Do you know how to get good ideas out of Honors College students? Take them to lunch! That's my newly started tradition this semester -- to take small groups of students out for a quick burger to mine them for ideas about improvements to the College and our programs. Today I took Senior Honors students Ty McCleery, Jessica Shackleford, Samantha Nix, Zulma Fernandez, and Darren Scoggin out for burgers and came back to the office with a shopping list of ideas. Of course, we had to have dessert. That's Zulma and Ty posing with our Oreo pie.
One idea to come out of the meeting is a monthly meeting of Senior Honors students to offer them help as they work on their honors theses. We'll try that out in just a few weeks. Thanks to all five of my luncheon companions, who are precisely the sort of students who make you glad to come to work in the morning.