Dehority Event Helps Honors Student Build Class Schedules
(Trinoskey, 2025 News & Notes)
On Wednesday, March 26th, the Honors College hosted its Pizza with Professors. The event gave students the opportunity to meet honors professors, discuss the classes they will offer in Summer and Fall 2025, and indulge in fresh Hotbox pizza. During the event, tables filled the Dehority lobby as professors gave out information about their classes, with topic areas ranging from Golden Age literature to selfies to James Bond.
Dr. David Roof, an honors professor whose favorite pizza topping is pepperoni, had a table at the event where he advertised his HONR 390 class, “Citizenship, Community, and Leadership.”
When asked for an elevator pitch, Roof offered, “It focuses on engaged citizenship, democracy, and the idea of living a purposeful life: that living a good life is about commitment to others and social responsibility. My experience has been that students really resonate and find a lot of value asking those questions.”
Many professors enjoy how teaching an honors class allows them to break outside of the traditional curriculums and design a class based on their personal interests. For Dr. Roof, the connection is personal: “I was in an honors program in my undergrad and those are the classes and experiences I find myself reflecting on, so I really became passionate about trying to create that same experience here.”
Among the students in attendance was Gunter Dhot, a first-year marketing major whose favorite pizza topping is chicken. Last semester, he enjoyed Dr. Robin Blom’s class on the Nobel Prize, saying that “everything I did went a little badly, but I know trying again I would do better, and it would be awesome.”
On what he is looking for in an honors class, Dhot stated, “Something I’ve never thought of before, I’m genuinely interested in, and brings up a new discussion […] It makes [the class] fun in a way where I can genuinely enjoy the essays I’m doing for it.”
As class registration continues to open, events like Pizza with Professors make building a schedule a less intimidating process. Face-to-face interactions with professors give students the chance to shop for classes in a way that goes beyond the otherwise impersonal scheduling software. When asked why he is staying with the Honors College, Dhot replied, “Because of things like this. I get to hang out with the professors, enjoy pizza, engage in the community, and then go to classes where I learn actual interesting things other than algebra and economics.”