Top News

Teach for America

Four Honors College students have been selected into the highly competitive national Teach for America program, an organization which selects talented recent graduates and professionals to teach for two years in low income communities. The students, Chris Costello, Henry Leo Melcher, Julia Risk, and Dennis Robillard, are seniors scheduled to graduate in May ’08. We had a chance to talk to each of them about their selection to TFA, and to ask a few questions about the application process and their teaching plans. What comes across clearly in their responses is how much each considers it an honor to have been selected for TFA, and a privilege to participate in this worthwhile endeavor. We on the E-Newsletter staff hope that reading what they have to say will spur other students in the Honors College to consider following their path upon graduation. Interview with Teach for America students

Daedalus String Quartet

The Honors College played host the afternoon of March 28th to the acclaimed Daedalus String quartet, which was in town for UVM’s Lane Music Series. They would be performing that night in concert at the UVM recital hall with the young African American pianist, Awadagin Pratt. The Quartet-in-Residence at Columbia University since 2005 and visiting quartet at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006, they’ve won several prestigious music awards since their founding in 2000. The Quartet was the second group from the Lane Music Series to make a special appearance at the Honors College, following that in the fall of the master Kora musician and Grammy nominee, Mamadou Diabate. Daedalus String Quartet Visit

V. Gene Robinson - Plenary Lecture

A few minutes after beginning his UVM Honors College plenary lecture on Religion and Ethics, V. Gene Robinson, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, and the state’s Ninth Bishop, paused, looked out at his audience of students and faculty in Carpenter Auditorium, and declared, “What’s truth for me may not be truth for you.” His audience, surprised by a statement so out of character from one they might have expected him to say, waited for him to continue. Robinson promptly provided context, casting his view of the truth in contrast to that of the ‘religious right.’ “The problem with the religious right, for me,” he said, “is that they want to tell you what the truth is.” He continued, “Only trouble arises when any one says, as the religious right does, that their truth is The Truth.” With these words echoing through the hall, Bishop Robinson tackled a number of contemporary ethical issues head on, from abortion to the war in Iraq, his goal, he said, to provide a model for ethical decision making within a religious framework.
Robinson Plenary