The guest speaker for 2015 Honors Day Convocation is the 2014 Hood Award recipient, Ann Fisher-Wirth, professor of English.
OXFORD, Miss. – Outstanding students from all academic disciplines and the campuswide top teacher are to be recognized Thursday (April 9) at the University of Mississippi’s 72nd annual Honors Day Convocation.
The convocation begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts. Seventy-two students are to be presented with Marcus Elvis Taylor Memorial Medals, the university’s highest academic award, and one faculty member will receive the Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher Award.
Guest speaker for the event is the 2014 Hood Award recipient, Ann Fisher-Wirth, professor of English.
At separate events, new members are to be inducted into the university’s top two student honor societies. The Phi Kappa Phi ceremony is scheduled for 3 p.m. Thursday at the Ford Center. Phi Beta Kappa holds its ceremony at 3 p.m. Friday (April 10) in Paris-Yates Chapel.
The Taylor Medals, established in 1904, are the university’s highest academic award and recognize no more than 1 percent of the student body each year. The Hood Award was first given in 1966 and allows faculty, staff, students and alumni to nominate a deserving professor for superior classroom teaching.
Around 170 students are to be inducted into Phi Kappa Phi, the university’s highest academic honor across all disciplines. The speaker is David Rock, dean of the School of Education and professor of curriculum and instruction.
Sixty-eight students are slated for induction into Phi Beta Kappa, the university’s highest academic honor in the liberal arts. Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and professor of history, will speak at the ceremony.