Mariah is from Atlanta, Kansas and is earning a degree in Graphic Design with a certificate in Motion Design. Mariah will continue at FHSU to earn a Master's in Intermedia, focusing in Animation.
It's always a joy to see students grow and learn and Mariah has out in the hard work to continue to develop her amazing art skills and we can't wait to see more of her future work!
We're glad you'll be close to the Honors fam for a little while longer, Mari! Congratulations and keep creating!
Lauren extends her thanks: "Thank you to the art department, more specifically Chaiwat and Karrie for pushing me and rooting for my success in so many ways! Thank you to Residential Life for being another family here for me! Thank you to AAOG for providing me the opportunity to go to school and have such great mentors and be a mentor for others!"
Lauren stepped up to be a CA and mentor other first-generation students to find their path to success. She's a proud and determined first generation student and we're proud of all her success and know she will go out and make an impact!
Lauren plans to land in either Denver or Seattle in the near future. Best wishes to you, Lo, and congratulations!
Morgan says: "Dr. Wendy Rohleder-Sook has been such a guiding faculty member for me when it has come to the LSAT, and all things law school! Also, the Honors College staff are always great!"
All that hard work paid off, as this January, Morgan will be attending Washburn University School of Law to obtain her law degree and plans to practice rural or agricultural law!
We'll miss that big smile here, but we wish her all the best as she starts her law school journey!
At FHSU, she has been a student senator for the Robbins College of Business and Entrepreneurship, served as Vice President of Communications for the Fort Hays Honor Society, and did great work for Tiger Media Network.
Alicia says: "I would like to thank Kevin and Kathay for all they have done to help me throughout my college career - specifically when transferring from KU. Transferring to Fort Hays was the best decision I ever made, and it would not have been possible without the Honors College and John Armstrong from Admissions. I will forever be grateful for the opportunities Fort Hays has given me. I would also like to thank Nick Schwien and Russell Heitmann from Tiger Media Network for all their support. I have made so many friends and memories from TMN and would not be the journalist I am today without the program."
We're so glad Alicia decided to make the move to Fort Hays and be part of the Honors College community (making it an official Feyerherm sister family tradition). 🐯 She took the mission of the Honors College to heart and made the most of her opportunities. We're excited to see where that dedication takes her in the future. Congratulations, Alicia!
Her parents and siblings have been a great support for her during her education. It takes a special commitment to conquer nursing online and step up to do great, Honorable work. We're very proud of her commitment and all her hard work. We wish her the best at WSU!
Griffin is from Holton, Kansas and is graduating with his degree in Chemistry. He previously graduated from the KAMS program. He plans to finish his master's degree in Biology here at FHSU and hopes to pursue a PhD and continue doing research in the pharmaceutical field.
Griffin says that his research advisor, Dr. James Balthazor, supported him in making the most of many opportunities, including acceptance into the master's program, obtaining research grants, and attending both state and national research conferences. His fellow Honorable, Braden Allphin, was also at his side; "He’s been in pretty much every major class with me since our freshman year, where we met because he randomly stood at my bench in chemistry lab during our first semester. Without his friendship, the trauma bond we share from P Chem, and the consistent reminders of a quiz the next morning, I don’t think I would’ve made it this far." Last but not least, Griffin's family was a support for him. His mom and dad always have faith in him and his older brother, Bruce, provided him with guidance during his time at FHSU.
Griffin will continue to great things at FHSU and beyond and we wish him the best of luck!
By Kevin Amidon, Oct 2024
The Honors College at Fort Hays State University is celebrating ten years of service to the Hays community, Kansans, and the world. Today’s Honors College stands on the shoulders of many who have dedicated years of effort to bring about the success of the College’s efforts to enrich FHSU’s student life, academic energy, and community engagement. On the occasion of FHSU Homecoming 2024, this brief reflection on important moments in the history of the Honors College seeks to highlight the contributions of the key people who have made this path possible.
What Honors means at FHSU
The FHSU Honors College is an academic program that represents a calling to service and engagement. The program supports experiential enrichment of students’ academic training, professional plans, and personal goals, and students earn their degrees with Honors on the basis of commitment to these principles. Students with strong motivation join the Honors College from high school, as transfer students, as online students, or as current FHSU students. The experiential core of the Honors College curriculum focuses on a wide range of student-designed co-curricular and pre-professional aspects that bridge the worlds of education and professional practice including research, study abroad, internships, community service, campus leadership, and many more. Honors College students therefore do much to create FHSU’s lively culture of service and engagement, and serve their fellow students, the community, and the university’s broader mission in meaningful ways.
How Honors began at FHSU
In the 1950s, the US invested strongly in higher education to advance the skills of the workforce, develop deep talent during the Cold War, and thank veterans for their service. At that time, FHSU began exploring Honors education with the goal of linking college success to emerging principles of gifted education at the K-12 level. These initial experiments continued on and off into the 1970s. Dr. Nancy Vogel was a pioneering faculty member in the Department of English who still provides substantial financial support to today’s Honors College including the medallions presented to each Honors graduate as a complement their commencement regalia. She contributed closely to the 1970s Honors Program as a faculty member in Honors courses. Resource constraints did not allow this manifestation of Honors education at FHSU to continue, however. Renewed efforts to establish an Honors Program with strong curriculum and admissions standards emerged, both university-wide and in the then-College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, in the later 1990s. Dr. Douglas Drabkin and Dr. Larry Gould, both major contributors to the development of today’s Honors College, were leaders in these efforts, which were not able to come to fruition.
Today’s FHSU Honors College
In 2008, Mr. Matt Means was asked by FHSU President Edward H. Hammond and Provost Dr. Gould to explore ways to advance FHSU’s success in nationally competitive scholarship and fellowship competitions (e.g. Fulbright, Goldwater, Truman, Rhodes, Marshall, NSF). Mr. Means saw the need for greater organizational support to recruit, retain, and motivate high-achieving students. The first result of these efforts was a student organization, the Fort Hays Honor Society (FHHS), which remains a vigorous aspect of student life at FHSU and an organizationally separate complement to the Honors College’s academic program mission. In 2010 the forerunner of the Honors College was added: the Distinguished Scholars Program, which President Hammond granted a budget to support merit scholarship awards and further incentives for student engagement on campus.
In 2014, newly inaugurated FHSU President Mirta Martin believed that a full-scale Honors College represented an important step to advance FHSU’s competitive position and student-centered focus on academic achievement and success. Mr. Means was charged with developing the structure of the FHSU Honors College and made the founding Director. FHSU’s executive leadership made further resources available, and through an intense collaborative process engaging faculty, staff, and students, the Honors College successfully emerged in the basic form we know today. Fall 2015 saw the arrival of the first class of approximately 25 admitted students. These students moved into the Honors College’s living community housed at that time in McMindes Hall, and their success has inspired students ever since.
In 2018, Ms. Kathay Johnson arrived to serve as the heart of the Honors College’s student services. In 2019, Dr. Kevin S. Amidon took over from Mr. Means as Director. Together with the Honors College’s annual teams of student assistants, and with the vigorous support of President Tisa Mason, Provost Jill Arensdorf, and Assistant Provost Angela Pool-Funai, they continue to advance the mission of the Honors College as an inclusive, motivating place where students make the most of their education through commitment to service and engagement.
Today, the Honors College admits upward of 80 students per year. It currently enrolls 159 students who represent every academic program on campus, almost 4.5% of the on-campus student body. Several fully-online Honors students participate in FHSU Honors Online, a program first piloted in 2020. Students are admitted and offered merit scholarships based on their high school academic record, commitment to engagement, and test scores. The Honors College living community now fills most of the beautiful Tiger Village residence hall, completed in 2016.
Where the Honors College will go from here
FHSU Honors College graduates go on to success in every field, and the Honors College seeks to support their goals for lifelong learning and service. The Honors College seeks out feedback from students and its Alumni Advisory Council to assess its success in advancing these outcomes. Students and graduates speak very highly of the College’s efforts, organization, and personnel, and their feedback informs the College’s goals for ongoing growth and enrichment. The Honors College expects to continue to grow as its alumni network spreads the word in ways that develop both new recruiting possibilities and financial support from generous donors.
This fall the Honors College welcomed 63 new students into the program. We keep hearing "that sounds like a lot!" It is! This is the largest incoming class ever! We couldn't be more excited to see all these new faces ready to discover all the people, places, and things that will shape their path. Some of them were born hitting the ground running, others are more calculating in their commitments; some know exactly where they're headed, while some are enjoying the journey. However they got here, we're very glad they're here. Wherever they're headed, we're glad to go with them.
The Honors College is also celebrating 10 years this year. With 130 alumni, a current roster of 158, and so many friends and supporters over the years, we're looking forward to catching up and reminiscing with old friends at Homecoming. (Watch our Facebook and Instagram for more info about our events.)
While we treasure our past and all the students, faculty, staff, ideas, challenges, innovations, achievements, study hours, and snacks that got us here, we're very excited about the future and all the Honorable Tigers still to come. Each incoming class brings something new and the program evolves as the students do. It's a really fun thing to be part of and, I know I can speak for me and Kevin (because he also says it all the time), we definitely have the best jobs on campus.
Wishing everyone a great semester and we hope to see many of you at Homecoming!
~ Kathay
The earliest framework for my story came to me at a pretty young age. Unlike many ideas, the concept of time-traveling teenagers simply wouldn’t leave me alone. I recently uncovered a journal from 5th grade with the very earliest notes of a time-travel-based story. The first true draft of A Prehistoric Odyssey: Gone to the Great Dying was written in the spring of 2017 when I was in 7th grade. I often had free time in my health class (thanks, Mr. Butler), and it was there that I began to write my story. As summer approached, I lost access to a reliable computer. Instead, I spent the summer (and subsequent summers) typing away on our home computer, which is so old, it might as well be a fossil (and believe me, I know fossils).
Years passed, and I came back to the story now and then, always changing things, but as I matured, I realized that I might actually have something worth sharing. It was Mrs. DeWeese, my gifted program teacher, who encouraged me to keep working and publish it. One November, I committed to doing National Novel Writing Month and bulked up my story significantly. Never underestimate what you can do by simply writing for an hour each day. The bond I have with my friends informed the characters, and my extensive research into the Permian period fleshed out the setting. By my junior year, I felt ready to share it with some of my friends and fellow book-readers. It was scary sharing my work, but once I did, I couldn't get enough of it. I made it my goal to publish the book before graduating high school, and even though it took well into the summer, I consider the whole process a success.
If you're up got a little dino adventure this summer, this is the book for you! You can keep up with Kale's future work on his website at: kalelink.com
Eileen just finished her freshman year at FHSU, majoring in English, and was nominated as the next FHSU Poet Laureate! She told us a little about her book, 3 a.m. Notes:
My book is a small collection of poems that came to me in the late hours of the night (hence the title). Ever since I was little, I’ve dreamed of being published - I used to write and illustrate my own books and bring them to show and tell in first grade. I saw a flash opportunity through Bookleaf Publishing and took it. And now here I am! Poetry has always been very personal to me, much like music, and the thing I want most out of work is for someone to be like, “Wow, she put that feeling into words.” Though this book was mainly self-published, I am currently working on getting my next collection published traditionally.
Sometimes it takes me a long time to get poems out because my process takes a few days. It’ll start with an idea or a line. When I’m feeling creative, I’ll write it all in one go, then leave it. I’ll come back the next day and begin editing it. When it feels overwhelming or boring, I’ll stop and try again the next day. I always want to put my best work out there, but it can also be a daunting task sometimes.
Saige is completing her degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry, and she earned Leadership and Criminal Justice certificates. She was a 2022 FHSU K-INBRE Scholar.
This summer, Saige will begin her Master's in Public Health Administration and is working on her medical school application in hopes of attending either KU or UMKC in the fall of 2025.
"Dr. Gillock has been the best academic advisor I could ask for over these past four years. He has always given me great advice in regard to my classes and personal endeavors. I always enjoy popping into his office to say hello. Dr. B and Dr. BT in the chemistry department were great professors who managed to make a subject I had always struggled with more manageable and sometimes even interesting. Their courses taught me to study and research skills that I will use while earning my master's degree and eventually my medical degree."
We wish Saige the best of luck and look forward to seeing Dr. Heizer in a few years!
As many have seen, one of her hobbies is contortion and foot archery. She hopes to have more chances to perform in the future.
Rose tells us, "My mom and dad have helped me a lot. There were many times where I wanted to give up pursuing dentistry because of how difficult it was, and they always were there to encourage me to keep going."
Rose has made the most of her ups and downs, and we know she'll keep up that commitment at UMKC! Keep smiling and seeking those adventures.
"Cole Engel, Anthony Gable, Emily Breit, and Sam Schreyer all have helped me grow greatly in the clubs and organizations I am involved in. They have all become people I can talk to about anything, school-related or not. They have done a great job of helping me whenever I need it but also pushing me when I needed to be pushed the most. They have pushed me to be a better student and leader than I couldn't have imagined coming into FHSU. My family has greatly contributed to my success as they have always been so supportive and have helped shape me into who I am and who I will continue to be. John Egan, my brother, and David Schulte [both Honors College alums, if we may proudly interject] have been two great resources throughout my time at FHSU. They were both older and have helped guide me to my success. I also want to thank all my friends who have helped me in college in and out of the classroom, especially the UABs."
Nate has put his best foot forward and taken advantage of amazing learning opportunities that will continue to guide him in his success. Best of luck in the also-windy city, Nate!
“I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.” ~ H. L. Mencken
