Lunch with Honors 18-19

Are you ready for the 2018 Midterm Elections? Join Honors to hear more about the Big Ten Voting Challenge, use a laptop to register to vote if you haven't already, and enjoy a catered lunch.

We want you to shape the future by casting your vote at the ballot box. Join us as we show what it means to be the Leaders and Best!

The BIG TEN VOTING CHALLENGE aims to increase the number of eligible student voters across the country and encourage participation at the polls for all elections.

The University of Michigan is leading the Challenge, and our goal is to increase our student voter turnout by 200%. In 2018, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are up for election. In Michigan, we will be electing a new Governor and Secretary of State. We'll also be voting for State Representatives and State Senators, Mayors and City Council members.

But the real winner will be you – for exercising your privilege to vote and your power to change the world.

To get started, visit TurboVote. It’ll only take five minutes. Or register at the event, laptops will be available.

Join us for Lunch with Honors: Reframing Success with Joy Pehlke.

How can honors students integrate and prioritize personal well-being in their demanding lives? This interactive presentation will focus on concepts and techniques students can use to work towards balance in their lives, and debunk the myth that students have to put well-being on the back burner in order to be successful.

Joy is a Health Educator and Wellness Coach with Wolverine Wellness at the University of Michigan’s University Health Service. Her work focuses on prevention and intervention in the areas of mental and holistic well-being, including primary coordination of the Wellness Coaching program. Joy aims to affect positive changes in students’ personal and community-based wellness through inclusive relationship-building and one-on-one work, such as wellness coaching and brief interventions based in motivational interviewing and holistic well-being. She holds her M.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from the University of Vermont and her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Join Honors as we take a tour of the Michigan Theater with their Executive Director & CEO Russ Collins.  20 students will also receive a gift card worth a free ticket!

The story of the historic Michigan Theater is an example of a community's vision, creativity, and determination succeeding over the bleakness of decline, indifference, and decay.  It is a drama of successful rebirth, conceived through active community involvement, nurtured by a unique mix of cultural programming and brought to maturity through dynamic community support.

Seema Mehta is a political writer for the Los Angeles Times who is spending the academic year at the University of Michigan as a Knight-Wallace fellow. She is studying the economic impact of automation and AI while she is here. Seema has been at the Times since 1998, and has covered politics for more than a decade, including the last three presidential races. During the Honors Program luncheon, Seema plans to discuss the aftermath of the midterm elections, the changing political landscape of recent years and how she became a journalist.

Dean Massey will explore the role of architecture and infrastructure in contemporary biopolitics through the concept of “governing by design” that he and his co-authors from the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative developed in their 2012 book of the same title. His starting point is the widespread criticism of the proposed US-Mexico border wall as an infrastructure of white supremacy. He will also sketch out some other ways that US architecture and infrastructure build racial inequity, taking examples pipes, prisons, schools, and houses. Finally concluding by highlighting strategies for imagining and building alternative infrastructures.

Rajesh S. Mangrulkar’s academic work lies in technology and its interface with educational innovation and pedagogy. At the University of Michigan, he has built his educational leadership experience in the internal medicine residency training program as associate director, as director of ENCORE (an education innovations unit within the Dean’s Office), and then as assistant dean for education innovation until accepting his current role in 2011. Currently, as associate dean for medical student education, he leads the curriculum, student affairs and admissions units for the Medical School.

Kai Mason (Class of 2019) is majoring in English. Kai’s passion for immersing herself in diverse cross-cultural spaces led her to take on campus roles such as Dialogue Facilitator, President of U of M Slam Poetry, and optiMize Fellow. These experiences, combined with her academic work, have focused her thinking about social identities and their representation and provided the basis for her Honors in the Engaged Liberal Arts (HELA) project: the creation of imi, a magazine that works to bring socioeconomic diversity and visibility to fashion. In imi, Kai urges people to consider how much more inclusive the world of fashion might be. Kai is the first student to participate in Honors’ new HELA graduation program.