Alison Rios Millett McCartney  

We're trying to give students the experience of being at a small liberal arts college but with the resources of a larger university. The Honors College, which started in 1998, is that small liberal arts college feel. I mean that not in terms of subject but in terms of the type of learning. It's hands-on, discussion-based learning. Students are taking classes with other students across campus in all different majors. What's important about this is that you're learning to think about, address and solve problems not just from one perspective. We're preparing them for the real world.

All the things that I'm going to be able to build. My word of the year is building. What I want to build, first of all, are more exciting learning opportunities for the students. So we're going to be starting, for example, a program to bring more faculty into the Honors College from across campus so that we can have more curricular diversity in the faculty. Also, building alumni relations is on the top of my list. I think that the alumni are integral for moving us forward, so I want to get their voices.  

Everything. I really love the process of discovering with students. It's not just that I'm assigning something to them, and they must learn and digest. Rather, we’re co-creating ideas, co-creating solutions to problems, co-creating different ways to look at the world. I’m not just telling you what to do; I am telling you parameters of what you must know and how we can all think, learn and grow together. Honors provides a unique atmosphere for that in the small class sizes that we have, in the fact that there's nobody in between me and the student. Students get to work one-on-one with faculty from day one here.  

This is what really prepares students for the job market and for graduate school. If students are interested in graduate school, I strongly recommend undergraduate research. Towson is a great place for that because, again, you're able to do the hands-on work with faculty one-on-one or three-on-one if you're talking about a lab. Last year, Honors faculty members who work with our students in chemistry and biology took their students all over the country for not only undergraduate research conferences but regular research conferences that faculty present at. And our students were outstanding.  

If you think about a graduate school application, you've got a student who has good grades in good classes, so forth and so on. OK. But then I have a student who's already done the advanced type of research that we want to see in graduate school and has the good grades, clubs, leadership and so on. It's a no-brainer. You're going to take the student who's already done an undergraduate research project, a thesis, worked with a professor. Somebody who is going to go further, deeper and be more creative in their thinking and their approach to problems.