The Director's Corner
January 13, 2025
Happy January to the Auburn Honors community, and welcome back to our beautiful campus.
January of course is the time of resolutions, I have made a slew of resolutions for myself, but I also have made some resolutions for the Honors College about which I am excited, optimistic, and - most of all - deeply committed.
Six months ago I moved to Auburn and began my dream job of leading this college. Most of my energies for those months have been focused on learning about this impressive university and its even more impressive Honors college - its history and structure, its strengths, its possibilities, its amazing students. Even as the project of learning always continues, the time for more active planning and development has arrived. The College’s staff and I have been researching and brainstorming possibilities for the future of our curriculum and programming, and we shift this month to a semester-long process of articulating our strategic plan for the College’s next decade.
The center of any institution’s plan should be a clear understanding of why that institution exists - what it is for. Six months of exploration and study have made me aware of many functions of the College, but they also have brought me back to an answer I gave when I was asked, in my interview for this position, what honors education ultimately is for. My answer was: belonging and opportunity. Auburn’s Honors College exists, first, to create deeper possibilities for our students to be part of a community within the larger university, and second, to give our students greater opportunities for them to flourish in their lives. These raisons d’être arguably apply to many units within the university, but what binds the people and activities of Auburn Honors together is a commitment to a more robust, dynamic education that cuts across disciplines even as it clarifies how those disciplines interact to sharpen our focus on the world, inspiring creative solutions to what would seem otherwise to be insurmountable challenges. While all of Auburn’s academic programs prepare their students to succeed in their chosen professions, Auburn Honors educates its students to be thought-leaders of those professions, using the more expansive vision and intensive understanding that they have acquired to translate the inner workings of their fields and practices to wider audiences, forging ties with the leaders of other fields to address challenges jointly and build a better world. That is why we are here.
Over the coming months I look forward to telling you more about what we envision for the college’s future - both the short-term future of the year and the more distant horizon of the next decade. Until the newsletter’s next issue, I wish our students engrossing classes, purpose-filled days, deepened friendships, and ever-sharpened, ever expanded minds.
Dr. Laura Stevens
Director, Honors College
Professor of English
