Directors’ Reports

From the Director
From the Associate Director

From the Director:
Building Financial Support for Honors

During my time as Director of the University Honors Program, one of my goals has been to increase financial support for students. As an economist, I know that financial support can signal underlying values. For the Honors Program, we want financial support to reflect our commitment to academic enrichment, our civic engagement, and our dedication to going above and beyond in research and performance work. I am very pleased that in the 2006-2007 academic year we were able, with the support of the Provost, to give each student who completed his or her thesis a $250 “undergraduate research award.” We will be able to continue this program again in 2007-2008.

The Fall 2007 semester was my last in the position of Honors Director, and I wanted to demonstrate to students and the university community how strongly I believe in the program. Therefore, I decided to offer a “matching gift” for every donation to the UNC Honors Scholarships Endowment. That means I have matched donations during the year, dollar for dollar, up to a total amount of $10,000. My goal was to build an endowment that will yield enough interest to generate scholarships in Honors for many years to come. The UNC Foundation is still totaling donations made at the end of 2007, and details on the endowment status will be in the next edition of the Honors Report.

Here’s hoping 2007-2008 continues to be a stellar year in the University Honors Program!

Marie Livingston (marie.livingston@unco.edu)
Director of the Honors Program

[Back to Top]

From the Associate Director:
Denver or Bust!

In the Fall Semester, the UNC Honors Program and Student Honors Council officers took part in the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) Conference in Denver.

As some of you may recall, UNC Honors had the distinct pleasure of hosting the Western Regional Honors Conference in Denver in Spring 2006. (See the related story in the Spring/Summer 2006 edition of the Honors Report.) Centrally located in Downtown Denver at the Brown Palace, we had an amazing turnout, and folks were appreciative of both the quality of the conference and the nature and location of the gathering in our beautiful Western state.

Nationally, NCHC chose to highlight Denver and our region by holding the national conference at the Hyatt Regency Convention Center in late October and early November. As we did for the regional conference, UNC Honors again partnered with CU Honors to help ensure that a distinctive regional quality would be evident to conference participants. Patty Limerick from CU Boulder was the opening plenary speaker for the conference. Tom Noel, CU Denver and “Dr. Colorado” professor of history, helped lead ghost tours organized in coordination with UNC. Our honors alumna, Katie Goulet, organized the NCHC Student Party and Poetry Slam. Finally, UNC and CU students helped with student check-in at the conference.

As a member of the national conference planning committee, I found it particularly exciting to be part of the event and was pleased with the opportunities it gave our UNC Student Honors Council officers to take part in conference sessions. Historically, our Honors Program has only been able to fund one to three student officers to attend the national conference each year, but since this gathering was in our own backyard, we were able to send the whole corps.

It was Denver or Bust for us! And we had a great time!

Debra K. Holman (debra.holman@unco.edu)
Honors Program Associate Director

[Back to Top]

* * *