ORONO, Maine — Thomas Schwartz of Amesbury, Mass., could have attended just about any university in the Northeast. The 22-year-old with a double major in chemical engineering and bioengineering chose the University of Maine because of its Honors College.
“This program allowed me to do meaningful research as an undergraduate,” Schwartz said Friday at the 75th anniversary celebration for the Honors College. “The way I was fostered through the Honors College already has been quite fruitful.”
The 2010 UMaine graduate had a paper titled “Thermal Deoxygenation of Levulinic Acid” published Friday by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London. Another paper is scheduled to be published later this year in a different publication, and Schwartz has a patent pending, he said.
Schwartz and about 40 other alumni from the Honors College attended a dinner Friday at Wellman Commons on the Orono campus to celebrate one of the nation’s first programs to emphasize interdisciplinary study in small-group settings.
Keynote speaker Robert Edwards, the former president of Bowdoin College, said that what the world needs in the 21st century are more people who have the skills to build bridges between the Age of Reason, embraced primarily by the Western world, and the devotion to religious idealism in other parts of the globe.
“We need leaders with enough intellect to grasp the dispute between Shia and Sunni Muslims,” Edwards said, “and who can better understand that it is not a war of the minds.”
The Honors Program at UMaine, founded in the early 1930s within the College of Arts and Sciences, is one of the oldest in the country. It was one of just six programs for undergraduates when it was founded in 1935, according to information on the Honors College website written in the 1980s. The program officially became the Honors College in 2002, when Peter Hoff was president of the university. A year earlier, Hoff outlined the need for the college in the 21st century.
“Our society and its security and prosperity depend on citizens and leaders who understand the history and perspective of peoples, cultures, and conditions, and who have the skills to solve problems creatively, communicate and work with others, use technology effectively, complete projects successfully, and adapt to rapid change in a global society,” he said.
Cecil J. Reynolds, an English professor who was involved in the Honors Program for four decades, summarized its philosophy. “The aim of honors at Maine was and is, in my opinion, to mitigate to a healthy degree the less admirable effects of too narrow specialization by those who, as leaders of tomorrow, may be called on to make or influence decisions both public and private involving an ever-increasing variety of factors,” he said. “A pressing need in our complex civilization is a rapid increase in the numbers of those who can mediate sympathetically between strongly held points of view. Unlike some other programs, ours did not propose to produce specialists even more specialized than our contemporaries but to broaden the function of a liberal education even for specialists.”
What Reynolds said more than 20 years ago remains true for what is now the Honors College, according to Charles Slavin, its current dean.
Aislinn Sarnacki, 22, of Winterport transferred to UMaine after a year at Simmons College in Boston. Sarnacki, who just earned her degree in journalism, was worried she would not be intellectually challenged at UMaine. Those doubts were erased when she became part of the Honors College.
“When we got out of class,” she said Friday, “students were still talking about the text. That didn’t happen in my other classes. It was nice to be with fellow bookworms.”
Students in the program attend small seminar-type classes their first two years called “Civilizations: Past, Present and Future.” In their third year, most Honors College students enroll in one or two of the dozen tutorials offered which allow them to explore interdisciplinary topics. Others spend their third year abroad or in internships. In their final year, students write a thesis similar to those required for master’s degree candidates.
“The intense supervision of my honors thesis was the most important academic experience of my life,” James E. Tierney, 63, of Lisbon Falls said in 2002. “My adviser’s personal guidance and insistence that I couple precise research with creative and original thought has served as a benchmark for me for over 30 years.”
Tierney graduated in 1969 from UMaine with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He graduated from the University of Maine School of Law in Portland several years later. He served as Maine attorney general from 1980 to 1990. Tierney was a lecturer in the Honors program in the 2001-2002 academic year.
One student who was in the honors program during the early years went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. Dr. Bernard Lown, 89, of Newton, Mass., graduated from UMaine in 1942 with a degree in zoology.
“The intellectual impact has not wanted to this day. It broadened my horizon immeasurably, enabling me to commune with the substantial ideas for diverse ages and cultures,” Lown said for a brochure about the college. “That early seeding of ideas has resulted in a sumptuous harvest, enriching my life to this day.”
Lown went on to become a renowned cardiac surgeon in Boston and with other physicians from the U.S. and the former Soviet Union founded International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
For information about the Honors Program at the University of Maine, visit www.umaine.edu/honors.