National Collegiate Honors Council

 

Date of this Version

2015

Document Type

Book Chapter

Citation

From: Housing Honors, edited by Linda Frost, Lisa W. Kay, and Rachael Poe. National Collegiate Honors Council Monograph Series (Lincoln, NE: 2015).

Comments

Copyright © 2015 by National Collegiate Honors Council.

Abstract

The story of where honors lives at Oklahoma State University is one of a series of twists and turns over the years and in many ways actually reenacts the proverbial rags to riches story.

Until 1988, honors space at Oklahoma State University (OSU) was limited to the office of the faculty member who had the title of Honors Director in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and received 0.25 FTE reassigned time for his honors duties. When one of the co-authors of this chapter was asked to become A&S Honors Director in 1988, he already had an administrative office on the A&S Dean’s office floor and one of his requests was that a new Honors Program Office be situated on that floor as well. He also requested 0.75 FTE reassigned time along with a part-time student assistant to keep the office open during regular business hours and make it accessible to current and prospective honors students. The answer to these requests—and to every other request he made before taking the job—was “yes,” and he thus learned an important lesson of honors administration: his list was too short. Over the years his constant advice to honors colleagues has been this refrain: “Always have a wish list!” The story of OSU’s current honors space, which consists of all of historic Old Central, is proof that this piece of advice sometimes pays big dividends.

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