By Rick Vacek | May 7, 2024
If there’s one place on campus that captures the sense of community in the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College, it’s the Honors Lounge.
Students can be found there 24/7, prepping their gifted minds with a stimulating mix of thinking and conversing – everything from the structure of languages and the philosophy of mathematics to literature, music and movies.
“People like to find distractions from their work sometimes,” said junior Ethan Conner, a frequent Lounge inhabitant.
But the distractions aren’t just people. They also can be a puzzle.
Last semester, the Lounge housed a 5,000-piece Sistine Chapel jigsaw, one of those mind-bending monstrosities that can keep someone mesmerized for hours. When Dr. Donal Skinner, the Honors College dean, heard that students weren’t impressed by a mere 1,000 pieces, he quintupled the challenge.
“We all really like doing puzzles,” senior Aditi Manjrekar said. “It’s a huge thing.”
They were more than halfway done when they learned that the Lounge would close early in advance of the Honors College’s move from the Green Center, which is being demolished to make way for the new Student Success Center and Student Union, to the Physics Building and Physics Annex.
Undaunted, they finished the rest of the puzzle in a week. (Here’s a video.) They were so determined to complete the job, they even cut out and painted cardboard pieces to fill in the seven that inevitably were missing. The Lounge’s new Physics Annex location opened on Feb. 19 with plans to hang the puzzle on the wall … and start another one.
The students’ accomplishment is a reminder that tasks are completed with much more efficiency when like-minded humans work in concerted harmony. The Lounge represents the greater good of the Honors College – it’s all about the relationships.
“I never would have thought I could have been part of a community like this,” said Conner, who also has gotten to know the community by working at the Honors College front desk. “I’ve found people here who are like me in ways I hadn’t experienced before.
“A lot of people, most of their friends are from their classes – they have a shared major or at least shared interests. In the Honors College, one of our shared characteristics is curiosity and love of learning.”
And doughnuts. A treasured Lounge tradition is the 4 a.m. doughnut run on Reading Day at the end of the semester. They hang out in the Lounge overnight, head out before dawn for their sweet reward, take a short nap and resume studying. “We’re severely sleep deprived, but it’s worth it,” Manjrekar said.
The list of Lounge activities includes Trivia and Game Night, made more tantalizing by the pancakes being flipped by a member of the student-elected Collegium V Executive Council. Manjrekar and Conner both are on the Council, which has its own Constitution (doc).
There’s Craft Night. Painting flower pots was especially popular.
And there’s Java Friday, when professors talk to students about whatever topic they choose.
Example: After Dr. Douglas Dow, associate dean and clinical professor of government and politics, told them that you shouldn’t microwave a grape, someone had to try it, of course – and confirmed his contention. But such frivolity only adds to the Lounge’s magnetism.
“It is so important,” Dow said. “It is a comfortable space for people to come and hang out, to be able to work and to be able to meet people. I think the ability to have a community requires the ability to have space in which you meet other people as members of that community. I think it becomes really abstract without that space.”
Dow was delighted that the students took ownership of the new Lounge location in the Physics Annex, arranging the furniture the way they liked.
“To the degree that is possible and responsible, the Lounge is governed by the students,” he said. “The CV Council is elected by the students, and its main job is to run the Lounge. It gives them agency. It gives them the sense that this is their space.”
But the Lounge isn’t the only Honors hangout space. Freshmen can congregate right where they live, in the campus residence halls that place them all together.
“Freshman housing is another large contributor to the community,” Conner said. “The people you’re around are the people you’re going to make friends with, and freshman year is the time that you make friends that you’re going to be with for the rest of college.”
Later on, though, those friendships tend to continue in the Lounge.
“I love using the Lounge,” sophomore Sneha Sharma said. “I used it more last semester than I’ve ever done before. Freshman year, I didn’t really study outside of my dorm, but now I’m trying to branch out. That’s how you meet new people, right?”
There are plenty of other ways to meet new people in the Honors College.
Students who have ambitions to join a team have several excellent options, including chess (a perennial national power), debate (has qualified for the national tournament each of the last 22 years), Comet Speech and Forensics (highly successful year in 2023-24 included a trip to Ireland and Italy) and Model United Nations (meets on Fridays to study international relations, history, geopolitics and diplomacy).
There are the two honors societies, Phi Kappa Phi (nation’s oldest and most selective) and Sigma Xi (to honor excellence in scientific investigation).
There are the internships. Students can prepare for careers in public service via the UT System-wide Archer Fellowship Program, intern for a state legislator in the Texas Legislative Fellowship Program (TLFP) or access other opportunities via the University Career Center and the Jindal School Career Management Center.
There are the Honors Mentoring Meals, a chance to learn from faculty members while enjoying a meal out.
And if the goal is to qualify for scholarships, there is the Office of Distinguished Scholarships, created with Dow’s help by Skinner’s predecessor, Dr. Edward “Ted” Harpham. It helps students compete for top scholarships and even helps them with their application.
“It’s a major part of the role I have here in the Honors College to this day,” Dow said. “In helping these students, it required me to radically rethink both what the goals and aspirations of our students are or should be, what role not just classes but other forms of intellectual engagement and experimentation – research, study abroad, extracurricular activities, clubs, organizations – and how to go about thinking of these as experiments.”
Skinner’s weekly newsletter aims to keep students apprised of all these possibilities.
“He brought his new perspectives and new initiatives,” Manjrekar said. “It’s as if he’s saying, ‘Here! Join! I’m telling you, this exists!’”
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More Honors College stories:
No Question, Honors College’s Value Goes a Long Way
The Story behind Collegium V’s Name? Just Ask Aristotle
National Merit, Terry Scholars Are Game for Opportunities