Snider Honors Program at King University

12/09/2022

Congratulations to Snider Honors Fellow Blakeleigh Mathes (Class of 2017) for receiving the Coach of the Year Award for the state of Missouri. She has given much to the sport of swimming in TN and her athletes. These young people are fortunate to be trained and taught by her. Way to go, Blakeleigh!

04/04/2022

Introducing Dr. Aaron Hitefield--Snider Honors Fellow, Class of 2017 :)
Photo credit and caption: Jamie Carson

04/20/2021

Here is Morgan Powers, one of our 2021 Snider Honors Fellows.

SHOOTING BELOW PAR – BOTH ON THE GOLF COURSE AND IN LIFE

“After graduation, I am going to pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry. I want to be the head of a lab and do cancer research.”

MORGAN POWERS

Morgan Powers was born in Dallas, Texas, the hometown of her favorite golfer Jordan Spieth, but at the age of six, her family relocated to Tampa, Florida. She received her first set of golf clubs when she was in the 4th grade but didn’t play often until she was thirteen.

Golf just seemed to come naturally to the gifted athlete. She would earn a spot on the high school golf team and it was inevitable that she would shine. While she was in high school, she was playing on the hurricane golf tour and ran into a King University graduate assistant that she knew who was working the tournament. “She told me to reach out to King,” Morgan said. Morgan then scheduled to visit King. It was the fall when the leaves were changed colors that she finally made the trip to Bristol. She was dazzled by the beautiful colors of autumn. “I had never seen anything like that,” Morgan said. After the visit, she decided that King was where she was going to enroll.

During her senior year, she reflects, “It was nice to experience the four seasons. In Florida, we only have one.”

Morgan is not only a stellar golfer but an exceptional student majoring in cell and molecular biology and minoring in math and chemistry. She received the Women’s Golf 2020-2021 Team Academic Award. But this is only the beginning. “After graduation, I am going to pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry. I want to be the head of a lab and do cancer research,” Morgan says.

Her reasons for wanting to pursue a career in cancer research stem from a frightening period in her life. Freshman year her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully she has been in remission since July of 2020. The CDC says that breast cancer is due to a couple of factors, the main ones include “being a woman and getting older.” One in three women are diagnosed with breast cancer which affects men as well.

Research indicates that those highest at risk for breast cancer have a strong family history of it or inherited changes in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. These changes or mutations make cells more apt to divide and change rapidly and prevent the genes from doing their job properly. The prevalence of breast cancer is very serious and a problem that Morgan hopes to help solve in her lifetime.

In May of this year, she will be traveling out to California to play Pebble Beach with her father. She is excited about playing the exclusive course with arguably the most beautiful golf hole, the 7th. Jack Niklaus, Tom Kite, and others have all hit legendary shots on the 106-yard par-3 that drops 40 feet in elevation with the waves crashing up against the rocks, spraying the green, and Monmouth winds ripping off Monterey Bay. And if that isn’t challenging enough you have a veritable plethora of bunkers hugging the green providing for nerve-racking bunker shots, that can easily disappear into the churning water below. For a solid golfer like Morgan who can easily shoot in the 70s Pebble Beach will be nothing short of euphoric.

To date, the Floridian in Port St. Lucie, Florida has been Morgan’s favorite golf course to play, though in less than a month that might all change.

Morgan has a zest for life whether it is the sport of golf, the people in her life, traveling, or pursuing a career devoted to helping cure the world of debilitating diseases. Her enthusiasm is contagious.

APPLY NOW! At www.king.edu

Interested in studying biology at King please click on the link https://www.king.edu/programs/stem/biology-major/

Interested in studying mathematics at King please click on the link https://www.king.edu/programs/stem/mathematics/

Interested in playing golf at King please click on the link https://www.kingtornado.com/sports/womens-golf

To give to King please click on the link https://www.king.edu/about/offices/advancement/give/ or sign up for Amazon Smile and select King as your charity of choice and help support those students that will one day impact the world. To learn more about Amazon Smile please click on the link https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/homepage?orig=%2F

03/23/2021

“We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.”

--John Culkin. “A schoolman's guide to Marshall McLuhan.”
The Saturday Review, March 1967, p.70.

Special thanks to Lee Jones, Assistant Professor of Photography & Digital Media, for sharing his insight on social media for the benefit of the Spring Honors Seminar. Professor Jones revealed in clear terms the deep impact that social media has on commerce, our relationships, vocations, and, most strikingly, our very perception of the world and of the self. Indeed, the new media changes everything, and this change is rapid, inevitable, so Professor Jones’s call to pause and reflect on this all-pervading influence on our lives is timely. We appreciate the opportunity he gave us to earnestly examine the phenomenon of social media for ourselves and discuss its benefits, its drawbacks, and how we can move forward into the digital age in a way that is fruitful and healthy. This was time well-spent and we are grateful.

03/12/2021

"If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration."
--Nikola Tesla

Special thanks to Dr. Susan Nicholson, The Music Department Chair and Director of Instrumental Studies at King University, for taking the Spring Honors Seminar participants on a wondrous journey through the science of sound and frequency as applied to music composition, modern and holistic medicine, religion, mathematics, philosophy, faith, and spirituality. Her thoughts and observations helped us appreciate the way in which sound, in one way or another, pervades every sphere of human life, if not the very fabric of existence itself. It is no surprise that we left the seminar ready to listen more deeply and then think more broadly about the function of sound in our lives.

03/05/2021

The Snider Honors Program thanks Keri-Lynn Paulson for her excellent and informative presentation as part of the Spring Honors Seminar Faculty Speaker Series. Professor Paulson spoke on the core principles of library science, media literacy, and information security, along with providing students with a few valuable life lessons that she has learned along the way. Students thought earnestly about how these lessons might apply to their own lives and acquired a healthy sensitivity to the way that information is consumed and disseminated in the digital age.

02/17/2021

Special thanks to Joe Strickland, Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media, for providing the Spring Honors Seminar with a superb introduction to lighting. It was fun to visit the DMAD studio and learn about technical aspects and artistic possibilities of light in photography. This was a terrific way to begin our faculty speaker series.

02/12/2021

The Snider Honors Program is pleased to announce that Dr. Andy Simoson will lead the 2021 Fall Honors Seminar! The seminar title is _Winning Strategies for Two-Person Games_. Here is Dr. Simoson's intriguing seminar description:

"Welcome to a host of rudimentary impartial contests between two players, the most famous of which is the classic take-away nim wherein the first player unable to move loses. A little math is enough to devise nearly magical winning ways."

Honors students, be on the lookout for the seminar on your course listings. This will be a memorable and fun learning experience, led by one of King University's most distinguished professors.