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INSIDE HONORS: A newsletter for alumni, parents, and friends of the WSU Honors College
April 2015 | find us on Facebook
Message from the Dean
Photo of Eli Shoemake
Honors College alumnus Eli Shoemake inspects a rotatable camera he made on the top of the Genii Unmanned Aerial Vehicle prior to flight (Patrick Gavin, Christopher Chaney, Ryan Brooks, and Jacob Leachman in the background).

One in every five students in the Honors College is majoring in engineering. This month, the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering announced the Outstanding Student Awards for 2015. Three of the six awards went to Honors College students: Muad Saleh was named Outstanding Materials Science and Engineering senior; Carl Bunge was named Outstanding Mechanical Engineering senior; and Victor Charoonsophonsak was named Outstanding Mechanical Engineering junior.

As Carl Bunge, from Monroe, said: “Honors provided me the confidence to reach my full potential and to know that I could make a difference.”

Like many others, I believe that an Honors College education is a perfect complement for preparing engineering graduates for success in the 21st century global economy. In the recent report, “The Heart of the Matter,” released by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, it was stated that three out of four employers want schools to place more emphasis on critical thinking and written and oral communication. These skills are emphasized in Honors from the moment a student walks into their first Honors class. The report continues to stress the importance of providing students an “intellectual framework and context for understanding and thriving in a changing world.” Our Honors courses highlight the interconnection between the humanities, the social sciences, and science and technology. Our courses—in fact our entire curriculum—are designed to recognize the importance of providing a broad education, which is in line with the comments of 1996 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Professor Sir Harry Kroto, who stated in an interview with the BBC: “it is extremely important to prepare a mind with as broad an interest as possible.”

Honors College alumnus and mechanical engineering graduate student Eli Shoemake, along with Honors student Victor Charoonsophonsak, are both key members of a new Washington State University spin–off company with mechanical engineering professor Jacob Leachman. This company, Protium Innovations LLC, is developing liquid hydrogen technologies for clean energy and aerospace. One of their patented inventions is a novel method for hydrogen cooling, which could improve the efficiency of hydrogen liquefiers and allow them to be much more compact. Eli is demonstrating the concept for his master’s thesis.

In Professor Leachman’s words: “The Honors College provides its students a diverse perspective and a broad awareness of the social aspects of engineering. It helps students be successful. Definitely the type of people you want to start a company with.”

In addition to critical thinking and communication, the third essential component of our curriculum is the requirement for foreign language proficiency. We are the only Honors College in the Northwest that has this requirement and we have it because we believe it is important. In fact, employers agree. In a recent article in the Financial Times of London, it was reported that companies “hire more multilingual employees, because these employees can communicate better, have better intercultural sensitivity, are better at cooperating, negotiating, compromising. But they can also think more efficiently.” These skills are essential for engineers, whether they are going into industry, working for a national laboratory, starting their own company, or becoming the next generation of professors.

Regards,
M. Grant Norton, Ph.D.
Dean, Honors College
mg_norton@wsu.edu


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