Outstanding undergraduates selected as Hall Center Scholars


LAWRENCE — Five outstanding KU undergraduates have been selected to serve as Hall Center Scholars for 2017-2018. They will have exclusive opportunities to interact with the well-known authors, scholars and public intellectuals who speak in the Hall Center Humanities Lecture Series. The scholars for 2017-18:

  • Emma Easom, junior, majoring in philosophy and Spanish
  • Zora Jenney, senior, majoring in English
  • Nellie Kassebaum, junior, undecided major
  • Korbin Painter, senior, majoring in history and Germanic studies
  • Katherine Schroeder, sophomore, majoring in history.

These students, whose interests represent a wide array of disciplines, will discuss works they may not have time or opportunity to discuss within their own classwork. They will participate in a faculty-guided book club, focusing on books and articles by Humanities Lecture Series speakers, and will also lunch privately with the speakers.

In conjunction with Blue Valley West High School, the Hall Center will host a Scholars project intended to reach out to area high school students. Once a semester, competitively selected students from Blue Valley West will take a field trip to attend a Humanities Lecture Series event and will interact with the current class of Scholars. The Scholars’ outreach will introduce the high school students both to the humanities and to KU, immersing them in the type of academic experience to which they could look forward as KU students. This year, the Scholars and students’ discussions will center on Humanities Lecture Series speakers Joan Breton Connelly and Andrea Wulf.

The Humanities Lecture Series speakers for 2017-2018 will be Siddhartha Mukherjee, Joan Breton Connelly, Matthew Desmond, Peter Balakian, KU faculty member Brian Donovan, and Andrea Wulf. The series has long provided a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue among renowned speakers, the university and the surrounding communities.

Hall Center Scholar awards, made possible by donations to the Friends of the Hall Center, are open to KU undergraduates with strong academic credentials who have demonstrated significant engagement in the university community.

For more information about the Hall Center Scholar program or the Humanities Lecture Series, please contact the Hall Center at hallcenter@ku.edu or call (785) 864-4798.

Wed, 08/30/2017

author

Andrew Hodgson

Media Contacts

Andrew Hodgson

Hall Center for the Humanities

785-864-4798