The Honors College Student Leadership Council hosted a social, specifically for honors college sophomores, to help better connect them to their community. This social event happened on Friday, Jan 31.
The Honors Student Leadership Council was created last year by Dean Ryan O’Neil and Assistant Dean Breezy Taggart. They sent an offer to all members of the Honors College, asking if they would like to be on a council, in hopes of hearing more voices from the Honors College Students. While the Dean and Assistant Dean organizes the Council, they are almost completely student-led.
The Honors Student Leadership Council is split into different sub-committees. Aurora Hanson, a member of the Honors Council, said “We are all sorts of different majors, all different grade levels. We all have multiple different involvements on campus.” Having different-minded Honors Students helps the Dean hear from many different views. This also helps, when the Council is organizing an event, deciding on an event that will be most beneficial to everyone. “Currently we are working on a couple different projects. We have one committee that’s working on making the courses that the honors college offers more accessible to the honor students, giving them a better idea of what we have. We have a committee that is in charge of organizing small events for students in the honors college. Then, we also have a committee working on a big event for the end of the semester.” said Hanson. Hanson is a part of the small event committee and helped organize Friday’s Sophomore Social.
The social is closed to honors students and focused specifically on sophomores. Hanson, when asked why the focus was on sophomores, said “We kind of noticed that sophomores have a little bit less community within the honors college. Freshman year, we all take the same two classes. There is a whole host of events specifically for freshmen. They really build that community and sophomore year we are kind of set free, so we wanted to create an event for sophomores so they can help keep that community going.” The event is not closed to sophomores, but they will be the main focus. The term ‘sophomore’ is applied loosely, and is rather if you consider yourself to be a second-year student at the university. The intent is to help the sophomores bond inside the Honors College and provide support to each other.
The Honors Student Leadership Council works to provide many small events for Honors College Students, including the Sophomore Social. Throughout the last two years, they have also contributed an Honors Student voice in campus decisions.
