Category: Uncategorized

Hello! Here are the links for things mentioned recently on Instagram:

Microaggressions Workshop Sign-up

 

Dear UHP Students,

Over the last few months, UHP administrators and faculty have heard from members of our community expressing lack of support and alienation during their time in the UHP. We are actively listening to students about their experiences and what we hear motivates us to move more quickly to make necessary changes to ensure that each and every student is well supported and able to thrive and succeed in the UHP and at GW more broadly. We sincerely apologize to all of our students who have experienced alienation in our program, and we fully commit ourselves to doing better moving forward. We recognize these issues as urgent matters of justice that call for immediate action, our earnest care, and ongoing commitment. We are thankful to the many students who have shown great leadership in continuing to call for change and we want our UHP community to understand that addressing these issues will be a top priority in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

As we continue to work to create a more diverse and inclusive UHP, we want to inform you of our immediate, short-term, and long-term goals for our program as a whole. Below you will find an initial roadmap for our work, which includes some of the program’s priorities and will be modified and updated as the UHP Diversity & Inclusion Committee develops additional ideas.     

Immediate Goals (Summer 2020)

• Implementation of a self-governed Diversity & Inclusion Committee 
• Participation in #GWInSolidarity by faculty and staff
• Anti-bias training for peer advisors (followed by continued discussion)
• Ongoing curriculum discussion amongst the core faculty
• Begin to work on improving student awareness of GW’s Bias Incident Response system  

Short Term Goals (2020-2021 Academic Year)

• Anti-bias training for faculty, staff and students (followed by continued discussions)
• Improved first-year and general community building
• Working with Admissions to more clearly define our admissions criteria and to improve advertising of the UHP to students applying to GW (including an improved UHP website)
• UHP website page dedicated to reporting on ongoing Diversity and Inclusion initiatives
• Ongoing curriculum updates to first-year courses
• Ongoing discussions between UHP students, administration and faculty to improve diversity, inclusion and belonging with the goal of building trust in our UHP community

Long Term Goals

• Sustaining a welcoming community through programming, yearly anti-bias training, and continued collaborative D&I discussions
• Recruiting and retaining a more diverse student body and faculty
• More variety in UHP upper-level course offerings

We also want to share with you that during the summer, we held our first UHP Diversity & Inclusion Committee meetings. Our conversations were open, honest, and productive. The group is developing a non-hierarchical organization so that students, faculty, and staff have an equal voice in raising concerns, discussing issues, and making recommendations to the program. The faculty and administration who participated in these initial conversations are particularly grateful for the candor of our student participants, and we welcome any additional students who would like to become members of the committee at any time (simply complete this brief form). We will keep the UHP community as a whole updated on the progress of the committee through a minimum of one report per semester (which will be posted on our blog and announced through the weekly Honors NewsFlash).  

In solidarity,
The UHP Administration & Faculty

Professor Maria Restrepo is teaching a second section of ‘Transitional Justice’ (Self & Society course) in the fall. Read more here.

There is still lots of time to add a new course to your fall schedule! Professor Jeffrey Spike will be teaching a brand new Honors Self & Society course titled “Ethics in Public Health”. You can read the course description here.

GW recently changed its policy to allow 5 days after you receive your final grades to change to a P/NP grade mode. This also includes honors courses. If you would like to change your honors course grade mode to P/NP, please submit a grade mode change form to uhp@gwu.edu up to five days after you receive your final grade. 

Please note that some P/NP courses may move to a Degree Map block called “Not Counted.” This means that normally the course must have a letter grade to fulfill the requirement. If this happens, please do not worry. The registrar’s office must manually change all of these; they will get to it! We will also be monitoring honors courses to make sure any are corrected as quickly as possible.  

As always, let us know if you have any questions!

Calling all budding philosophers! In case you didn’t know, Origins & Evolution of Modern Thought fulfills Philosophy major/minor requirements: 

• HONR 1015 counts for PHIL 2111 (History of Ancient Philosophy) 
• HONR 1016 counts for a Philosophy elective, for both the major and minor. 

Also, this is a friendly reminder that if your SEAS program requires you to take PHIL 2135 (Ethics in Business and the Professions), that counts as one of your Arts & Humanities requirements. 

Check in with Ben or Brianna to learn more!

TODAY’S RIDDLE IS:

What tastes better

than it smells?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWERS:

What has a heart

that doesn’t beat?

First correct answer goes to Syndi Nadler with ARTICHOKES! And the best wrong answer goes to Bri Mirabile with “One of Medusa’s victims, or Edgar Allen Poe’s floor.” Tokens for you both!

Hey! It’s World Book Day. What are you reading? I’ve decided to finally dive into my growing Steinbeck collection that I have for some reason. Share!

TODAY’S RIDDLE IS:

Passed from parent to child,
Shared between siblings.
My importance is unquestioned,
though used more by others.
What am I?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWERS:

As a stone inside a tree,

I’ll help your words outlive thee.

But if you push me as I stand,

the more I move the less I am.

The correct answer was PENCIL and Jared got the first right answer. Cindy Y. wins best incorrect answer with a fossil! A Townhouse Token to you both!