Honors Open Meeting

Honors Open Meeting

On Monday, March 9^th, a large group of Pforzheimer Honors College students assembled in Gottesman for the Honors Open Meeting. Dr. Benton encouraged the students to have some ice cream and then introduced the guest speaker, Dr. Shelia Chiffriller from the Psychology Department.

Dr. Chiffriller explained to the group how her research on domestic violence issues had centered on the violent husband instead of the woman victim. She made a good point by saying that most domestic violence cases revolved around the victim and people often wonder what the wife did to upset her husband, or what she was doing to make him hit her. Dr. Chiffriller, instead, wondered what was wrong with the abuser, what made him do the things that he did.

            In most research Dr. Chiffriller read, there were two or three categories that described the men who abused. Dr. Chiffriller used a different method than others had used in the past and then categorized her subjects into five different groups.

            After she finished her very interesting lecture, the room applauded and it was obvious that the Psychology department will have many more Honors students in Dr. Chiffriller’s classes next fall.

            Dr. Benton then asked all the faculty to leave the room and the Honors students gave their very honest opinions about what classes they liked and did not like. There was a lot of discussion about making a class that allowed the students learn about something, like Art History, and then actually do what they learned, like create a sculpture or a painting. Then there was discussion about what we would like to do for Honors events and museums were a big discussion topic. Though many people voted to take a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, if you would like to go earlier, Dr. Benton will be speaking there in May on France’s chateaux and England’s castles.