Boone Honors Program
A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR
It is a particularly exciting time to be a member of the Boone Honors Program at Ferrum College. Beginning in Fall 2011, all new honors students live together in Roberts Hall at the center of campus, adjacent to Stanley Library and classroom buildings. In addition receiving scholarship at the top tier of Ferrum's system, every honors student is eligible for additional scholarship of up to $3,000 for a study abroad experience. During our May term 2012, five honors students will take advantage of this benefit, traveling with an International Religions class to Salzburg, Austria; with an environmental science class to Belize; and with a Spanish class to Honduras. The travel scholarship may also be used for semester-long study abroad. Beginning in Fall 2012, a study abroad experience will be required of every student in the program. Honors students have won scholarships to study in Oxford and London and have also traveled to China and South Africa.
In addition, honors students enjoy priority registration privileges each semester.
The Boone Honors Program includes both curricular and co-curricular components. Academically, honors students are on a different path from the first semester for meeting Liberal Arts Core requirements. Whereas most first-semester students enroll in a Gateway class, honors students are grouped together in the Cornerstone Seminar in Leadership with Dr. Ed Hally of the political science faculty. Honors students take five interdisciplinary honors seminars such as a relatively new course in the art, music, culture, history, and political unrest of the 1960s. All of these seminar satisfy some requirement in the Liberal Arts Core. for part of their general education requirements at Ferrum. Additionally, students have opportunities to work closely with faculty in honors-enriched courses in their major or minor. Enrichment projects are imaginative and substantive: a Russian major creates a Russian/English glossary of terms useful in diplomatic relations; an English major and journalism student designs a newspaper that might have been published in Shakespeare's time; an art major illustrates her own children's book; a biology major taking a Murals e-term class works with her classmates to produce a mural illustrating Virginia Social Studies Standards of Learning concepts for a local elementary school.
The program also features distinctive cultural and social excursions designed to build friendships with faculty and other honors students and to broaden students’ horizons culturally. Excursion include visits to local museums; performances of touring Broadway musicals at the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre; concerts and operatic performances; lectures and presentations by special guests at nearby colleges and universities; dinners at various local restaurants, and travel to regional sites of historic interest, such as Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. In Fall 2011, we visited the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke to see a special exhibit of depression-era photographs, as well as the historic home of Mrs. Ibby Greer (a Ferrum trustee) in Rocky Mount, Va. As a special pre-Christmas treat and exam break, we were accompanied by the college's First Couple, President Jennifer Braaten and the Rev. Conrad Braaten, to the Southwest Virginia Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker. You can see photos of our recent excursions and activities on the page of our Facebook group, Boone Honors Program at Ferrum College.
For more information about the Boone Honors Program, feel free to call me at 540-365-4334 or send an e-mail lwhited@ferrum.edu.
Sincerely,
Lana A. Whited, Ph.D.
Director of the Boone Honors Program