April 17, 2024

Recognizing Excellence in Honors

Katie Essing, pictured left, was honored with the Outstanding Faculty Award during the annual Honors College spring awards ceremony.  There were plenty of laughs to go around during the annual Honors College spring awards ceremony, as well as plenty of faculty, staff and students who were honored.  Multiple students pursuing the Honors Certificate were recognized for their outstanding achievements over the past year. The college also gave an award to an outstanding faculty member, Katie Essing, and an exceptional campus partner, Susan Hartnagel. The final honor of the evening was given to Alexandra Socarides, associate provost for academic programs, who…

April 4, 2024

Unbound: Reading Without Limits

Bill Kerwin, an associate professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Honors College, is one of four professors who teach the Honors “Unbound: Reading Without Limits” course. The class was developed in partnership with the Unbound Book Festival. The University of Missouri Honors College has a variety of important partnerships across campus and throughout the Columbia community. One of the more unique collaborations is with the Unbound Book Festival. A staple in Columbia since 2016, the Unbound Book Festival welcomes world-class authors to mid-Missouri to discuss their books, their work and their life. The goal of…

Feb. 28, 2024

Honors College Welcomes Inaugural Cohort of Tarkow Teaching Fellows

Interested in supporting future Tarkow Teaching Fellows? Contact Melia Douglass (mdouglass@missouri.edu) for more information! For 50-plus years, Ted Tarkow has shared his passion for philosophy, literature and art with thousands of University of Missouri students. Tarkow, a professor emeritus of classical studies, has held a variety of roles during his Mizzou tenure, including several within the Honors College. Currently an affiliate faculty member, Tarkow served as director of the Honors College for a handful of years and has been a regular professor in the Humanities Sequence. Ted Tarkow has made a lasting impression on thousands of…

Feb. 27, 2024

Overcoming Obstacles and Encouraging Others

Teaching has always come naturally to Reginald Rogers. An associate professor of chemical and biomedical engineering in the University of Missouri College of Engineering, Rogers has a shelf full of awards highlighting his teaching and mentoring abilities. Reginald Rogers woke up on June 18, 1999, and expected it to be a fairly uneventful day. Rogers was at home in Atlanta, Georgia, enjoying a well-deserved break after finishing his sophomore year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Late in the afternoon, Rogers hopped in his car for a quick trip to pick up his father. He never made it to…

Feb. 22, 2024

Communicating Vital Messages

Along with research and teaching responsibilities, Julius Riles helps lead the Minority Focused News as a Locus of Empowerment ASH Scholars research team. An affiliate faculty member of the Honors College, Riles helped create and co-directs the Media and Diversity Center on the MU campus. Photo courtesy of Julius Riles. Part of the ASH Scholars Program, the Minority Focused News as a Locus of Empowerment research team investigates the manners in which news websites and streaming platforms that serve under-represented and marginalized populations provide a benefit to society. The team was created in 2019 and undergraduate students at the University of…

Feb. 20, 2024

A Strong Mizzou Connection

Botswana Blackburn, Health Sciences department chair and teaching professor, has relished in educating the next generation of Tigers. An affiliate faculty member in the Honors College, Blackburn got her first taste of Mizzou through the Missouri Scholars Academy and later as an undergraduate and graduate student. Botswana Blackburn got her first taste of how rewarding the collegiate experience could be – especially at the University of Missouri – through the Missouri Scholars Academy (MSA), a three-week residential program on the MU campus for 330 of Missouri’s academically gifted students who are ready to begin their junior year of high school.

Jan. 29, 2024

Educating the Next Generation

Shari Freyermuth is an associate teaching professor of biochemistry and an affiliate faculty member of the Honors College. She has been involved with Honors at Mizzou for several years. While Shari Freyermuth had planned to one day attend medical school, when she arrived at the University of Georgia as an undergraduate student she found a new interest – research. That enthusiasm for discovery followed her as she finished her Ph.D. at Duke University and began a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Missouri.  Freyermuth’s fellowship was in the laboratory of Joe Polacco, a professor emeritus of biochemistry at…

Jan. 3, 2024

Honors Students Go Live on KBIA

Every student in Amy Simons’ Honors Tutorial was tasked with watching or listening to Views of the News, a show hosted and produced by Simons, on Wednesday in preparation for a lively discussion on Thursday. After spending most of the semester as avid consumers of the show, the cohort then worked together to produce their own episode. Honors Tutorials, small one-credit discussions available to University of Missouri Honors students, are designed to provide more meaningful relationships and in-depth learning experiences than the traditional classroom setting can offer. Some Tutorials, such as last semester’s “Views of the News: Media Criticism” taught…

Dec. 15, 2023

Building Bridges Between His Interests

As the Honors Outstanding Faculty awardee, Troy Hall spoke at the Honors commencement ceremony in May and will speak during the December celebration as well.  With interests in music and philosophy, Troy Hall explores both passions as affiliate faculty in the University of Missouri Honors College. Hall, who is an instructor of philosophy and percussion faculty in the School of Music, regularly teaches in the Honors Humanities Sequence and lends his expertise each spring semester to the Honors medical ethics discussion group. With his wide range of teaching duties, Hall interacts with Tigers from multiple degree…

Dec. 6, 2023

From Ma Rainey to Beyoncé: A Study of Black Women in Music

Blues to gospel, gospel to jazz, jazz to soul, soul to disco, disco to R&B, punk, hip-hop, rap, metal; the “Black Women in Music” Honors course taught by Maya Gibson covers almost 130 years of music history. Maya Gibson places Black history and music center stage in “Black Women in Music,” an Honors course covering Black female musicians from Ma Rainey to Beyoncé. Gibson, who is originally from the Washington, D.C., area, attended Oberlin College in Ohio and received degrees in vocal performance, English literature and Black studies. She pursued two master’s degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – African…