Welcome from the Director

Each morning as I come to work at the Renée Crown University Honors Program I play an unspoken game and think about a writer whose work has influenced me. By “influence” I don’t mean to suggest style–instead I mean a quality or cast of imagination. If you really think about it, all writing is “creative” writing whether you’re working on a Physics paper or a poem. Influence is direction. Good writing, like good teaching can point us in new directions.

Not long ago, one of my favorite writers, the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, won the Nobel Prize for literature. Mr. Transtromer is both a writer and a child psychologist. He is also an exceptional “amateur” classical pianist. I like to think of him playing Schubert at twilight beside a snowy window. I like thinking of his life of affirmations–saving children at risk, writing inventive and curious poems and essays about the life of the mind. He once wrote: “It is so seldom/that one of us truly sees the other:/for a fraction of a second as in a photograph/a man appears but sharper/and behind him/something that is bigger than his shadow.”

That bigger thing is what the Greeks called “psyche” and it’s customary in our time to think of this as an odd marriage of soul and intellect. Whatever we choose to call it, it’s proper for us to think of ideas and to cherish finding new modes of thought. You don’t have to be a poet or a philosopher of science to know that research and serendipity are equal parts of this story. Accordingly, each morning I have the good fortune to hear from students and faculty who are working avidly on finding new directions. I am lucky to work among scholars, both young and old, who are searching for something sharper and bigger in the worlds of influence. Come and visit our office and please join the discussion.

Professor Stephen Kuusisto