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Honors
Program rewards students, prof
Life
lessons and standing ovations defined Thursday’s
Honors Convocation.
By
Liddy Serio
Recipients
of the TCU Honors Scholar Award, Phi Beta Kappa electees
and the Honors Professor of the Year were recognized Thursday
at the 42nd Annual Honors convocation, which included
a speech from Princeton University professor Alexander
Nehamas.
Peggy Watson, director of the Honors Program, announced
the recipients of the TCU Honors Scholar Award and Chancellor
Victor Boschini announced the Phi Beta Kappa electees
and honored them for their tremendous academic achievement.
“This is the most prestigious award available for
college students, and TCU is one of the select schools
in the nation with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter,” said
Boschini before he announced the three juniors, twenty
seniors, and fifteen students with conferred degrees who
were elected into the society.
The keynote speaker, Nehamas, is a scholar of philosophy
and professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature
at Princeton University. He spoke on Socratic ideals as
well as Socrates’ quest to discover the best life
possible.
“Socrates’ life was a dismal failure by Athenian
standards,” Nehamas said. “But it is his failure
that has transformed him into a hero.”
In the end, the key to the best life is in the search
itself, Nehamas said.
“Socrates was able to spend his life in search of
the good life because society could create a space for
his questions, and today that place is the university,”
he said.
Nehamas emphasized that like Socrates, we must acknowledge
our ignorance in order to gain knowledge, and that confusion
and doubt are important in obtaining wisdom.
“There is no better place to begin than questioning
the nature of education and the significance of goals,”
he said. “Confusion and doubt may truly belong to
the best years of our lives.”
Nehamas received a standing ovation upon finishing his
speech.
“I thought he was phenomenal,” Boschini said.
“He took a complex subject and applied it to a broad
audience consisting of faculty, staff, students and parents.”
Chris Schaun, a sophomore entrepreneurial management and
marketing major, said he could not agree more.
“I’m a business major and I love this stuff,”
he said.
But the standing ovations were not over yet.
Blake Hestir, an assistant professor of philosophy, received
the 2004 Honors Faculty Recognition Award, elected every
year by honors students. Hestir was already on-stage because
he introduced the guest speaker and was surprised to receive
the award and the standing ovation that came with it.
Schaun said Hestir deserved the award because he cares
so much about students.
“He’ll be as big an influence in your life as
you want him to be,” Schaun said |
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Sarah
Chacko/Photo Editor
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| Alexander
Nehamas, a philosophy scholar and professor at Princeton
University, delves into Socratic ideals as part
of his keynote address at the 42nd Annual Honors
Convocation Thursday morning in Ed Landreth Hall. |
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