Phi Theta Kappa to Host Honors Institute at San Francisco State University
Jackson, MS - Phi Theta Kappa, the International Honor Society for Two-Year
Colleges, will hold its annual Honors Institute at San Francisco State
University June 16-21. The Honors Institute provides a weeklong opportunity
for participants to hear challenging speakers address various aspects
of the Society's interdisciplinary Honors Study Topic, engage in stimulating
small-group discussions, and enjoy scholarly fellowship with their peers
from Phi Theta Kappa chapters throughout the world.
"Our International
Honors Institute is the 'crown jewel' of honors programming. It affords
chapter members and advisors the opportunity to spend a week in intensive
study of our Honors Study Topic," said Susan Edwards, Phi Theta Kappa's
Director of Honors Programs. "Participants will also have the opportunity
to study and discuss the interconnection of our Society's Hallmarks of
scholarship, leadership, service, and fellowship that we call the Phi
Theta Kappa Experience and the ways in which their study can translate into
Honors in Action programs that benefit their colleges and communities."
Speakers
at the Honors Institute will explore the 2008-2010 Honors Study Topic,
The Paradox of Affluence: Choices, Challenges, and Consequences.
The program will include the following lectures:
Selfish
Reasons to Become a Better Person
Gregg Easterbrook is the author
of numerous books including, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better
While We Feel Worse. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, has called The
Progress Paradox " a book you must read, because it tells the truth about
America today." He also serves as the contributing editor of The Atlantic
Monthly, The New Republic and the Washington Monthly,
a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a columnist for ESPN.com.
The
Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf
Coast
Dr. Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history and fellow
at the James A. Baker, III Institute at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and American Heritage,
and author of The New York Times bestsellers Tour of Duty,
The Boys of Pointe du Hoc, and Parish Priest. He is also the
author of books on subjects ranging from Rosa Parks to Jimmy Carter and The
Majic Bus: An American Odyssey.
The Overworked and
Overspent American: The Paradox of Affluence
Dr. Juliet Schor
is professor of sociology and department chair at Boston College. Schor
is the author of the national best-seller, The Overworked American:
The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, The Overspent American: Upscaling,
Downshifting and the New Consumerism, and Born to Buy: The Commercialized
Child and the New Consumer Culture. Her forthcoming book is
Consumerism and its Discontents.
Pathways out
of Poverty through Green Collar Jobs: The Role of Scholarship in Improving
Quality of Life for Urban Residents
Dr. Raquel Pinderhughes
is professor of urban studies at San Francisco State University. Her teaching,
research and community activism focus on improving quality of life for
people living and working in cities. Her landmark study, Green Collar
Jobs: An Analysis of the Capacity of Green Business to Provide High Quality
Jobs for Men and Women with Barriers to Employment, is considered the
definitive work on the subject, and has been used as a model for various programs.
American Health Care: Cost, Choice, and Equity
John
R. Graham is Director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.
He is the author of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only project
to rank all 50 states' health laws and regulations according to free-market
principles; and the editor of a book addressing What States Can Do to
Reform Health Care: A Free Market Primer, to which he contributed a
chapter on pharmaceutical cost containment. He is also the primary author
of the monthly Health Policy Prescriptions series, and the Healthy
California series of briefing papers.
In addition, participants
will have the opportunity to see a the play Continental Divide in
a production of the Honors Institute Reader's Theatre directed by Laura
Taggett, professor of English at Lone Star College-CyFair in Texas; take
part in a town hall meeting on the issues led by Rob Carey, professor of biology
and physiology at Pima Community College in Arizona; and hear a presentation
on the Phi Theta Kappa Experience by Phi Theta Kappa program directors Susan
Edwards, Monika Byrd, and Jennifer Stanford. Attendees will also have
a free day to explore the city of San Francisco.
Additional program
information and a downloadable registration form are available on the
Phi Theta Kappa Honors Institute website.
Phi
Theta Kappa International Honor Society, headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi,
is the largest honor society in American higher education with 1,250 chapters
on two-year and community college campuses in all 50 of the United States,
Canada, Germany, the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, the British Virgin Islands, the United
Arab Emirates and U.S. territorial possessions. More than two million
students have been inducted since its founding in 1918, with approximately
100,000 students inducted annually.
