The Honors College will offer colloquia next year on topics ranging from politics and bioethics to coffee and the Amish community.

Each year, the Honors College presents a collection of colloquia, and for the 2019-20 year, nine faculty members will offer seven colloquia on those topics and others.

The colloquia are a unique variety of special-interest classes presented for Honors students. Offered through fall and spring semesters, the content of these courses strives to be exploratory for the students, as well as the professors.

As many students seek out the classes that fit most closely with their major, these one-hour periods open up possibilities in a creative realm that is uncommon to the average student.

Sarah Winkler Laster, Honors College academic manager and budget director, said that the colloquia give professors the chance to teach classes on subjects they might not typically get to teach.

“Colloquia are meant to be fun, hands-on experiences,” Laster said.

Dr. Todd Womble, assistant professor of Language and Literature, has taken part in creative colloquia for four years.

“For a lot of people this can be out of their comfort zone… some students prefer to write papers and some make a collage or painting,” Womble said. “It gives me a chance to do things in the classroom that I don’t get to do otherwise… it blends hobbies and interests into an academic opportunity.”

Elizabeth Miller, sophomore English major from Allen, Texas, took Womble’s short course in the fall of 2018 and said he was her favorite part.

“He makes the class really interesting,” Miller said, “and with a subject about movies, it was really engaging.”

The colloquia change each semester. The classes are open for enrollment to Honors students of all majors with sophomore academic status and can be night courses, weekend meetings or five-week short courses. 

During fall of 2019, Dr. Womble and 8 other Honors college professors will be offering the following:

• “Bon Appetite: Savoring Poetry & Good Cooking” (Dr. Steven Moore)
• “Coffee: The Good, the Starbucks, and the Folgers” (Dr. Ryan Feerer and Dr. Tim Kennedy)
• “Dilemmas of the Human Condition: Bioethical Issues in Perspective” (Dr. Daniel Morrison)
• “Food Writing in Oxford” (Dr. Shelly Sanders -offered exclusively to students studying in Oxford fall 2019)
• “Politics on Campus” (Dr. Chris Riley)
• “The Book Was Better: Considering Literary Adaptation” (Dr. Todd Womble)
• “The Simple Life: Exploring an Ohio Amish Community” (Dr. Heidi Morris and Dr. Jason Morris)