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Dean’s Message

Kimberly Engber Ph.D.

Dean and Associate Professor

Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College 

(316) 978-6459

kimberly.engber@wichita.edu

Dean's Message 

Don’t pay attention to the temperatures outside. We are ready for a crisp autumn, the wonderful ripening of thought and friendship, the golden turn of leaves and of minds. Welcome!

We celebrated the 10th year anniversary of the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College in 2024-25 and the long history of Honors at Wichita State that started with the founding of an honors program in 1957. Please keep an eye out for opportunities to engage with alumni throughout the coming year as we work to increase dialogue, student success and access in Honors.

Original Honors College Concept

In 2014, we were guided by the benefits we sought to provide by forming an Honors College on this campus. Those included:

  • Emphasizing academic rigor along with exploration, creativity, and discovery
  • Providing Honors students individualized advising and priority enrollment
  • Engaging students in intellectual dialogue and real-world problems
  • Facilitating undergraduate research across campus
  • Preparing students for top graduate schools, competitive national scholarships, and leadership roles in professional careers
  • Supporting interdisciplinary courses and curriculum development
  • Serving as a curricular laboratory for faculty to experiment with course design and content

Today I ask you: Are we meeting these goals? And what should our new goals and strategies be as we chart a path for the next 10 years?

College Playbook

We have a College Playbook that aligns our work with university and presidential priorities, particularly with the university-wide initiative to promote student success, persistence and graduation rates.

Our priorities and strategies include aiming to:

  • Spark the interest of diverse student populations by creating course content that speaks to their cultural experiences and realities
    • Over the past three years, faculty have challenged students intellectually and professionally by developing new courses including Black Lives Matter, History of Genocide, multiple service-learning opportunities in courses and experiences such Leadership Academy and BILL’S Trip, new first-year seminars over the past four years, and a course that is offered in honors because a student asked a faculty member to teach it - War: Strategic Studies.
    • If there’s a course or topic you want to see in our schedule, talk to faculty members. Let us know. We want to know what issues and ideas are most interesting to you, to be in dialogue with our ideas and interests.
  • Increase connections to community partners, including increasing connections to the neighborhood around our campus
  • Increase access to undergraduate research and innovation pipeline programs for all students not only honors students
  • Increase funding for students with financial need. We’ve made some progress in the last three years
    • We are now able to award at least $1000 to every honors student with high financial need, and we hope to do more in future.
  • Increase outreach to current students, and we’ve made some progress in this area with email and phone outreach, visits to campus organizations
  • Design a first-year Honors experience that builds community
    • We created a new required Honors Colloquium that meets twice each semester for first-year students 

In that list you heard: intellectual, professional, service, connections, access, funding, outreach, experience - all guiding our work in Honors.  

Feedback for Looking Forward

Today we look forward to next year and beyond, and we hope throughout this year you'll share feedback that will help us meet your needs and ambitions.

On April 15, 2015, Dorothy and Bill Cohen made their naming gift to the Honors College official – and in their remarks that day, they said they wanted to continue to support the great ambitions of Wichita State University students. They wanted to support Honors to join knowledge and innovation to grow visionaries.

You are those visionaries they speak of. They want you to dream big dreams, and it is our job to help make those dreams a reality. We will succeed sometimes and fail sometimes, and we want you to help us get better. I’ve given you some big picture questions and strategies that we are working on.

  • Do you have an idea? Talk to one of the faculty or student council members. We’d be happy to hear from you.

Please let us know what matters to you!

Signature of Kimberly Engber

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