CHRIS BRITTAIN

Toms River, N.J.

I write this letter on behalf of many Lock Haven University alumni in support of the Lock Haven University Global Honors Program (GHP) as an independent entity on the LHU campus. We ask simply that the GHP not to be down-sized, absorbed, or ultimately disassembled into an Honors Program in name only, through the sweeping and premature changes in Chancellor Greenstein’s integration plan.

I will never forget my first day visiting the Honors House as a student back in 2006. Two days before I was set to arrive on campus for Honors orientation, my life was upended by the sudden death of my 22-year-old brother. Though I missed orientation for the services, my parents and I agreed that further delaying my education would not ease the grieving process, and we made the difficult decision that I would travel to campus the Sunday before classes were to begin, just 24 hours after the funeral.

When I arrived at the Honors House, three Honors student leaders had spent their day on the front porch waiting for my arrival. They greeted me with solemn, open arms, helped me to move my belongings into my dorm, gave me their personal contact information, and met with me weekly throughout the semester to make sure that I was ok. This set the tone for my Honors experience — a supportive community that believed in the growth of its students above all else. The Honors Program was a constant source of socialization; a way to connect with new friends rather than retreat into grief. Beyond that first year, it shaped much of my future, both professionally and personally. Though it may have had a more pronounced impact on me than on most, I can attest that I have personally witnessed hundreds of students’ college careers immeasurably bettered because of their time in the LHU Global Honors Program.

Since stepping foot on campus in 2006, I have always known it as a singularly positive community of diverse yet like-minded individuals with the goal of furthering student educations and enriching college experiences. LHU Honors students are not enticed by scholarship accolades. In my time in the program (and unfortunately since as I’ve come to learn) funding was meager. Yet we managed to stretch every dollar to make the most of what we had to present an impressive array of programming that put other Honors Programs to shame.

As a student, the Honors Program supported my travel to regional and national honors conferences across the country and abroad. My worldview as a global citizen was shaped by the opportunities I was provided there. When presenting at conferences and speaking to student leaders from other programs, I remember explaining what all we were able to provide. I remember seeing the dumbstruck looks on their faces that our program managed to do so much without a single full-time staff member. Instead, the Student Associate Directors, with the assistance of nearly half the student population of the program in varying volunteer leadership capacities, went to great lengths to plan monthly academic programs, student events, weekly mentoring groups, competitions, community service efforts, barbeques and much more.

The success that we were able to achieve was born of a distinctly human drive to better our small community within Lock Haven’s campus, not a drive shaped by financials. That is why it is with great dismay that financial disarray beyond the Honors Program’s control may place it in the crosshairs of this proposed integration. The GHP has done so much with so little for so long, to tarnish that would not only be distressing to the hundreds of alumni who have so benefited from it, but would diminish the futures of those who have not yet been so lucky to live the Lock Haven Honors experience.

I cherish the few opportunities I get to return to Lock Haven. I have more love in my heart for that physical location than probably any other. And in this moment, I am nauseated by the thought of returning. Not because of the faculty, the employees, the students, or the town – but because those with so little history of the school or the area have seemingly fallen from the sky with the intent to dismantle what I have always known to be so great.

My six-year experience in Honors, first as a Student Associate Director and then as a Graduate Assistant, shaped my career. I went on to work for the Ramapo College Honors Program for nearly eight years. In 2015, I founded a group of Honors alumni called the LHU Honors Coalition which has since provided student scholarships on an annual basis. My experience attending conferences sponsored by the GHP led to my involvement with the Northeast Regional Honors Council, of which I am currently the President-elect and in just a few weeks will chair my first Honors conference. When I say that the GHP has life-changing effects on its students, I truly mean it.

I imagined a future where they may try to move the program from the Honors House into some basement elsewhere on campus. Back in 2010, when rumors spread that the upper administration was eyeing the house to be demolished for a parking garage, we regularly joked that we would chain ourselves to the front porch before we let that happen. I never imagined that the deconstruction of this singularly positive community would be suggested in such a nefarious way under the guise of providing more opportunities for students.

To Chancellor Greenstein,

Interim-President Hanna, Provost Darbeau:

I implore you to spare the Lock Haven University Global Honors Program from dissolution or integration with Bloomsburg or Mansfield. Please learn more about our campus, our home, before enacting these sweeping changes. The ill will that you sow and the futures you imperil will cost much more than the dollars you may save in the process.

Feedback from Honors Alumni:

The experience a student receives in the LHU Global Honors Program is second-to-none, and the proposed integration of the three programs would eliminate one of the top experiences a student can have at LHU. Through the Honors Program, I gained invaluable leadership as a student associate director; I traveled through PA and nationally to present research at Honors Conferences; I served as a student organizer for a regional honors conference and was a co-planner of the first PASSHE Honors Conference; and I was able to study abroad with students from other PASSHE institutions. I would not have had the college experience I did without the Global Honors Program. Lock Haven has long been looked at as a exemplary Honors Program – please do not take this away by integrating.

–Brent Barge, Class of 2013

GHP at Lock Haven gave me opportunities to explore my interests, meet friends, make connections, develop leadership skills, and travel. The opportunities that I had contributed to my career choice and helped imposed me as well as gain confidence in myself. I can’t put into words how my experience at Lock Haven was impacted by the GHP and how much I learned academically and socially and grew as a person.

–Devon Juliano, Class of 2012

There is an unmeasurable value of entering into college and navigating the experience with a built-in community, a community comprised of knowledge-seekers, action-takers and compassionate peers, staff and faculty. As a first-generation student, my success in college and afterwards is intertwined with my experience in the Honors Program. Every time I pass the Honors House when visiting, I feel a great sense of gratitude. Change, like this merger, is difficult but we cannot sacrifice a program’s existence and ability to touch students’ lives.

–Nicole Cozzi, Class of 2011