The Honors Lecture of the Year is an annual event at Arkansas State University-Jonesboro. The Honors College is the main organizer for this event, but it is supported by a university-wide coalition of students, faculty, staff, and administrators. The Honors Lecture of the Year aims to stimulate campus discussion through academic discourse about an issue that affects higher education.

Honors Lecture of the Year

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

ASU Student Union, Auditorium

This year we will be hosting Annette Simmons who is the President of Group Process Consulting and author of several books, including “The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling” (named as one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time) and “Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins.” Simmons is a powerful keynote speaker and popular consultant evidenced by her client list which includes the Brookings Institution, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Microsoft, Time, Inc., NASA, the World Bank, Best Buy, and the YMCA. She has appeared on CNBC’s Power Lunch, NPR’s Market Watch, and she has been quoted in Fortune, Working Woman, Harvard Business Review, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post. For more information about Annette Simmons, please visit http://groupprocessconsulting.com/.

This lecture will cap a yearlong endeavor to promote “The Power of Story” which is our 2009-2010 theme for the NEW Honors Living-Learning Community that will open in August 2009. The Honors College will be sponsoring a yearlong series of “mini-lectures” in the new HLLC Smart Classroom Building not only for Honors students, but for the entire university community. The speakers will be both ASU faculty and members of the Jonesboro community that have a “story” to tell. Our aim is to educate and enlighten students, but also to encourage them to tell their own “story” during ASU’s Centennial Celebration and Jonesboro’s Sesquicentennial Celebration.

The Honors College of Arkansas State University-Jonesboro held its inaugural Honors Lecture with Dr. Mark Bauerlein, on Tuesday, February 10, 2009, at 7:00pm in the ASU Student Union Auditorium. A reception and book signing was held at the lecture’s conclusion. Dr. Bauerlein’s lecture was co-sponsored by the Honors College, the Graduate School, the College of Agriculture, the College of Business, the College of Communications, the College of Engineering, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the College of Nursing and Health Professions, the College of Sciences & Mathematics, the Student Government Association (SGA) Action Fund and the Honors College Association (HCA) at Arkansas State University-Jonesboro.

Dr. Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University. His newest book, "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future;Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30," was released in May 2008 and has been heralded by CNN, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal. Drawing upon exhaustive research, detailed portraits, and historical and social analysis, "The Dumbest Generation" argues that “the digital age stupefies young Americans” and lays out a compelling vision for how society can address the future. For more information about Dr. Bauerlein and his book, visit http://www.dumbestgeneration.com/.

Dr. Bauerlein’s other books include “Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906,” “Literary Criticism: An Autopsy,” and “Civil Rights Chronicle: The African American Struggle for Freedom.” Other books include “A Handbook of Literary Terms,” with Dana Gioia and X. J. Kennedy, “The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief,” and “Whitman and the American Idiom.” His articles and reviews have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Weekly Standard, Reason Magazine, Yale Review, Partisan Review, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Mark Bauerlein earned his doctorate in English at UCLA in 1988. He has taught at Emory since 1989, with a two-and-a-half year break in 2003-05 to serve as the director, Office of Research and Analysis, at the National Endowment for the Arts.