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Goal 2: Exhibit a Commitment to Community Awareness, Involvement, and Service.
Goal 2: Exhibit a Commitment to Community Awareness, Involvement, and Service.
The honors coursework requires a commitment to community awareness and involvement, as reflected in the objectives under this second goal. Essentially, this makes classroom concepts and real-life experiences connect in a meaningful way, requiring students to engage seriously and directly with real world problems and limitations. Communities are important, but imperfect, and it is up to everyone to make a positive impact on their community. Honors coursework made that connection clear in both a very direct, practical way and in a more theoretical way.
Outcome 1: Enact solutions to real-world problems for individuals and society.
Outcome 1: Enact solutions to real-world problems for individuals and society.
The first outcome of the second goal is all about making and chasing goals aimed at bettering the community, not only in word, but in action. I’ll have to double-dip on an artifact to effectively demonstrate this objective by using the final presentation from Community Problem Solving. Since this project has already been described, I will not waste time and space by rehashing all of the details. It is because this project was practical and directly involved with community improvement that I see no other viable option to demonstrate this objective. We sought to make transportation more accessible to students who may not have the ability to get where they need to go, we did the legwork to propose a new solution to the people who could make it happen. Objective achieved.
Minot State HON 391H - Downtown Business Awareness and Transportation.pptxOutcome 2: Reflect on a civic effort which addresses civic responsibility and citizenship.
Outcome 2: Reflect on a civic effort which addresses civic responsibility and citizenship.
The second outcome of this community involvement goal is to reflect on a civic effort that addresses civic responsibility and citizenship. To demonstrate this objective, I chose to utilize two journals from Visionaries of the Past. These journals reflect on the political writings of Thomas Paine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and compare their thoughts on the role of each citizen in government. Both men were heavily influential in the development of the American government and even in its revolution. The reason these journals demonstrate this objective is because they engage with and reflect on civic movements from quite some time ago. The first journal discusses Rousseau’s ideas of self control as a necessary consequence of being a member of any given community, touching very briefly on the responsibility of voting, while the second journal compares and contrasts Rousseau and Paine’s views on the role of government over the citizen as well as the role of the citizen in government. The second journal also touches on the fact that Paine performed his civic duty by publishing his thoughts in the most accessible manner possible, and he made the effort to keep it that way. While I may not have had a hand in anything these men did, I do live in a world impacted heavily by the movements they started and contributed to. For that reason, I feel that a reflection on their civic work sufficiently demonstrates this outcome.
Steenstrup Journal 1.docxSteenstrup Journal 4.docxA great deal of honors coursework deals in reflection, self improvement, and opening one’s eyes to the wider possibilities in the world. In short, the honors program involves considering and inspiring change at every level, from the internal world of the self all the way to society. Many of the courses are aimed at teaching students to see the world around them in new and innovative ways, but if that was all it was, the program would be rather lackluster. While we do spend a lot of time considering and reshaping our own perspectives, it would all mean nothing if it remained contained within the classroom. This is why the second goal of the honors program is so vital to its core mission; it bridges the gap between what we know and what we do. Both direct community involvement and reflection on civic efforts force us as students to consider the wider impact of the knowledge we gain through other courses. Without these objectives, we may never push ourselves to truly get involved in the community around us beyond the superficial level required for theoretical coursework, and I might never have had the chance to see firsthand the positive impact I can have on the communities I find myself a part of.
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