Kristine Miller, Professor of English and Executive Director of the Honors Program, has recently edited a collection of essays, Building Honors Contracts: Insights and Oversights, as part of the National Collegiate Honors Council Monograph Series in October. The book addresses the problems with creating honors contracts, offering solutions so the process may transcend the transactional and demonstrating that honors contracts demand the same creative pedagogy that defines outstanding undergraduate coursework. Dr. Miller begins the collection with an introduction that argues that the word “contract” itself delimits more possibilities than it reveals. Eleven subsequent chapters rebut this assertion, demonstrating how contracts can enrich student experience with collaborative partnerships that take experiential learning beyond the walls of the classroom. When students put honors into practice, whether inside or outside the bounds of established coursework, they become lifelong learners equipped to shape their own personal and professional futures. The best honors contracts challenge students, faculty, staff, and administrators to follow their curiosity and to lead others toward collaborative discovery. In doing so, they accept the poet Horace’s challenge: Sapere aude—or dare to know, the Utah State University Honors Program’s motto.
Edited, introduced, and featuring work by Dr. Miller, this volume is a long-awaited contribution to honors pedagogical scholarship and a showcase of the creative flexibility that has distinguished USU Honors nationally. The full work will be available on Digital Commons on November 20th: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nchcmono/.
In addition to scholarship on Honors education, Dr. Miller has published extensively on twentieth- and twenty-first century literature and culture. Her work in this area, which has primarily focused on war, includes a monograph, British Literature of the Blitz: Fighting the People’s War (2009), and an edited collection, Transatlantic Literature and Culture after 9/11: The Wrong Side of Paradise (2014).
Mufti Nadimul Quamar Ahmed is a graduate student in his second year, pursuing a doctorate in sociology at USU. He recently helped survey Utahns to see if environmental concerns affect the decision to have children.
Utah State University President’s Office recently held receptions for this year’s round of inaugural lectures. Three recently promoted faculty in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences presented thoughtful reflections on their research and the even...
