Oklahoma Christian University’s Honors program will welcome new leadership this May as Amanda Nichols steps in as director.
Current director Lindsey Long and provost Brian Starr made the decision to appoint her in December 2024. Long will finish out this school year and then step down from her position.
“I was contacted to see if I was interested in being Honors director next,” Nichols said.
She looks forward to using her new position to support the opportunities Honors presents to students.
“I’ve gotten to teach honors courses for several years now,” she said. “I enjoy working with the honors students and just, you know, there’s lots of discussions and talking about ideas. There’s a lot of things about the honors program I believe in, in terms of teaching them how to communicate very effectively—written-wise and verbally—like being able to give speeches and debating. Also just being able to have a group on campus that helps them kind of find their people—common interests and that type of thing.”
The Honors program at Oklahoma Christian provides students a rigorous interdisciplinary learning curriculum.
“It is one way we can provide some coursework for students that want an extra challenge,” Nichols said. “So that’s one way that Honors serves students. There’s an emphasis on interdisciplinary-type teaching, so trying to bring ideas from different disciplines together.”
Nichols plans to test new Honors classes in accordance with recent updates to core general education courses at Oklahoma Christian.*
“One of the things we’re mindful about is we are reassessing our current curriculum,” she said. “We’re gonna implement a few pilot classes for our incoming Honors freshmen in the fall and just kind of see how that works. That’s in response to the gen ed changing. With the new general ed core that’s getting implemented, one of the things we’re spending this next year doing is realigning the Honors curriculum to fit with the new gen ed curriculum. While Honors won’t be officially changing for another year, we are piloting and having some discussions.”
Nichols looks forward to meeting students in the program as she helps them with their studies.
“I would meet students,” she said. “There are some that took my section of Bible Science and Human Values, but I didn’t meet or even know who all the Honor students were. I think that part will be good. Just to kind of like meet and connect names and faces together and then just kind of know about them a little better and help with advisement.”
*Talon story about the changes to the core curriculum coming soon.
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