Honors Student Experience

Q: How has the Honors College at SDSU influenced your current path?

A: Being part of the Honors College at SDSU changed my life. I started college fully intending to go on to professional school after graduation and study physical therapy. Then I started my Honors Independent Study. During my junior year, I worked with Dr. Scott Pedersen as my Independent Study faculty advisor developing and writing a dissection guide for the anatomy course at SDSU. By working on the dissection guide, I was able to deepen my knowledge and understanding of the human body, get practice writing clear and concise dissection instructions, and gain teaching experience. I loved the work and felt so fulfilled being in the anatomy lab. After completing my Independent Study, I realized I wanted to teach anatomy as my career. Now, I'm in graduate school training to one day be an anatomy professor.

Toby Uecker serves as the Dean of Students at SDSU.

How has the Honors College at SDSU influenced your current path?

“The simplest answer is that the Honors College is the biggest reason that I even attended SDSU, and the community that I had in Honors as an undergraduate formed my deepest connections to this place that is now both my alma mater and my professional home. It was Honors faculty and staff whom I came back to visit in the decade or so between graduating and coming back to work in Brookings, Honors friends I stayed in close contact with over the years, an Honors administrator who made sure I knew when a job opened up in SDSU Housing & Residential Life that matched my professional experiences. Beyond that, thought, the values I learned and lived in Honors shape the way I live and work today. The interdisciplinary of Honors gave me a wide-ranging toolkit for understanding the complex world around me. The relationships among students and faculty modeled for me how to get to know—and how to sincerely connect with—people across all sections of any community I’m a part of. The seminar-style of Colloquium and other Honors general education requirements gave me experience engaging in an array of group settings. Independent study taught me how to hold myself accountable for big projects and how to persevere when roadblocks come up. Honors didn’t solely dictate the path to where I am today, but it has been absolutely vital to shaping the way I approach that path and make choices along the way.”