Honors program students thrive with leadership from Ryan Diehl

By Pablo Sanchez
Online Editor

The Hutchinson Community College Honor’s Project is still going strong, nearly 25 years after its birth.

Ryan Diehl, HutchCC Curriculum and Program Improvement Coordinator, is the Honor’s Project Coordinator.

“The Honor’s Project dates back to the inception of the honor’s program, back in 1993 and 1994, and some of the students talked about how it’s a requirement of their scholarship,” Diehl said. “It’s tied to the Presidential, Presidential Gold and the Honors Merriment Scholarship.”

Diehl said a lot of the students are in the ED15H honors success seminar, and during the fall semester, students brainstorm different topics, and some students have majors that they want to go into.

Other students explore different fields, and Diehl’s role is to help them find a faculty mentor.

“They get together and start working in the spring, and what happens in the spring time, their very first assignment is to complete a proposal agreement with their faculty mentor,” Diehl said. “Then the honors sub committee reviews all the proposals, and then we offer feedback. We either approve them or approve them with some changes that need to be made, or we say ‘you need to come up with a better topic.’

“A majority of the time, it’s either approved or approved with a few changes. The only ones we rejected are projects they aren’t complicated. We try to look for creativity or some contributions to the field. It’s not something you go about and read a Wikipedia entry.”

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