Syracuse University Honors Program
Syracuse University Honors Program
I’ve blogged about this before, and now the folks at Community Folk Arts Center are coming right up the hill to us to encourage participation. PLEASE take some time out to take part. Get a picture of yourself making or holding the bone you make and submit it with your online civic engagement hours form for approved civic credit.
On Thursday, October 18th, Honors Core Faculty member and chair of the Magazine Journalism Department, Melissa Chessher, hosted the inaugural “Honors Footnotes” event – a guided tour of Oakwood Cemetery, led by Sue Greenhagen, a member of the Historic Oakwood Cemetery Preservation Association, a local historian, and a retired librarian from Morrisville State College .Designed by one of America’s earliest landscape architects, Howard Daniels, Oakwood Cemetery opened its gates on November 3, 1859. The 160 acres of this outdoor museum feature a Gothic style mortuary chapel, 19th- and 20th-century architecture styles, including works by Horatio Nelson White and Archimedes Russell, and hundreds of 150-year-old trees, which showcased their fall colors. Sue Greenhagen (who, along with her sister, are known as “the cemetery chicks”) has spent years researching those buried in Oakwood. In addition to the general history and featured architects just mentioned, the tour highlighted a few of the more notable characters including an abolitionist, a robber baron, a Civil War commander, and several celebrated writers, artists, and philanthropists!
In a sentence: “Honors Footnotes” are small events hosted by Honors faculty or staff that encourage informal interaction around a variety of topics! Stay tuned for future opportunities!
What’s up with Honors and all the talk about this thing called “the commons”?
Find out here and at the Thursday, 11/8 talk with Jay Walljasper at 8pm in LSB 001 to find out more.
Dana Senderoff, an Honors senior enrolled in Prof. Thompson’s HNR 360 Presidental Election and the New Media, has a request for you! She writes, “The presidential election is coming very soon, and the winner of this election will determine the future of health care in America. It is very important that we all understand the changes in health care that will come about from the two candidates, but it seems as though not everyone is properly informed. The media is our main source of information, but it does not always provide trustworthy information. I am conducting a term project on the portrayal of the Affordable Care Act through new and social media. In addition to my research, I have created a survey to help gather information from SU students. Please take my survey, it will only take two minutes!”
Thanks for participating! You can access the survey at the link below:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K3W2GJ6
These past few days have been trying, even frightening as Hurricane Sandy has battered the east coast. As I write, my sister, a physician in Manhattan, is living without power and heat in her Greenwich Village apartment. She’s still a young person and can manage. But this morning I’m thinking about all those who require help, the elderly and children, and people with disabilities.
This puts me in mind of what I think it means to be involved with honors at SU. Our collective goal is to become larger than our singular interests. That’s what our approach to civic engagement is all about.
As the university returns to business as usual let’s hold together the life of the mind and our lives as citizens. And let’s keep our friends and neighbors in our thoughts.
Stephen Kuusisto
Director
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too can become great.” –Mark Twain