For the past several years, Oakland University Honors College (HC) has asserted itself as a key component of OU’s secondary education experience. A brief reminder of the past three years serves as clear evidence of this claim. In 2019, the HC welcomed a new freshman course with 663 students and two-thirds of students with a grade point average (GPA) over 3.9.
In 2020 the HC more than 2,000 students enrolled with an academic spread of almost 50 academic programs. The last two academic years set the course for the groundbreaking graduation class in 2021.
Despite the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent turbulence, the HC graduating class in 2021 did not let external influences stand on the way to a degree.
This year’s HC final class 2021, as first reported by Oakland University News, featured 164 graduates – the most ever for an HC senior year. In addition to this record, 83 of these students were Presidential Scholars. This title requires a GPA of over 3.9 and a strenuous amount of community service that underscores the student’s commitment to both achieving academic excellence at the OU and improving their communities.
An important part of HC is that Honors College Councilwho advises the HC, manages thesis proposals and oversees the events and programs.
OU Political Science Professor Matthew Fails was a member of that council and offered his unique perspective on this year’s senior year.
“I think Honors College is a real pride for the university,” said Fails. “It offers real, tangible benefits to Honors College graduates. In this respect, it is thanks to the students that OU has been able to win over the last 5-10 years. We have more and more students who meet the academic standards of the HC and who remain enrolled at Honors College and graduate there. ”
Despite Oakland University largely closed personal learning for the 2020 academic year, the graduate classes of both the HC and the broader university decided to invest in their future and invest in work. Fails was especially proud to say that the students he and other faculty counselors mentored over the past year were especially proud.
“It was a special experience between [my experiences as a professor] with the entire senior class and my role as a thesis mentor at Honors College. I had two mentoring students this winter, both of whom were doing theses under my supervision, ”said Fails. “To be completely honest, I missed not being able to sit in my office together [with mentored students], or sit down at a table in a conference room and talk about your projects. “
The amount of work and commitment to making the transition to online learning, especially for graduates with high-level courses that require teacher interaction, was something that Fails reconsidered. The strict academic standards of the HC, combined with the external problems, created a scenario that students and lecturers worked closely together to solve.
“Even though we weren’t there physically, I found that this was part of the mentoring process for a graduation project [during the pandemic] went better than I thought. I think we have been able to replicate the nature of personal attention, problem solving, and data collection [from pre-pandemic]although I don’t think many have preferred to graduate from university as so much has been done virtually. ”
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/honoring-the-honors-colleges-record-breaking-2021-graduating-class-the-oakland-post/
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