 Hello, how are you? I'm great. Good to be here. It is the third, fourth week of the semester. I don't think I even know at this point anymore. Four. You know, I tried to say three. I tried to give us less time. Not sure why. So we will go ahead and get started. And we have a few folks and I think we get a lot of viewers after the fact, but hopefully some folks will trickle in as well in case there's any questions. As always, my name is Grace Strain. I am one of the staff advisors here in the CSC undergraduate advising office. We are so excited to do our Tuesday Talk series and get to chat with some other folks in either CSC, the College of Engineering, any student services offices, providing support to our students. And I am joined today by the wonderful Rachel. Rachel, I want to pass it over to you to introduce yourself and chat a little bit about the work that you do in Honors. Absolutely. So my name is Rachel Armstrong-Saron. My pronouns are she, her, and I am one of the two academic advisors in the engineering Honors program. This is the start of my ninth year with the program. And so I have really enjoyed and continue to enjoy working with students to figure out what they want to do as part of their time in Honors. From the time they're admitted through alumni, we have a really thriving Honors community and a really thriving Honors alumni community. And I really enjoyed that I get to work directly with them. Awesome. Thanks, Rachel. And we're excited to chat about Honors and have a whole bunch of questions, but I think the first one is one that we get the most often for students who are interested is what are the requirements? What do I have to do to be an Honors? Could you talk a little bit about the requirements for the Honors program? Absolutely. So students apply to the engineering Honors program at the start of their sophomore year at the earliest. So students do need two semesters at the University of Michigan or one semester for external transfers. The really important reason why we have that is so that students have time to get exposed to the many incredible things that the University of Michigan and Michigan Engineering has to offer. Because Honors is a really excellent path, but it's also one of many, many things that you can do and we want students to explore and to really discover is Honors the place where they want to invest their time. When students are applying to the Honors program, we're looking for passion, for commitment to equity and to growth and students who want to expand on their education in ways that are meaningful to them. They do that through a couple of important requirements. One is that every Honors student completes a minor. That's any minor available to them at the University of Michigan. For CS students, that's probably every minor except CS. So we have students in business and public policy, French and German, philosophy and physics, math and material science. It's really however you want to take your degree and enhance that with a supplemental program like a minor. In addition to the minor, all of our Honors students complete three one credit seminars. These are seminars on leadership and personal development. So how do you reflect on work that's meaningful to you? Think about your communication strategies. Think about your leadership style. Improve your communication. All of the things that are important to everyone and that you get to do in a supportive and reflective environment. In addition to the minor and the seminars, all of our students also do a capstone project that's different from their major design experience. So we know you're going to get a really strong education with CSE in your major design. You get to kind of choose one of those projects. The Honors capstone is a much broader opportunity where students can pursue something related to their passions or related to their future. That might be a research project, especially if you're interested in a research career or a PhD. It might be an entrepreneurial project. If there's something that you want to pursue in that space. For students in our EGL specialization, it's an operations project through the Tower Institute for Global Operations. But in each case, the capstone is a chance for students to exercise their enthusiasm and their skills in typically the senior year. They do that with the support of a faculty advisor. And then we get to celebrate them when they present it at the end of their term. Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate you talking a little bit about the application requirements as well as, you know, what just the honors experience entails. I think it's a really robust experience for students. I do want to hone in on something because I'm sure there are students who, as they're listening to this might say, wait, I didn't hear GP requirement. I heard a lot of conversation about, you know, values, thinking about leadership, like being really intentional in what you're pursuing academically. So is there a GP requirement associated with honors and engineering? That's a great question. And for students who are coming from a high school experience or from even looking at LSA honors or honor societies, that may seem like a natural fit. For the past couple of years, starting in March 2020, as may not surprise you, we have had a flexible GPA requirement to the degree that at this point, students who are applying to honors or students who are currently in the honors program do not have to meet a minimum GPA. What we want to see for students is that they are succeeding in ways that are defined by them. So for students who have goals on which a GPA might be dependent. So for example, if you're applying to graduate programs or to fellowship opportunities, then a GPA might matter to you. And in that case, we have honors advisors who are available to talk with you about your success strategies and to help you ensure that you have the academic support to get there. But it's not required for the honors program specifically. For students who are interested in the EGL or engineering global leadership specialization. That specialization of honors does require a GPA because EGL requires students to complete a master's in engineering at the University of Michigan. So the GPA requirement for EGL students is to ensure that they are successful in that pursuit. Awesome. I really love that that change in GPA and more so being about individualized student success plans. You know, you're not competing against everybody else. They may be competing against yourself, you know, and what you can do and what you want to do. I noticed that you teased the EGL specialization, almost as if you know the next question I'm going to ask Rachel, your psychic. So I do want to ask a little bit more about what EGL entails. I know you mentioned a little bit of it in the last answer. Absolutely. So engineering global leadership or EGL, you know, Michigan's known for their acronyms, is a specialization of honors program that actually predates engineering honors. EGL celebrated their 30th anniversary this year or is currently celebrating our 30th anniversary this year. And the EGL honors program grew out of a need for engineering students to really develop and hone their ability to apply business concepts to global operations problems. So EGL students participate fully in the honors program. They do all the things that honor students do. They just do it in a specialized way. So as I mentioned, all honor students pursue a minor EGL students specifically pursue the international programs and engineering international minor for engineers. Through that minor, they develop language proficiency in a second language. They have a six or more week global or intercultural experience. So that might be study abroad, research, internship or volunteer abroad. We also have a couple of seminars where they think about the global context of their work because no matter where you are, who you're designing for and what you're creating, there is going to be interaction of multiple cultures and application to multiple communities. And so we really want to see students think about that and apply that to their success. So they do the international minor for engineers, they do the honors seminars, and they do a capstone project for EGL students that is a team project with Tauber Institute for global operations. Tauber spelled T-A-U-B-E-R and I would strongly encourage anyone who's interested in the intersection of business and engineering to check out the Tauber website. They have fantastic summaries of the kinds of work students do through their team project. You can read about the coursework and the things that help prepare students for success in those projects. And those projects take place between senior and the graduate year. So once students finish their undergrad and before they start their master's degree, the team project is a summer internship, 14 weeks paid, where you are working for a global company helping them solve significant operations challenges or opportunities. Students do a really fantastic job. They save companies lots of money or energy or resources, you know, they might focus on sustainability or supply chain or strategy. And there's a really great opportunity to match what you're interested in operations with what a company actually needs. And then students stay for the master's degree and then during that year work route for wherever they want to go full time. I think to get off track just a little bit. I think this is a really nice bridge between the last Tuesday talk we had and when we have coming up we had IPE before and then we have MDP afterwards. So you're like that bridge of globalization and thinking about solutions for corporate partners. So interesting how that played out. I promise I didn't schedule that so carefully. It didn't happen consciously. IPE and MDP are great partners of the engineering honors program and EGL. So we have a lot of students who do the international minor for engineers, all of the EGLs as well as many honors students as well. And we also have students who go abroad without pursuing the minor. So Michigan engineering's investment in global education is really important. It's really picking back up after a couple of year hiatus. But we really understand the importance of that knowledge, that understanding of the communities and cultures who will be affected by your work and who with whom you will be working. And MDP also a fantastic partner, a great way to get hands on design experience and design can be integrated into your honors plans, whether that's through the MDP minor or through a design related capstone project. Awesome. Well, thank you for the free advertising for next week's MDP session. Definitely something to check out when we chat with them next week as well. But yeah, that global education piece, again something we're coming back to for a second time now in our IG lives, I do think that is so critical. It's what we do at the University of Michigan and especially for our engineering students. Like I can't imagine an engineering student who isn't going to interface with other cultures, with other, you know, contexts in the work that they're doing. So really, definitely really important. I know we've talked about a whole lot of stuff here, but I do want to ask kind of the big question, which I think students always come to us with when they're considering any program experience, et cetera, is why should a student do honors? What really helps honors set them apart? That is a great question. So I've been in this role for a while and my goal as an advisor is to help students find the right fit for them. Because there are no wrong answers to how you can spend your time at Michigan and Michigan engineering, except not to do any of it. That might be the only one way to make a wrong choice. Engineering honors is a way to bring together your unique interests in a supportive community where other people want to reflect, to keep learning, to be curious, and to develop as scholars and members of a community, and to do that together. So I would say to students, if you have done, in your first year especially, something like engineering 110, which is the design your engineering experience course. If you take an engineering 110 or you're in it right now, and you think, I really like this format, I like that we are exploring our strengths and thinking about how that relates to our time at Michigan and our future careers. That's a really great indicator that the engineering honors experience would be a good fit for you. Engineering 110 and the engineering honors program are both run out of the Engaged Honors and Engagement Programs office. And so the philosophy behind engineering 110 is the philosophy behind the engineering honors experience. So that's one great indicator that it would be a good fit for you. There's a lot of things that students do in the honors program that they can do without being part of us. So anybody can get a minor, and many minors fit within the 128 credits that you need to graduate. So if you think, I really want to do a minor, but I'm not so interested in this specific community because I have a community elsewhere, that's okay. Do that minor. Absolutely pursue those classes. Start taking and exploring things that are of interest to you. Either stuff you already know that you like or you never had a chance to take a Japanese class before you got to the University of Michigan. Do that. Spend your time doing those super cool and interesting things. We at the University of Michigan have a lot of students who are engaged in undergraduate research. You don't have to be a part of engineering honors to do that. But if you're a part of honors, this is a great space to connect with people doing other kinds of research and to be able to share across boundaries. And get outside of your major and get outside of your specific lab and hear about what other people are doing. It might also be a place where you can get some support. So if you're having a hard time connecting with a lab or finding a professor, we have advisors for that. You also have advisors in your department. So there are many things that honors offers that are offered at other places on campus. I like to think that we bring that together into a supportive community and an inclusive community. So we want students to join honors because they want to be there. Because the kinds of experiences that we offer are the things that in which they want to engage and that the kinds of community that we offer is a space that they want to be. Our application process also gives you a little bit of a taste of what that experience is like. So I mentioned engineering 110 as one fantastic way to say, I enjoyed this, that speaks highly to how much I'll enjoy honors. But our application process also gives you a chance to engage in a workshop that's run very similar to our honors seminars. And the topic and the format would give you experience of what it would be like to be an honor student in seminar. And so you get to decide. Is this right for me at the same time that we help you engage with the program and figure out. You know, do you have the kind of enthusiasm for something that we're looking for in honor students. Love that we came back to like that, that whole piece of like self exploration reflection like knowing what is right what's the good fit for you but also that piece about community. I think sometimes students can forget that especially some of our engineering students, especially in CS, you know, it's very rigorous it's very challenging it's very competitive field. But having community here it is so important. So if it's not, you know, engineering honors, you know, make sure you find a community somewhere I think is a really important take away from all that. I know that we're at time we could probably talk like another 20 minutes about all of this, but I am curious if you have any like final takeaways, some things you want to share, perhaps where students could go to get more info on the honors program. Absolutely. So our number one resource is our people, our students. So our peer advisors are available every weekday from 130 to 430 p.m. in 251 Chrysler. We are neighbors to the international programs and engineering office and right around the corner from the engineering advising center and engineering career resource center and down the hallway from the engineering center for academic success. So we're in that space where we're upstairs from MDP and the Office of Student Affairs. We're in the Chrysler Center come see us every day that classes are in session. So that's every day except fall break and Thanksgiving break at this point. Our peer advisors are here and they are a fantastic resource to talk about the student perspective on the honors experience. They can share with you more about the requirements, especially in line with what you want to do. So, you know, asking you about your interests and then being able to make some connections for how that would fit with the honors program. The honors and engagement programs office also does things like the common reading experience. So if you got to attend Trevor Noah on Friday, we are super thrilled that he was here as well to talk with the College of Engineering. So you can see the kind of things that matter to us, the kinds of conversations, the kinds of topics that are important to the honors and engagement program. And that gives you a little bit of a picture of the philosophy of the program. The absolute best way to figure out if it's for you is to come talk with us and our peer advisors are really looking forward to meeting you. The peer advisors are truly one of the best resources and I love that the invitation to just go find out, see if it works for you. You know, you're here, you're willing to chat with students and help them figure out if honors makes sense. I will note as we're wrapping up that I think we must have summoned MDP because they did join like right after we talked about them and gave the plug for next week. So if you want to find out more information about the multidisciplinary design program, please join us next week. I believe we're doing 12 or perhaps 1230. What is time? What is dates anymore? We're doing 1pm. So I was wrong both times. So 1pm next Tuesday we'll be chatting with MDP about some of their offerings. But Rachel, thank you so much for making time for being here and for sharing about the engineering honors program. Any parting words of advice or wisdom you have? Thanks for having us. The computer science students make up the largest proportion of students in the engineering honors program. No surprise given that we also make up you make up the largest proportion of students in the college of engineering. And they do some really incredible things. Our peer advisors would love to talk with you about the kinds of work that computer science engineering students do as part of the honors program and I look forward to seeing many of you in the office soon. Sounds good. All right. We'll take care of Rachel. Thanks everybody for joining us and we will see you next week at 1pm on Tuesday the 27th. Bye all.