Santa Clara University

The Honors Advisory Council (HAC), a student committee, meets bimonthly to discuss issues surrounding the University Honors Program.  In addition to offering advice regarding the Honors curriculum, the HAC also helps to plan and implement events and programs for Honors students.   In February 2006 two representatives from the Honors Program attended the first annual Honors Conference of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) in Los Angeles.  In February 2007, the HAC sent two more students to the Conference, held that year in New York at Fordham University.   In February 2008, another two students will attend the conference, held at Regis University in Denver.  In February 2009 Santa Clara will host this conference. 

 

Since the Honors Advisory Council was created to improve the UHP by working with ideas presented during the first AJCU conference, it hopes to continue to expand and improve Santa Clara's Honors Program.  One such idea from the 2007 conference gave rise to the Iraqi Children's School Supplies program, a philanthropic project that the HACs of all the AJCU participated in:  gathering pencils, pens, notebooks, rulers, and the like to create individual packages for the schoolchildren in Iraq.  In conjunction with this project, SCU's HAC hosted a discussion of life before and after the war, led by one SCU student, an Iraqi refugee, who shared her personal story of being a senior at the University of Baghdad before the war forced her out of the life she knew and brought her to America.

 

The first major program the HAC had established, though, was the President's Reading Series.  Twice a year approximately 12 Honors students have dinner with the President of the university, Father Locatelli, and discuss a book of his choice.   At the first dinner, held in January of 2007, Fr. Locatelli and the students enjoyed a lively discussion of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat.  In April 2007, the scintillating discussion over dinner revolved around Reza Azlan's No god but God.  The 2007-08 academic year will have its first dinner of the President's Reading Series in April 2008 due to the President's travel schedule.