Coordinator's Corner: Recapping the 2022 Bing Honors College and Looking Forward to the 30th Anniversary

On September 6^th of 2022, Vice Provost Sarah Church welcomed 70 honors students back to campus for the Bing Honors College (BHC). The Vice Provost kicked off Bing Honors College by discussing how Peter Bing wanted to provide students a sense of community and support as they wrote their theses. Together with his wife Helen, he endowed the Bing Honors College to ensure that students could get a jumpstart on their theses and find a community of fellow writers to support their efforts.

Last fall's opening ceremony at the Faculty Club was an opportunity for students from more than 30 departments and programs to meet with their BHC cohorts and faculty leaders. PWR Faculty Director, Adam Banks, spoke about the opportunity that BHC offered for students to build a squad of fellow students and faculty who would support them through the research and writing challenges throughout the year. During the two weeks of BHC (which takes place annually in early September), students and faculty worked to build those bonds and launch the thesis writing process through workshops, writing groups, short writing assignments, field trips, archival visits, and cohort lunches.

Faculty leaders for each cohort plan a curriculum tailored to the needs of beginning researchers in their specific field. In some fields, students have been working on their projects in a lab for the Summer or have written a detailed proposal in a Junior-year honors course. In other fields, student projects may be in very early stages. In Biology and Human Biology, faculty leaders Jamie Iman and Jennifer Wolfe work with students to refine their projects, craft a literature review, and create posters to present their proposed research projects. Thomas Mullaney brought History students to archives on campus and across the Bay Area. In some cases, he worked with faculty in other disciplines—such as Kyoko Sato in STS or Alice Staveley in English—to create cross cohort workshops. The Economics and Public Policy cohort met each day for lunch with faculty leader Marcelo Clerici-Arias. During lunch, they discussed research questions, worked through challenges, and set individual goals for each day. Across cohorts, faculty leaders and TAs provide students support in the early stages of thesis project development and help create the communities that support students throughout the year.

Bing Honors College also supports students by providing BHC wide workshops and write-ins. Despite a heat wave during September, dozens of students joined us at the Hume Center Lounge for workshops on Writing Productivity and on Digital Tools for Research (lead by Jennie Stonaker). Our Graduate Resident Assistant, Candice Kim, hosted write-ins at both the Hume Center and our dorm throughout BHC.

On September 22^nd, we returned to the Faculty Club for our closing ceremony. The 70 students from the opening ceremony were joined by 10 additional CISAC students who spent the first part of BHC in Washington, DC. At the event, students from Biology and Human Biology shared their research projects through poster presentations, and one student from each of the cohorts gave a short, two-minute pitch to describe their proposed thesis project. Finally, the closing ceremony also offered an opportunity to thank Sarah Pittock for her six years as BHC Director.

Last year, I served as BHC Coordinator as the outgoing Coordinator, Sarah Pittock, carefully guided us through the planning process. This will be my first full year as BHC Director. Together with the BHC Team (Cindy Duong, Jasmine Hernandez & Michelle Bercow), we are now planning for the September 2023 Bing Honors College, which will run from September 5^th through September 21^st. We have 14 proposed cohorts from 23 departments and programs. Our cohorts include:

• AAAS, CCSRE, & FGSS 
• Art History/Film Studies
• Bio/HumBio
• CISAC
• Economics & Public Policy
• Electrical Engineering
• English
• Philosophy, Religious Studies, & Ethics in Society
• Education
• History
• International Relations & Political Science
• Science, Technology, and Society (STS)
• Sociology & Urban Studies
• Symbolic Systems

This year's BHC will be a particularly special one: the first Bing Honors College took place in 1993, so this year will mark the 30^th anniversary. While I don’t have access to all three decades of enrollment data, across these years BHC has supported well over a thousand Stanford students with the challenges of researching and writing an honors thesis. Just a few weeks ago we opened registration for this year's program.  We're excited to welcome this new cohort and set them up for success in their honors projects in their senior year.