By Mia Bonifazi
An old rumor lingers in the minds of all students: education destroys creativity. Higher education, in particular, is often demonstrated in the same dull manner, filled with pictures of students sitting in large, boring lectures and musty libraries, poring over books with little time for anything else as their minds seep away. The people who go into academia – working at a university or doing research – are similarly drawn caricatures of older white men in canvas and corduroy with a decaying briefcase and a voice made to drag someone to sleep. But the reality is that academia is often what a person makes of it. The ability to find spaces for creativity is an exercise in perspective rather than a staunch impossibility. Some see the brilliance of creativity intermixed with academia: research papers that feature an interdisciplinary twist, niche topics of interests and larger access to resources to plan large scale events.
At the University of Arkansas, the Honors College is built to have creativity intertwined from the way classes are taught to the events it’s constantly hosting. Freshman Honors College students remember that A-Week, or Rush Week, featured several events each day to entice students, focused on introducing the Honors Futures Hub to help Honors students engage with on-campus activities, plan for their futures and understand the access to resources available to them. Many Honors students have lofty goals, multiple responsibilities and are required to do an honors research project, so the college also attempts to create spaces for those students to come back to themselves.
The Honors College does two main things that highlight its creative enterprise: Honors events and Honors courses. The honors events take the shape of several forms. Pulses are hour-long conversations about emerging topics from a panel of professors and professionals. Recently, they’ve done two panels about the impacts of AI on the workforce and data centers, the second of which featured a Google Employee. The honors courses have highly sought-after faculty who teach smaller cohorts in seminar-style classes on topics of interest to the student body, such as Taylor Swift, Walmart, Iran and the highly popular Bad Medicine.
Megan Hull, director of curricular planning and student engagement in the Futures Hub, works with graduate intern Camila Arnez Mercado to create many of the honors events. Between them and the other Futures Hub staff, they plan around 250 events throughout the school year, all surrounding the G.R.E.A.T framework, which stands for global experience, research, engagement, academics and trajectory. They focus heavily on getting students ready for studying abroad, completing their honors thesis and their future career plans. When not focused on that, they try to convince students to take a break from their academic course load.
“We want them to be a break from the hustle and bustle and remind students that they are humans first.” said Hull. “So, we lure students in with cereal on a Thursday afternoon and some Taylor Swift music playing in the background. One of my favorite events is Gingerbread House Competition at Hotz Hall every reading day of fall break. It is just a celebratory, goofy time … a unifying moment in the Honors College.”
One of the most consistent Honors events is their series of Recesses, which occur every Thursday at 3 p.m. in the honor’s lounge. Hull said they partly plan around the rest of the university when creating the themes of each Recess. For instance, the first Recess of each month connects to the Multicultural Center’s First Friday, such as LGBTQ+ History Month in October. The rest, if not connected to the Honors College theme, get creative.
“The ones where Camila is the most creative in are the ones where there isn’t an assigned theme already,” Hull said. “So whether that is National Toast Day recess where we bring in toasters and hopefully don’t blow the fuses in the Honors College. … She had a cafe day where people made their own hot coffee and ice cream sundae bars.”
Still, she understands how the Honors College is different from the others on campus. The students in the Honors College are also a part of the other major colleges on campus, where they are studying for their degrees. That gives the Honors College more room compared to the rest of the colleges; their nature is supplemental, an addition.
“We are not hiring hundreds of faculty and coordinating thousands of classes and providing academic advising. … I think other academic colleges couldn’t post the volume of events that we could just because they have a different role and obligation for that student,” Hull specified.
But events are half of what the college provides. Each semester, they also have specialty college courses only for honors students. Some require applications, since the desire for the course is often more than the available spots. Hull works with the Dean of the Honors College, Lynda Coon, to create these courses from the ground up.
“It can enrich you in the future. And I mean that in every way, including financially. By bringing in super creative entrepreneurs and musicians and all these different people. It makes you employable. It’s a future work issue,” Dean Coon noted when asked about the value in providing these more creatively constructed courses. “Let’s say you’re applying to med school and you took “Bad Medicine,” it’s like the ticket for an interview.”
It can take a couple of years in development until a class is ready to be taught, though, due to the high demand of teachers, the limited space for courses and the amount of research needed for these more specialized classes. Often, the professors Coon wants have to match the enthusiasm of the students taking the course.
“We have a long queue because faculty want to teach [honors students] because [they’re] engaged, intellectually curious, happy to take a little bit of a risk by dipping [their] toe into something kind of crazy,” Coon said. “How I identify faculty is I look for a combination of a great desire to teach undergraduates coupled with ambitious research. Because my view is the classroom is better when you have someone who’s actually doing it.”
Her background as a historian, specializing in the later Roman Empire and early medieval West, has helped her develop a strong, interdisciplinary eye; her ability to shift her perspective and catch an interesting view of something is more refined from her years as a historian. As a result, the classes take interesting perspectives on topics other may not consider, such as a course coming up simply titled “Dog.” The course will explore dogs from every possible perspective: their place on the police force, the years of breeding, the religious aspect of dogs, the social aspects of service dogs, etc.
The single-word title is a deliberate choice. Coon commonly comments on her preference for the succulent nature of a short title.
“If you get the right word, it’s the best,” argued Coon.
These courses, creativity in their craftsmanship, entice students from all colleges to sign up and attend, allowing for even more interdisciplinary elements compared to other classes. The goal, Dean Coon and Hull stated, is to leave the students with a class that is, in design, unforgettable.
“When I visit alumni, they always talk about the great honors course they took,” Coon said. “Even if it’s 20 years out … I’m going for what people remember. The mayor is teaching a class. It was an amazing insight into local government.”
That could be best described as the overall goal of the honors college. It wants its students, often looking much farther into the future, to look back on their time at the U of A, remembering the kooky events they attended and fascinating classes they took. This is the most definitive and promising benefit of implementing creativity into university administration; rather than students making their way through their time at university, it creates active members of the community who search for ways to engage on campus, bettering themselves and the reputation of their college.