Laurie Johnson, professor of Germanic languages and literatures, is the new director of the Campus Honors Program (CHP).
Johnson has been serving as interim director of the program, which enrolls approximately 600 students and offers about 50 courses per year, in addition to a wide variety of co-curricular, extra-curricular, research, and travel programming, since May.
“Our students represent all colleges and a huge variety of majors on campus. The chance to work in a student-facing, campus-level program was irresistible,” said Johnson.
Johnson said while she would ultimately love to increase the number of students in the program, she’s also focusing on ways to scaffold some of the benefits and experiences that honors students receive to the wider undergraduate population at the U of I. She said CHP already pursues some best practices that have been shown to retain students and contribute to student success.
“Recently, the team leading the Student Success Initiative at Illinois asked how, instead of focusing on making students ‘college-ready,’ we can focus on making the university ‘student-ready,’” said Johnson. “What would that look like? I think a number of the practices we follow in CHP would be part of this, including seminar class sizes, robust funded research opportunities, and education abroad opportunities. Linking the work of CHP to the already great work going on in these areas in other units on campus is a primary goal.”
Johnson previously served as interim associate director of the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, and as director of undergraduate studies, director of graduate studies, and acting head of her home department, Germanic Languages and Literatures. She also has campus affiliations in the Program in Comparative and World Literature and Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory.
Johnson said her roles within SLCL and her home department of GLL have had everything to do with her interest in affecting positive institutional change.
“Our ability to continue researching, writing, and teaching depends on our undergraduates, and the experiences I've had within SLCL and LAS have convinced me that it's completely possible to enact concrete policies and practices that pull us out of the daily weeds and refocus us on our core missions,” said Johnson. “I'm very grateful that my current position, like past ones, allows me to continue teaching and interacting daily with our frankly amazing students.”
Lisa Monda-Amaya, interim vice provost for Undergraduate Education, said Johnson’s accomplishments as a teacher and scholar, along with her leadership expertise, make her an ideal leader for the program.
“She is committed to our goals of strengthening the program, broadening opportunities for faculty involvement, and enriching collaborative relationships between students and faculty,” said Monda-Amaya.
Dania De La Hoya Rojas