Honors Program Alumni eNewsletter (Summer 2014)

Director’s Message

If you read your last Honors Alumni newsletter, you should be able to answer the following question: What do Jeopardy!, the Ford Mustang, Lucky Charms cereal, the plasma TV, and the UConn Honors Program have in common? If you answered, “They are all turning 50 this year,” you are correct! Although, it might be more appropriate to say, “What is they are all turning 50, Alex!” We have so much to be proud of at the UConn Honors Program, and we will be spending the 2014 – 2015 academic year celebrating our program, our alumni, our faculty and staff members who are the heart and soul of Honors, and our current students who remind us each day why we do the work we.

Here are some of our plans for our Golden Anniversary:

  • As part of Homecoming and Huskies Forever Weekend in October, we will invite our young alumni back to campus to connect with each other and with current Honors students. Stay tuned for more information and plans for this reunion weekend.
  • We’re bringing the Honors Program to you. Though we love Storrs, we’re planning to branch out to New York, Boston, and Washington D.C. during this academic year. We hope you’ll come out and meet us to talk about what you’ve been doing and also to hear about the great things happening in the Honors Program.
  • Our 2015 Honors Medals Ceremony – the commencement for the Honors Program – will be an expanded event this year, including an “Honors for a Day” experience for alumni to come back to campus and meet with faculty and students. You’ll be able to sit in on classes with our best Honors faculty members and get a feel for what Honors is like today. We’ll also talk about where we’ve been as a program and where we are going during our next 50 years. We’ll wrap up the experience by recognizing the 2015 Honors Scholars as they receive their Honors Medals. 2014 marked our largest graduating class to date with 342 students receiving their Honors degrees. As we mark the 50th anniversary of the Honors Program, we are hoping to recognize an even larger class of scholars.

If you have ideas or like to plan reunions, we’d love to hear from you! You can email ellen.mayo@uconn.edu at any time, and we will be in touch. I hope you’ll also check our website often for news about us and about our 50th anniversary plans. It’s a great time to celebrate a golden anniversary. This celebration will be even better with your support and presence. The Honors staff and I all hope to see you soon!

Best,

Jennifer Lease Butts, Ph.D.
Assistant Vice Provost, Enrichment Programs and Director, Honors Program

What’s New

Medals Ceremony honors students, alumni, and faculty
On Saturday, May 3, 2014, the Honors Program recognized a new graduating class of Honors Scholars at the annual Medals Ceremony. This year marked the largest class in the history of Honors, with 342 students officially completing the rigorous requirements of the program, including the Honors thesis/project. Read more.

A dolphin tail of two Huskies
The ocean is still a place filled with undiscovered mysteries, even among the most well-known creatures. One of those creatures is the dolphin. The general public may not realize there are more than 30 species of marine dolphins globally, but two women know it well. Honors alumni Kathleen Dudzinski Ph.D. ’89 (Honors-CLAS) and Heather Heenehan ’09 (Honors-CLAS) have made studying these lively mammals their life’s work. Read more.

Class Notes
Check out what your former classmates are doing in the Summer 2014 Class Notes!

In Other News

Portraits of Strength: Joseph Zinski ’10 (ENG)
Portraits of Strength: Mikey Chase ’13 (CANR)
Portraits of Strength: Sandra Bixler ’07 (CLAS)
Three UConn Students Win Prestigious National Scholarships
UConn Junior Awarded Prestigious Truman Scholarship
An Autonomous Quadcopter – Now There’s an IDEA!
Studying Wetlands as a Producer of Greenhouse Gases

Interested in Giving?

If you would like information about giving opportunities to the Honors Program, please contact Katrice Sponzo (UConn Foundation, Leadership Giving) at (860) 486-1565 or ksponzo@foundation.uconn.edu.

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