University of Mississippi - Ole Miss Yearbook (Oxford, MS)

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:ademics ' According to many sources, the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College (SMBHC) is taking huge strides towards becoming one of the best programs of its kind in the nation. The SMBHC just reached its goal of i ,000 students in the fall of 10 1 2. We ' ve reached our maximum growth |jotential...so, from here on out, the quality of students will only improve, says sophomore honors senator Zack Newton. In 20 11 , the Reader ' s Digest ranked the SMBHC within the top three honors colleges in the nation. Another review ranked the Honors College at the No. 9 public program in the country and first in the impact the Honors College has on the culture of its associated university. 1 am honored and flabbergasted that we ' re top three in the nation • and also filled with a sense of urgency to honor that spot, says sophomore Honors College senator Sierra Mannie. We look al Ihc triumph of our students as our awards. QUOTE DOUGLASS SULLIVAN-GONZALEZ Dean Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez, lovingly referred to by honors students as DSG , says that the mission of the Honors College is to create a living, working environment where our students shoot to become citizen scholars, where they are fired by the life of the mind, that they have a real solid commitment to the public good, and a drive to find solutions. At the end of the day, DSG and the rest of the SMBHC staff don ' t worry too much about the numbers that Reader ' s Digest spits out each year. They care about the quality of education provided and the impact that education has on their students. We have an incredibly gifted faculty with the time and resources to help assist us with our goals. Mannie agrees. We look at the triumph of our students as our awards, says DSG. If a student gets into Harvard or MIT or Berkeley... .or they get into the med school of their choice.. .or they get the job they ' re competing for as engineers - that ' s basically how we pin awards on our chest. Not only does the SMBHC recognize accomplishments after graduation, but they support higher learning experiences throughout the student ' s tenure with trips and projects including freshman ventures, sophomore service, junior quest and the senior thesis project, along with opportunities for funds for more exploratory research and study abroad. One of the Honors College ' s biggest accomplishments in the last calendar year was implementing the World Cup Goal, which, Gonzalez says, has an aim of transforming ordinary courses into lived honors experiences looking towards the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. We ' ve got students involved in courses already that are examining the Cup from various angles - sociology, economics, history, anthropology, says Dean Gonzalez. annmo an Looking to the future, the Honors College is pi; expansion of their current building, Now that we have a great student base, giving us a facility to thrive in will be really exciting, says Newton. PHOTOS TAYLOR DAVENPORT STORY BRADLEY BOLEWARE 22

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PHOTOS PHILLIP WALLER 24 J