The Director's Corner
The Director's Corner
August 17, 2025
Welcome back to our returning students, and to our newest students, welcome! The Honors College staff, faculty and I look forward to seeing you this week as the fall semester begins.
The coming year will be a time of growth and positive change for the Honors College. Cater Hall, the beautiful historic building that houses our administrative offices, needs a new roof and general restoration of its exterior, so the building will have construction fencing around it for the first few months of the semester. Please know that we are open for business, even if it looks like we are not. Students, stay tuned for possible relocations of academic advising appointments during the loudest stage of construction.
I am delighted to report that just as our building is going through a phase of renewal, the college is changing in other ways, especially in the resources and opportunities we offer to our students. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Benjamin Fagan, associate professor of English, as our new assistant director for National Prestigious Scholarships. Dr. Fagan has ambitious plans underway to educate all Auburn students about national and international scholarships and grants, and to support our students as they apply for these opportunities. He will be visiting all sections of our Freshman Exploration classes this fall and reaching out to students in many other ways, so I hope that all of you get to meet him soon.
As we work to expand opportunities for Honors students to participate in mentored research and creative endeavor, we will be piloting a new type of introductory research course, the Research Venture Lyceum. A group of talented, energetic faculty are participating this fall in Honors pedagogy workshops to create five one-credit courses for the Spring semester, with the goal of offering small groups of undergraduates early opportunities to join a research project and decide if they want to pursue more intensive research or creative endeavor later in their undergraduate years. We also are at work on expanding and enhancing the Honors College’s research fellowships, which can serve as alternatives or complements to the university-wide undergraduate research fellowship program.
I am also trying out a new program this year, called “Dinner Discussions with the Director.” About once a month I will be hosting an informal dinner in the conference room of Cater Hall with 10 Honors students (who will sign up on a first-come, first-serve basis) and a guest who hails from Auburn’s faculty, staff, community partners or alumni. Over dinner the 12 of us will converse about one of two topics: “How I Got Here,” in which the guest talks about the decisions and chance events that led them to their current career, or a “Complex Question” that is posed by the guest for discussion and debate. I look forward to these occasions for community-building and stimulating conversation, and I welcome students’ nominations of faculty and staff to invite to these dinners.
We have many more exciting plans underway, which we look forward to announcing over the coming months. All of our work in Honors -- from our individualized academic advising and intellectually expansive courses to our career exploration support and social programming -- is directed to our core mission: challenging minds to change the world. We are here to enhance and increase the opportunities that Auburn University provides for intellectual growth, pre-professional development and the expansion of mind and self that college ideally makes possible.
To our students, I wish you a wonderful semester that brings you mental challenge but also intellectual excitement and joy. I wish you a time of new friendships sparked, and of old friendships sustained, with hopes that you keep those friendships for your entire lives. I wish for you that you will be surprised, even shocked, at least one time by something you learn this semester, and that through that experience of surprise you deepen your learning. Nothing brings me greater hope about our world than seeing all of you on our campus, bringing your energy, your curiosity, your full hearts and your amazing talents to the project of learning. I so look forward to seeing all of you in the coming months.
Dr. Laura Stevens
Director, Honors College
Professor of English
