We returned to school Monday to find the happy sight of piles of applications for the Honors College. Our application deadline was Monday, and we've almost completed the intensive work of processing the files and will soon make our decisions about acceptances to the College. My thanks go out to Debbie Haskin, Robyn Curtis, and Stacey Ready of our office for all of their labor in organizing the reams of important paperwork. 
Students are beginning to drift back onto campus in anticipation of the resumption of classes on Monday, and I was invited to meet a roomful of beginning students in the School of Nursing this morning. These were 70 juniors just now beginning their nursing program, and I gave a short presentation in hopes of recruiting them into the Senior Honors program. In Senior Honors, students research and write a senior thesis. As I told the students this morning, the thinking, analyzing, and writing that go into putting together a thesis are just the sort of skills that best prepare students for graduate school and the professions.
Pictured above is incoming nursing student Ashley Joubert, posing with the stethoscope she'd won as a door prize in the moments before my presentation. Here's hoping we land Ashley and many of her nursing classmates for Senior Honors!
Thanks go out to the fine folks in the School of Nursing who put the event together, including nursing instructor Lachel Story, as well as our own Paula Mathis, who spearheads all of our recruiting efforts in Senior Honors. Paula is an Honors College veteran who supervises the Senior Honors Program.