Search

This collection is the official organizational records of the CMU. Honors Program and the related Honors Council

This collection is the official organizational records of the CMU. Honors Program and the related Honors Council. The collection consists of seven series including: Student Biographies, 2006-2015 (Box 1 - 3), Honors Council Minutes, 1961-1995 (Boxes 3 - 4), Honors Council, Academic Senate, Minutes, 1996-2018 (Boxes 4 - 5), Subject Files, 1961-2021 (Boxes 5 - 8), Audiovisual Media, 1968-2012 (Boxes 9-10), Objects, 2013 (Box 11), and Posters, 1992-2009 (Oversize Folder 1). The Student Biographies series includes biographical sheets completed by competitors for Centralis scholarships and Freshmen Honors students. There is no standard format or medium. Besides the biographies, the sheets may include collages, art, poems, songs, and photographs. Some of the biographies originally included materials with battery-operated materials. Minutes usually include agendas, minutes, and attachments, such as communications, reports, proposals, scholarship information, and other materials. The Subject Files series begins with several histories of Honors describing its beginnings and major changes. Program history is also documented in the course description guides, course outlines, Beaver Island class trips, program reviews, policy and procedure manuals, fundraising, scholarships, and endowment scholarships. Information about Honors related organizations including the Honors Outreach Network, the Honors Philanthropic Society, and the Honors Alumni Board is included, as well as three self-published books. Audiovisual Media includes an advertisement video, an Inside Central segment with Ed Long, and many photographic materials, which are largely both undated and unidentified. However, there are folders of photographs organized by occasion or group, including Beaver Island, Centralis, The Claude S. Larzelere Trivia Contest, Directors, Talent Show, the Stratford Festival, and Volunteer Work, among others. The Objects series includes two plastic CMU Honors Program 2013 Winter Charity Ball wine glasses. The Posters series mostly pertain to Centralis Scholars, but also include a timeline on the program’s history, and a photograph of Maestria en Administration Internacional, Cohort 5, 1998. This last poster is the only item in Spanish in the collection. Overall, the collection is in very good physical condition. The collection is in alphabetical and chronological order by series. Boxes 1 through 9 are cubic foot boxes. Box 10 is a letter sized .25 cubic foot box. Box 11 is a small odd sized box.

Researchers may be interested in knowing information on specific scholarships can be found by searching for both the scholarship’s specific title and the general term “scholarships.” Handbooks may also be found in program reviews or Honors Council minutes for a given year. More information on specific classes might be in the Honors Council minutes. Additional information on Honors may be found in multiple CMU organizational records collections and the papers of Dr. Charles Westie which are in his wife, Ardith Westie’s, papers, in the Clarke Historical Library. Dr. Westie was one of the first people who pushed to create the honors program.

Processing Note: During processing 21.5 cubic feet of miscellaneous financial and other materials, evaluations, search committee materials, duplicates, reading and generic materials, lists of prospective students, social security numbers, and unidentified biographical sheets were withdrawn. Acidic materials were photocopied, and the copies were maintained within the collection. A sampling was retained of the following materials: Centralis Scholarships, Graduation materials and The Claude trivia contest materials. The Claude is otherwise recorded in CMLife. CMU mascot information was interfiled into the Clarke’s CMU Vertical files. Photographs, negatives, and biographical sheets were not rehoused due to the vast quantity in the collection and the Clarke’s current resources. In the biographies, wires and batteries were removed.