Category: Students

Some of you undoubtedly have civic engagement hours from the 2013-2014 academic year that you still plan to log, but I want to share with everyone what you have done for communities around the world.

Honors students logged a total of 14,450 volunteer hours between August 26, 2013 and May 11, 2014. If you divide that into 8 hour work days, that’s a total of 1,801 days or  360 work weeks or 7.2 years.

Seniors, logged 3,550 hours this year and 12,200 hours over three years at SU (we don’t have stats for 2010). Juniors logged 4,715 hours, Sophomores 4,640 hours, and first year students jumped into community action logging 1,510 hours.

 

Students volunteered on the Syracuse Westside, on campus, in their home towns, during spring break and while studying abroad. Projects included staffing tables for a variety of organizations at dozens of different events, passing out water bottles at races, giving blood, reading with pre-schoolers, walking dogs, grooming horses, making music, making art, making puppets…….making the world a better place!

 

 

It’s not too late to log your hours from the past year. It’s not too early to begin to plan your next volunteer event.

In May and June, millions of public radio listeners around the country will hear the stories behind historic recordings, as told by students in the Honors course Inside the Words and Music.

These student scripts were produced for the Sound Beat radio program, which spotlights recordings in the SU Library’s Belfer Audio Archive—one of the largest sound archives in the country. Sound Beat produces daily 90-second episodes that are distributed to public radio stations nationwide.

Last fall, students in the course Inside the Words and Music, taught by writer/musician Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, worked with the Sound Beat staff to research a song of their choice—including seminal recordings by such artists as Bessie Smith, Blind Willie Johnson, Hank Williams, and the Weavers. The students then wrote scripts about the life and times of these recordings and the musicians who wrote/performed the songs.

Sound Beat producer Jim O’Connor selected scripts written by 12 students for the show: Jill Comoletti, Emily Procopio, Maggie Cregan, Hasmik Djoulakian, Meg Lane, Kelsey Francella, Jacqueline Attia, Dan Stack, Andrew Frasier, Alexis Lisser, Megala Sankrith, and Courtney Malloy. Starting May 12, the students’ episodes will air on public radio stations, and they will also be available on the Sound Beat website: www.soundbeat.org.

In the fall of 2014, students in Inside the Words and Music will once again explore the vast Belfer Audio Archive in search of the great stories behind great recordings.

Hi Honors Community,

Honors students Darcy Cherlin and Alison Joy will host a fundraiser event to aid Karen refugees in Syracuse and Thailand. The event will be held at Funk n’ Waffles on Saturday, April 5 at 8 p.m.

The following is quoted from their press release:

Guests are invited to bring articles of clothing to donate to the Karen refugee population in Syracuse. Each clothing item will discount the admission price by $1, with five articles of clothing allowing guests to enter for FREE.

The Karen are an ethnic group from Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), a nation that has been plagued by civil war since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1948. To escape rape, torture and forced labor, the Karen fled across Myanmar’s border to Thailand. Today, the Karen live in nine refugee camps on the border, jungles in Thailand and countries like Australia, Canada and the United States. Syracuse is currently home to approximately 700 Karen refugees.

Funds raised at the event will help provide medical accessibility to Karen refugees living in the jungles of Thailand.

Cherlin developed an interest in the Karen refugee community while tutoring Karen children in a Syracuse public school. Since then, she has conducted research identifying the challenges Karen face accessing health care in Syracuse, Australia and Thailand as part of her honors capstone.

Cherlin is a senior at Syracuse University studying Medical Anthropology. Joy is also a senior with majors in Television, Radio and Film and Italian. The two friends worked together in 2013 to organize an arts gala as part of Syracuse University’s Remembrance Week.

The fundraiser will also feature local music and comedy acts. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Jeff York will perform with Professor Zeke Leonard, and student comedy group Best Restaurant In Town will round out the night with plenty of laughs.

Funk For A Cause

Saturday, April 5 at 8 p.m. (Doors open at 7 p.m.)

$5 admission (or 5 pieces of clothing)

Funk n’ Waffles

727 S. Crouse Avenue

Syracuse, New York 13210

 

For more information, visit the Funk For A Cause Facebook page.

Hi Honors Community!

This year we are fortunate to have Professor William (Bill) J. Peace joining the Honors program as the Watson Distinguished Professor of Humanities. Bill Peace has been teaching Honors classes in bio-ethics and disability rights, and many of you are familiar with his class this term, “Body Art & Modification”.

Honors has the privilege of co-sponsoring this year’s Watson Symposium in the Humanities along with many other schools, colleges, and departments that have a special focus on human rights, bio-ethics, and healthcare.

As part of this initiative, next Wednesday, April 2 at 6:45 in Watson Theater, Bill will be holding an informal viewing of the ground-breaking film “Lives Worth Living”.

“Lives Worth Living” first premiered on PBS in 2011, and is the first television history of the Disability Rights Movement. From the film’s website: “Lives Worth Living is a window into a world inhabited by people with an unwavering determination to live their lives like everyone else, and a look back into a past when millions of Americans lived without access to schools, apartment buildings, and public transportation – a way of life unimaginable today.”

Bill will lead a discussion at the close of the film. You can catch the trailer below! We hope you can make it.