Serving the campus of the University of Alabama since 1894

The Crimson White


Serving the campus of the University of Alabama since 1894

The Crimson White

Serving the campus of the University of Alabama since 1894

The Crimson White

Honors College discusses ways to increase student involvement

Members of the UA Honors College met Wednesday evening in Nott Hall to discuss ideas that might encourage more student involvement in the college.

Anna Foley, a Freshman Experience intern and member of the Honors College advisory board, said the Honors College is creating a structure for student involvement and governance. Foley said the purpose of the new structure is to bring together all the activities that already occur in the college and to create a formal way for students to become involved in the Honors College.

In addition, Foley said every activity that occurs within the Honors College will fall under four main areas: scholarship, research, civic engagement and cultural experience.

Foley said the Honors College is looking for students within the college who would like to become more involved in the activities taking place in the college, and the college has created new positions that will help more structure for the activities already taking place.

The new positions being created fall under two categories — elected and selected positions, Foley said. The elected positions will fall under president, vice president, secretary and treasurer. The president and vice president will serve as the face of the Honors College Assembly and help to recruit freshmen. The selected positions are directors who will oversee committees. Students may apply to be director of scholarship, research, civic engagement, cultural experiences, student life and arts awareness.

Foley said the students applying for an elected or director position should ensure they have plenty of spare time and that these positions should be their main priority.

“These are huge time commitments,” Foley said.

Foley also pointed out that the new elected positions will not be another SGA. The new positions are intended to add structure to programs in the Honors College, Foley said.

“They are extremely academic,” Foley said.

Jamie Lyons, president of the Honors Program Student Association who also writes for The Crimson White, said students can create and submit their own ideas for committees through committee proposal forms. The committees will allow for students to obtain a leadership role within the college with less of a time commitment than the elected and directors’ positions.

Lyons said students on these committees will have the chance to work on small or short-term projects.

Foley said some students have already come up with ideas for committees. Some of the ideas that will take effect next year include interest groups such as a yoga class and intramural sports teams. However, Foley said the Honors College always welcomes more ideas.

“We need ideas–anything and everything that y’all want to do,” Foley said.

Foley said she wanted to stress that the idea for the new structure was created by the advisory board, which has been a part of the Honors College for about two years. In addition, Foley said she wanted to give credit to the 12 members of the advisory board for their ideas.

The Honors College has approximately 4,000 students and is one of the largest colleges on campus, which was a main reason the advisory board wanted to add the structure, Foley added.

“It only makes sense that we would have some way to further their learning experiences with these activities,” Foley said.

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