeahJNFmegkTd9U8
• Class Representatives: Applications are still open for class representative! We have a variety of positions open for all classes. This is a great opportunity for anyone looking to get more involved on campus through a leadership position. Applications close Friday, April 18^th at 11:59 PM.
  • Form: https://forms.gle/Vx2Mrd7Uv2MpvkAq7

Outside of Honors