Wayne State College Honors Colloquiums started yesterday and will end tomorrow in Connell Hall, room 131. Honors Colloquiums began back in the early ‘70s at Wayne State College. It serves as the final project for honor students to be able to graduate from WSC with honors.

“They started it in the early ’70s, a group of faculty wanting to recognize the outstanding academic students on campus,” Wayne State Honor Colloquium Adviser Deborah Whitt said.

This honors program was originally only open to students who received the Neihardt Academic Scholarship, but with over 400 students in the honor program at Wayne State College today, any student who comes in with a 25 or above on their ACT, or has a 3.3 GPA or higher, can join the program.

“Now we have over 400 students in the honors program here at Wayne State College,” Whitt said. “Any student with a high GPA, high ACT and wants to graduate with honors can be part of the program.”

The fall 2016 honor students presenting include: Kailey Rader, Daniel Bidne, Taylor Mathis, James Branstetter, Kyle Kremer, Brandon Geary, Ashley Heine, Lauren Bergeron, Justin Aaberg, Seth Peirce, Brock Bretschneider, Hannah Dierking, Samantha Hascall, Corbin Eisenmenger and Jacob Mausbach. This final honors project not only helps students in their future careers, but also helps catapult students to graduate school as well.

“Not only had it helped me develop better practice and better techniques to help my students, but it will also help in my future, like getting my master’s degree or possibly a doctorate, because I went through this process here at Wayne State College,” Honors Colloquium student Kailey Rader said.

This project allows students to discover what they really love about the career they are entering, and to pinpoint what specific way they want to get into their career.

“It allows them to think about their career early,” Whitt said. “They really have to be thinking, ‘What is it that I love about my program of study, and where do I really want to fit.’”

This year’s Colloquiums will include presentations from students from several different programs of study across Wayne State. Each with their own interesting topics to present on.

“I love going to those colloquiums because I learn so much and it’s campus-wide with kids from every program doing these interesting cool projects,” Whitt said. “I would really like to encourage students, staff, and faculty to see their terrific work.”