The 2018-2019 school year brought new energy to the Honors Program. The inaugural women’s Honors floor in Warren Hall lived into the idea of living and learning communities on Whitworth’s campus. Eli Min lived on that hall, and we reached out to her to tell us about the Honors floor final event, the 2019 Honors Monologues.

“The 2019 Honors Monologues was the culmination of a semester-long independent study involving six students currently living in honors housing, Kjersten Langager, Julia Ledbetter, Simone Marrujo, Rachel McKibbon,Taylor Unger, Sasha Willis and myself. We wanted to continue to share the experience that we had begun in our First Year Seminar course and decided that the class would be a good way to continue reaching out to the Whitworth community. Over the semester, Honors Monologues consisted of Monday and Friday meetings where we would invite professors at Whitworth to represent their disciplines and answer the question, “What is one concept you think everyone should know about, regardless of whatever field they’re in?” A few of the incredible speakers we invited were Dr. Aaron Putzke from Biology, Dr. Patrick van Inwegen from History, and Dr. Karen Peterson Finch from Theology. 

Towards the end of the semester, each of us chose two or three of the lectures that we had heard to do further research on regarding how to address a problem within society from multiple perspectives. The Honors Monologues Exhibition was a poster session meant to showcase that research and the papers that we produced. The whole experience was so much fun and showed me, personally, what possibilities lay in the interdisciplinary approach. We couldn’t have done it without the support of Dr. Erica Salkin, who oversaw both our First Year Seminar and the Honors Monologues!”