The Honors Program at Minnesota State - Mankato
"The Honors Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato is committed to supporting motivated undergraduate students by providing them with exceptional learning opportunities, mentoring relationships, and a supportive community that fosters their personal, academic, and professional development."
The primary goal of this program is for students to grow in three main competency areas. These include leadership, research, and intercultural engagement. Experiences in each of these areas are provided through the honors program, although students also have the opportunity to develop their own experiences. Students demonstrate their work in each competency through this electronic portfolio.
Check out my Experiences!
How I used my current leadership values as well as adapting and growing to guide a group toward a common goal.
The stories and frustrations of conducting your own research and building knowledge from such experiences.
How I gained self awareness of my own cultural values and reflected on the cultural differences and similarities of people from different backgrounds.
Why I Chose The Honors Program
Why Honors Essay (201)
I chose to join the honors program at Minnesota State Mankato because I feel as though it will challenge me academically and socially. This program will challenge me academically by introducing me to students with a similar mindset regarding school. A similar mindset could mean we are equally hard workers and have similar intellectual ability. These characteristics can allow us to bounce ideas off each other or allow us to edit and critique each other’s work. Additionally, through the research competency, I will challenge my academic ability in my field. Socially, I hope the Intercultural Engagement competency encourages me to immerse myself in a culture completely different from my own.
The leadership competency will help me to become a better leader in school and in the workforce. In my current job, I will use leadership skills developed in the Honors program to be successful in my new position as a customer service manager. In my future career I will use my leadership skills to educate people about animals or lead a team of researchers.
Overall, I joined the honors program to push my limits academically and socially. The program will improve my leadership skills. It will allow me to learn about others different from myself. Honors will also encourage me to meet other students that I can discuss academic opinions and social opinions with.
Why I Remain in the Honors Program (375)
The Honors Program has provided me with many valuable opportunities and experiences even in the short time I have been involved. I have met many people from different walks of life and found a community that I will always feel welcomed in. This program has also challenged me to work on my strengths and acknowledge my weaknesses.
To begin, the community events and spaces provided by honors have encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone. I have always enjoyed meeting new people; the Honors Program has made this a very simple task. I have made the effort to make it to many honors events such as the picnic in the fall and trivia nights. Each time I walk in the door I see a friendly face asking how I am doing. If it was not for this welcoming community, I would not have remained in this program, but the kind people make me want to keep coming back.
The experiences we complete for the Honors Program has motivated me in many ways. I have always wanted to take on a research project, without the honors program I likely would have done something simple. Honors have encouraged me to expand upon the simplicity of my research with presentations and this has allowed me to reflect while I am conducting research. I have thought about what my future research should look like based on the challenges I am currently having. For example, I am conducting research where we count the number of wheel spins mice perform every five days. The counters are not good quality and tend to be inaccurate or disconnect often. This has shown me that it will be important to do research on the materials you are using before conducting research. Further, it will be beneficial to have funding for a project to obtain the money for proper materials.
Overall, the Honors Program has had a great impact on my college experience. I have found a community I can always feel welcome in, and I have challenged myself in numerous ways through the experiences I have always envisioned in college.
How the Honors Program Influenced my Character
When I first began the Honors Program in fall 2021, I wanted to challenge myself academically and socially. The Honors Program has facilitated multiple areas of growth academically and socially through attending culture events, conducting research, and connecting with others. The program also brought many other advantages to my future career and college experience such as a potential future research publication and leadership skills I gained.
In simple terms, this program challenged me academically by holding my grades at a high level, encouraging me to get involved in research and taking classes to learn about cultures different than my own. Without the honors program, I would not have had the initiative to get heavily involved in research. Through this experience, I have had the opportunity to present my research twice, with a plan to present again at a national conference. This national conference will connect me to experts in my field which could lead to future career opportunities. Aside from the knowledge of the research process, these presentations provided me valuable leadership experience and confidence in public speaking. Further, I took American Sign Language as a general education course without knowing the impact it would have on my character. I learned about Deaf culture; a language can mean more than just words and there are many discriminations against this community like other cultures. I furthered my knowledge on the subject by reading True Biz by Sara Nović and watching a film called “A Silent Voice”. These pop culture sources allowed me to reflect on the way I act towards people and to stand up for those that are not being treated with kindness and respect. A simple action like trying to get hearing aids for people who are deaf, while seemingly helpful on the outside, is degrading the culture of the Deaf community.
Similarly, the social community honors has provided made it easy to form connections with peers and staff members in the program as well as professors in my department. It was difficult for me to make friends during high school. It took time for me to find people I connected with, but college was a fresh start. The honors program immediately immersed me with other peers that were academically motivated and challenged me to improve. Peers I have connected with freshman year are still around to support me as I defend my portfolio. When I encounter stressful weeks, I go for a snack in the honors community lounge, I am always greeted with a friendly face asking how I am doing. I am incredibly thankful the honors program has enabled these connections.
The first experience I completed was in the leadership competency as a Customer Service Manager at Cub Foods. During this experience, leadership meant leading a team towards a common goal and ensuring every member was scheduled for a break. I also handled large amounts of money by bringing it carefully back to the safe. I checked in with members of the team to provide care and comfort as I felt that was important due to my previous experience as a subordinate. I then observed ineffective leadership styles through my time as a member of the Global Wildlife Club. As the second member of a small group, I learned the trials and tribulations of starting a new club in college. Early on when a few others had joined, the leader asked what activities the club may want to do, he listened to suggestions, but they were not recorded anywhere. This snowballed into a greater issue when activities were repetitive and not engaging for the other members. I quickly discovered the importance of listening when leading and working with a team. Members can get discouraged or leave if they do not feel valued. My third leadership experience occurred during the summer before my senior year where I was an Avian intern at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota. I worked in medical care for injured and orphaned birds on a team with other interns and volunteers. Often interns guided volunteers with questions or when issues occurred. I noticed the way other interns spoke in negative tones to volunteers and to each other. I had moments when I did the same in stressful situations, but I pushed myself to have a substantial amount of patience. Thanking people for the work they had done helped to form a positive environment where people felt valued. Overall, the leadership competency instilled values such as organization, patience, listening skills, and courtesy when working on a team. These guide people forward in a positive manner while ensuring each person feels important to the common goal. My leadership philosophy going forward utilizes my skills as identified my StrengthsFinder results to stay organized toward a common goal, find what makes team members unique and delegate those skills to particular roles, and use listening skills to resolve differences. I look forward to using these skills as leader of a research team with people of all expertise; some may work better in collecting data whereas others have strengths in analyzing data.
I began working in research in my third year of college, I expected to be working on a team but ended up working on my own project. I became skilled in working independently with my professor’s supervision. I enhanced my patience skills when working with a new data processing software program. Presenting my research made me nervous and concerned I did not know all the information I should have; I got many questions I did not know the answer to. I used “I am not sure” type responses and provided the information I did know. After presenting, I made sure I knew the answers to things I was unsure of. The speaking skills I learned at a conference style included more summaries of my research than I expected.
The knowledge I had of other cultures before my intercultural engagement experiences was low, but I understood various oppression and mistreatment. I knew how to manage and use my voice to stand up for what was right. I expanded this previous knowledge on a much deeper level through my experiences. To begin with, in my Minnesota Zoo volunteer role, I worked with many generations of people. I saw firsthand how the older generation was not used to using they/them pronouns for one of the volunteer coordinators. This was frustrating but encouraged me to be extremely diligent as a reminder to others and to give full respect. The three culture nights I attended allowed me to compare cultures in food, music, clothing and crafts. The Americanized culture that my family follows is much different. The food is greasier, the music tends to be more country or pop oriented and the crafts are made out of paper or string as opposed to beads or animal skins. There are also not many specific traditional outfits for each occasion but instead color schemes in my culture. A similarity amongst my own culture, the Spanish and the Native People is the importance of color and what it represents. Previously, to my intercultural engagement experiences, I have always struggled with how to help or when to not help people with disabilities. I now know from my ASL class and reading True Biz that there are different ways to approach people with disabilities and it is dependent on the person. In future interactions, I will ask if the person needs help or treat them as I would treat any other stranger.
Connections to Other Competencies:
Many of my experiences have involved multiple learning opportunities that blend with other competencies. My Minnesota Zoo Volunteering taught me leadership skills while talking to people on the trails. I was quite nervous that people would get annoyed when I approached to talk about the animals. I quickly saw the positive impact other volunteers had on guests and started to brush off the negative thoughts. Responding to questions I did not know the answer to also became a skill of mine. This is likely to occur when presenting research in the future or guiding a team of researchers. As a zoo volunteer, I did additional research beyond required training for knowledge of the animals and habitats represented by the zoo. This constant learning and teaching information, which fits into the research competency, is a valuable skill for me to learn if I work in public education.
The roles I possessed at Cub Foods and being an intern at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center also included intercultural aspects. At Cub, I worked with people of various ethnicities, dialects, and ages. I noticed instances of agism where older workers and even customers concluded they had greater knowledge. For example, a customer ridiculed me for not being able to do simple math because “they do not teach that stuff in school anymore”. What he did not know was that my mom spent a lot of time practicing simple math with play money; a long day was the cause for my poor math. Similarly, the volunteers I worked with at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center varied in age from teenagers to middle-aged to older folks. I discovered differing knowledge and experiences based on ages or how people interacted with each other. People with like-ages gravitated toward each other yet there was uniformity and kindness no matter the age.
In conclusion, without the Honors Program I would not have dived deep into experiencing other cultures through firsthand encounters and knowledge from books. These have sparked interest in other events that I strive to go to as time allows. I may find these events by newspaper, social media postings, or searching on Google. Further, having a partner that works for the city and has similar interests, he may suggest events to attend. These experiences challenged me socially. I am proud of the toxicology mice research I have conducted and look forward to pursuing a publication after graduation. I feel confident I know my leadership values which can be applied when overcoming challenges within a team and if there are issues with the current leader. My research and leadership experiences challenged me academically. I look forward to expanding my goals after the honors program to challenge my character further through cultural experiences, academia in a master’s program, and leading a team of researchers.