Arete Honors Spring 2022

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FROM THE DEAN'S DESK

One of my favorite advertisements features a spokesman for Liberty Mutual who hopes to juice up his powers to reach more people by subjecting himself to a spider bite to become like the eponymous superhero. The next scene portrays him lying on a stretcher, his face swollen, asking, “Did it work?” One of the joys of working in the Honors College is being able to take some risks. For the very first time, we recently offered an early admission option for applicants for our Buchanan Fellowship. We chose three of just over 20 applicants and expect to try once again next year. It appears to be a success, but even if it hadn’t, it would have been a useful experiment. I always reassure students, particularly in the sciences, that their findings can be important, even when— sometimes especially when—they do not conform to their original expectations. As we contemplate success, we are beginning to think about the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Honors program, which we will celebrate in 2023. We have some preliminary ideas, but we would also welcome any thoughts that you might have. In the meantime, we continue to read large numbers of Honors theses, each successful defense of which we celebrate by ringing the bells in the Honors tower. Although I have previously recounted how memorable this occasion is for some students, I was reminded anew of this when one of our students began crying as we did so. As she looked back on her collegiate career, which began at a community college, she told us that just six years ago, she had arrived in the state virtually penniless and with little hope, and that she was now making plans for graduate school.

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ARETÉ MAGAZINE | Spring 2022

Great responsibility

Another student who had been through similar trials and did not graduate, as planned, with an Honors degree nonetheless wrote to thank us for the part we had played in providing a scholarship to her and joyfully announcing that she was finally getting her degree. We typically measure our success by the number of students who enroll in Honors classes, by the numbers of those who graduate with Honors, and by how many win University, national, and international awards, and all these metrics have been positive in recent years. However, we continue to recognize that we have often positively influenced students whom we may have attracted to MTSU by our recruiting efforts, who only took a few classes in the Honors College, who worked with our Undergraduate Fellowship Office, who contributed to one of our publications, or who attended some of our Honors Lecture Series.

She had arrived in the state virtually penniless and with little hope and . . . was now making plans for graduate school. We hope that the stories of our students and our faculty and staff will continue to inspire our readers and those who continue to provide financial support for what will soon be a half-century endeavor.

John R. Vile

areté

noun (ahr-i-tey) the aggregate of qualities, as valor and virtue, making up good character


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