The University Honors Program is undergoing changes as current co-directors Constance Mui and John Sebastian step down from their positions.
Loyola has begun searching for a new full-time director for the program. University Provost Edward Kvet said in an e-mail that “a national search for a director with experience in honors education and administration and commitment to the Ignatian vision of education will be conducted in fall 2010.”
An interim director will be hired for the 2010-2011 academic year. According to Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, Lydia Voigt, applications for the position have already been submitted and are currently under review.
“The UHP Advisory Board will serve as the search committee,” she said. “Following their review of application materials they will make a recommendation to the provost.”
The meeting date for the University Honors Program Advisory Board has yet to be decided but is expected to be held before the end of the semester.
Mui, professor of philosophy, and Sebastian, assistant professor of English, will be stepping down from their positions May 31.
“I’m looking forward to getting back into the classroom a little bit more and getting back into the research I left off for a while,” Sebastian said.
The new interim and full-time directors will have the task of deciding whether or not to change the honors curriculum to match the new common curriculum.
“We’re in kind of a holding pattern at this point,” Mui said. “Until the new director knows what the new common curriculum is going to look like we can’t really talk about changing the honors curriculum.”
In their three years as Honors Program directors, Mui and Sebastian have started many honors program traditions such as the annual Senior Send Off, the Last Lecture Series, and laser tag trips.
Mui and Sebastian have spent the past year planning a new freshman seminar for honors students, which will begin next year.
“The course will serve as an introduction to a liberal arts education in an Ignatian model that also creates the foundation upon which the traditional honors seminars that we’ve been offering for the past couple of years will build on,” Sebastian said.
Sebastian and Mui have also been working with honors programs throughout the country to create an honors study abroad program in Glasgow, Scotland as part of a group called the Principia Consortium.
“My hope is that we will send our first group of honors students to Glasgow to participate in this in spring 2012,” Sebastian said.
Mui and Sebastian will continue to teach seminars in the Honors Program and help students to make the transition as smooth as possible.
“The students are the center of the program. They have given us so much to be proud of,” Mui said. “They really are the best part of the program.”
Sebastian and Mui said they see their stepping down as the right step to take in the development of the honors program.
“Our hope for the immediate and the long term future is that with a full-time director in place the program can really take off in a new direction,” Sebastian said. “There’s an opportunity here for somebody with a really exciting and dynamic vision to come in and take this to a whole new phase.”
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