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Please direct questions about the magazine or this Web page to Anne Scott.

By Ann Carney
Photography by Jason Marsh

Stu Silverman knows a lot about Honors College. He's been there since 1987, when the first class of graduating seniors numbered about five students. It's no wonder he answers questions without pause, pulling facts, figures and names from somewhere in his head. Until you ask him why he does it. Then, he shifts a bit, his voice barely giving way to emotion and says, "I got into this business because I like students." Pause. "I get a thrill when a student finishes, looks back and says, "'Gosh, that was a really good experience.'" Silverman makes it his job to see that the experience really is that good.

Dr. Stuart Silverman is Dean of the Honors College.

A Special Place
Honors College is a special place. Until last year it was a program. Now, it's been elevated to even higher status. Honors College is where the best and the brightest - students with high school GPAs somewhere around 4.0 and SATs around 1350 - come to interact with students like them, and faculty usually reserved for senior fellows.

They take Honors College courses, typically nine over four years, mixed in with traditional college fare. And, they pair up with researchers - known researchers - to be a part of the discovery that ranks USF among the top research universities in the nation.

Honors is the best of both worlds. It combines the advantages of a small, highly personalized college with the resources of a large research institution. For the motivated, academically superior student, it is a place to develop thinking, reasoning and analytic skills that can be applied to discovery.
But while the emphasis is on small, the opportunities are big. Opportunities like interaction among the university's top teaching and research faculty, study abroad and the chance to present at national conferences, all expenses paid.

To graduate, each student must complete a thesis. Sometimes it's a little outside the box. Silverman wouldn't have it any other way. He's not one to say "Why?" "Why not?" is more his style.

Three first-year research scholars work in the laboratory with Fiona Crawford, Robert Silver Endowed Chair in Childhood Disorders Research.

A Path to Excellence
Wayne Paugh graduated from Honors in 1993. Today he is chief of staff to the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property in the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, D.C.

When it came time to choosing a college, Paugh says USF's Honors Program put the school "over the top." And, though he arrived in his souped-up Camaro with not much more than volleyball, the beach and good times on his mind, the guidance he received from Silverman steered him instead toward a double major in mechanical engineering and communications.

"Stu Silverman was a safety net and inspiration for all of us. It may not have sounded like much going in, but looking back it was huge," Paugh says. "He kept on me. Eventually I heeded his advice and ended up as 'Most Outstanding Graduate' in the mechanical engineering class."

Paugh's thesis on open and closed adoptions led him to his birth parents. It's the kind of highly personalized learning that tells the story of Honors College.

Discussion, questioning, and independant thinking are standard for these honors students.

A Growing Presence
Today, Honors College is a much bigger place. And it is officially a college. About 1,400 students make up the population. As many as 300 serve as research assistants, about 80 in the medical school and at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, alone.

Each year, a select group of incoming freshmen is invited to be USF Research Scholars, a program that allows them to work with senior faculty on research projects in a way that no other college does.

Next year, an Honors Research major will up the offerings at Honors. For a small group of students, that new program means a double major and the chance to spend an intensive year-and-a-half working with senior faculty mentors in a relationship much like that of a Ph.D. student working on a dissertation. No university in the nation can lay claim to a similar program, one that Silverman says will send a group of students into the world, "with resumes that rival anyone, from any school."

Silverman is proud of the college. But he says it is nothing without its staff and the faculty who teach for the college. Silverman calls them "absolutely unbelievable."

"If it weren't for these people and this faculty, we'd be absolutely nothing," he says quite matter of faculty.

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