What is the Honors Institute?

What is the significance of the Honors Institute topic?

Who is Dr. Wangari Maathai?

Who is Tony Hall?

What will happen at the Institute Symposium?

How does the Honors Institute affect the Miami Valley?

What is the location and date of Dr. Maathai's keynote address?

What is the location and date of the Honors Institute Symposium?

How can I find out more information about the keynote address and symposium?

What is the Honors Institute?

The Honors Institute is a multi-track learning experience that includes a provocative community event. Its purpose is to prepare Honors students to think beyond their academic training and to make it a habit of incorporating this training into larger, humanistic considerations of the common good. Focusing each year on a different contemporary intellectual issue of ethical importance, the Institute consists of:

• two interdisciplinary Honors seminars.
• a civic engagement project for Honors seminar students.
• a community keynote address, free and open to the public, delivered by a figure of national or international prominence.
• a community day-long symposium, free and open to the public, consisting of small, intensive discussion sessions run by regional experts and humanities scholars.
  

What is the significance of the Honors Institute topic?

According to sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University, we have a "moral obligation to provide every American with a decent life." And yet, despite the persistence of poverty in our communities, we seem to remain in what Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter calls a state of "passive indifference." The Institute Keynote Address and Symposium will serve as a forum to sensitize the public to the plight of our impoverished citizens. Participants will be called on to analyze, from a humanistic perspective, the state of poverty, and exchange ideas about how to creatively and effectively build healthy, inclusive communities with vitality and opportunities for all. Some of the questions to be analyzed and considered include:

• What is it like to be hungry and poor? In other words, what is the subjective experience of poverty?
• Have we as a community thought enough about these subjective conditions, i.e. mental illness, physical illness, a sense of isolation, helplessness, and shame?
• Why do we tend to blame the poor for their situation?
• Do we have a moral obligation to provide all citizens with a decent life? Why?
• How can we think through the elements of our culture that contribute to the conditions of poverty (e.g., our education system, healthcare system, mass media representation, race and gender inequities)?
• What kinds of action can we take to establish healthy communities and end poverty?
• How do we sensitize our fellow citizens to the issue of poverty and motivate them to make change?

The topic of poverty is especially timely and urgent. The rate of poverty in the US, currently at 12.7%, is the highest in the developed world and is more than twice as high as in most other industrialized countries. At 37 million, the number of US citizens living in poverty equals the population of Canada. According to many experts in the field, one of the primary causes of poverty is not unemployment but low wages insufficient for covering the most basic needs - food, shelter, healthcare, and childcare. The disparity between rich and poor has widened in the past forty years. As Amy Glasmeier, author of An Atlas of Poverty in America, notes, the US is "a nation pulling apart." For example, in 1965, CEOs made 24 times as much as the average worker; by 2003, they earned 185 times as much. But poverty is not only an economic issue; it cuts across race and gender lines. Compared to 8% of the white population, 22% of the Hispanic and 25% of the African-American populations live in poverty. Poverty also affects women and children in larger numbers. According to the Children°s Defense Fund, 1 in 5 children are born poor. As the disaster and tragedy of Hurricane Katrina clearly demonstrates, poverty in the US is a persistent problem that seriously compromises our national integrity.

Who is Dr. Wangari Maathai?

The first woman from Africa to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Wangari Maathai has worked over the past 30 years to empower peasant farmers, promote democratic values, and establish a more equitable balance of power between women and men in her native Kenya. The Green Belt Movement, a grassroots nongovernmental organization pioneered by Dr. Maathai, has aided local communities in establishing over 6,000 tree nurseries. In December 2002, with 98% of the vote in Kenya’s first free and fair election in decades, Dr. Maathai was elected to Kenya’s Parliament. She was subsequently appointed by Kenya’s president as Assistant Minister for the Environment. In her January 30 address, Dr. Matthai will share her experience and expertise in combating poverty and creating healthy communities in her native Kenya. Dr. Maathai will speak on "Empowerment and the Escape from Poverty."More information on Dr. Maathai...

Who is Tony Hall?

Three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, the longest serving US congressional representative from the third district of Ohio from 1978-2002, and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, Tony P. Hall is one of the leading advocates for hunger relief programs and improving international human rights conditions in the world. Ambassador Hall, author of the book Changing the Face of Hunger, is currently senior advisor for Opportunity International's "$1 Billion for 100 Million People," a microfinance program that will provide small business 100 million people in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Ambassador Hall will speak on "Changing the Face of Poverty." More information on Tony Hall...

What will happen at the Institute Symposium?

The Institute Symposium on Poverty and Society will consist of a combination of inquiry and action sessions:

• Morning sessions will be facilitated by regional academic experts on the following topics: poverty and education; poverty and health; and poverty, race, and gender.
• The luncheon will feature Ambassador Tony Hall's address.
• Afternoon sessions, called “Transformative Visions,” will be devoted to action-oriented workshops facilitated by representatives from community organizations.

How does the Honors Institute affect the Miami Valley?

The Wright State University Honors Institute was created to respond to a number of needs, the most salient being the importance of producing graduates who are creatively and civically engaged in their community-who exercise what philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls a "civic imagination." The population of Dayton has declined steadily in recent years, most notably since 2000. Ohio overall has had difficulty retaining college-educated citizens and is lagging behind the nation in what is now referred to as a "knowledge economy." Unlike Ohio's former manufacturing economy, the "knowledge economy" requires a highly educated, well-rounded, and community-focused citizenry. According to Richard Florida, whose book The Rise of the Creative Class has influenced urban planning all over the nation (most locally in Dayton's Tech Town run by Citywide Development Corporation), "the key to regional growth lies not in reducing the costs of doing business but in endowments of highly educated and productive people." It is in this context that the WSU Honors Program created the Honors Institute.

What is the location and date of Dr. Maathai's keynote address?

Dr. Maathai's keynote address will be held on Tuesday, January 30, 2007, at 7:00 p.m. in the Apollo Room of the Student Union on the Wright State University Main campus in Dayton, Ohio. No ticket is required for Dr. Maathai's address.

What is the location and date of the Honors Institute Symposium?

The Honors Institute Symposium will be held on Wednesday, January 31, 2007, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the WSU Student Union. Lunch will be provided. Online registration for the Institute Symposium will be available starting November 1, 2006. Click here to register.

How can I find out more information about the keynote address and symposium?

Additional information is available at the Honors Institute Web site: www.wright.edu/honorsinstitute.