Administration

Honors Program Staff

Director of the Honors Program...Barry Falk, Ph.D.

The Director of the JMU Honors Program oversees daily operations and leads in program planning and development. He initiates additional programs where appropriate, coordinates existing honors programs and supervises the honors students' participation in these programs. He is responsible for recruiting, advising and counseling honors students and developing and evaluating the honors curriculum. The Director reports directly to the Dean of Undergraduate Studies.

Dr. Falk holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota and an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a professor of economics at Iowa State University for twenty-five years before coming to James Madison University in July 2007. He worked with the Honors Program at Iowa State for the past fifteen years and was responsible for Iowa State's first undergraduate research symposium. Dr. Falk’s areas of research and teaching are in macroeconomics, time series econometrics, and economic forecasting. He has supervised fifteen doctoral students, served on over fifty doctoral and masters committees, lectured regularly in hs field, and authored or co-authored twenty-two articles in peer-reviewed journals in the economics profession and numerous articles in other journals. He is married and has two children.

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Associate Director of the Honors Program...Maureen G. Shanahan, J.D., Ph.D.

shanahmg@jmu.edu
(540) 568-6029

The Associate Director aids the Director in advising, counseling and recruiting honors students and developing and evaluating curriculum. She coordinates first year orientation for Honors Scholars, the Brown Bag Lecture Series, and publication of the Honors Program Handbook, the Senior Honors Project Handbook, the arts journal Fugue and newsletter Honors News. She also advises Honors student organizations.

Dr. Shanahan received her J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Michigan. She practiced securities law for many years before becoming a modernist art historian. She is an assistant professor in the School of Art and Art History and teaches courses on twentieth-century art and visual culture and has published articles in Cinema Journal, Michigan Feminist Studies, and the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. She has also published articles on the French artist Fernand Léger (1881-1955) and other modernists in Patronage, Spectacle and the Stage (2006), Democracy and Culture in the Transatlantic World (2005), Collecting Modernism: European Masterworks from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (2005), Encyclopedia of French-American Relations (2005), and Den Maskulina mystiken (The Masculine Mystery) (2002). She is currently completing a book entitled Traumatic Communities: Fernand Léger, the Experience of Trauma, and Collective Identities , a project that will reconsider Léger's work as contextualized by the trauma of the Great War and subsequent events formative of his ideas about nation, class, and collective identity

Assistant Director of the Honors Program...Mary Kay Adams, M.M.

adamsmc@jmu.edu
(540) 568-6526

The Assistant Director aids the Director in advising, counseling and recruiting honors students and developing and evaluating curriculum. She coordinates the President's Day and Choices information sessions for prospective students, the summer orientation program for incoming students, first year advising, the Honors Learning Community, group advising sessions for current honors students, and she teaches in the Honors Program.

Ms. Adams received her B.M. and M.M. from The University of North Texas. Before coming to the Honors Program, she taught in the School of Music at JMU for twenty-three years, teaching a variety of courses such as music theory, music appreciation, global music, applied flute and cello, symphonic literature, and the Classical era in music. An active performer on both flute and cello, she has been a soloist, a chamber musician, and an orchestral player in such ensembles as the Roanoke Symphony, the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, the Shenandoah Symphony Orchestra, and the Fort Smith, Arkansas Symphony. She has performed at conventions of the National Flute Association and Music Educators National Conference. In addition to her teaching at JMU, Ms. Adams has also taught at Arkansas Tech University, Eastern Mennonite University, Bridgewater College, Washington and Lee University, and Mary Baldwin College.

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Director Emeritus of the Honors Program Joanne V. Gabbin, Ph.D.

Dr. Gabbin received her Ph.D. from the Universityof Chicago and taught at Lincoln University before coming to James Madison University. She led the Honors Program from 1986 to 2005, during which time she significantly expanded the number of students in the program and established the Brown Bag lunch talks, the Honors Symposium, the Honors Opportunity Program, the Honors Learning Community, and many other programs. She created the Honors Program Advisory Board, which endowed a $50,000 fellowship established in its name. During this same period, Dr. Gabbin founded the Furious Flower Poetry Center , named in honor of the Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. The Center has held two internationally renowned conferences in 1994 and in 2004. Dr. Gabbin has written and edited numerous books, articles, and films, including the award-winning Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (University of Virginia, 1985), Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present (University of Virginia, 1999), and the children's book, I Bet She Called Me Sugar Plum (2004). She has received numerous awards, most recently the Provost's Award for Excellence in 2004. As of May 2005, Dr. Gabbin became Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center. In recognition of her years of service, the Honors Program has initiated fundraising for the Joanne V. Gabbin Endowed Scholarship, which will be awarded to need-based students. To give to this fund, please contact the Honors Program Office at (540) 568-6953 or e-mail us at honors@jmu.edu.

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Prestigious Scholarship Coordinator...Melinda Adams, Ph.D.

adams2mj@jmu.edu
(540) 568-3377

Dr. Adams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and has worked as a freshman advisor and is also an advisor to students interested in studying in Africa, which is her area of research specialization. She also comes with experience as a grants reviewer for the Department of Education and as a recipient of numerous nationally prestigious scholarships including the Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS), a dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), a Global Studies Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation, as well as many other awards. She will help identify and mentor top students on our campus so that they will become successful applicants for nationally competitive awards such as the Fulbright, Rhodes, Goldwater, Marshall and Truman.

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Executive Secretary of the Honors Program...Karen Allison

allis2kl@jmu.edu
(540) 568- 6953

The Executive Secretary provides support for the Honors Program by disseminating program information, maintaining and updating student records, typing and editing office correspondence, documents, requisitions and associated financial management forms, scheduling appointments and programs, supervising student assistants, and various other duties.

Karen is originally from Virginia, moving back from Florida in 2000. Prior to coming to JMU in July 2006, she worked at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind and the Department of Motor Vehicles. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Eastern Mennonite University in Management and Organizational Development.

The Honors Lab Manager oversees the Honors Lounge and Computer Lab, maintains the Honors Opportunities Program records, website, gathers and analyzes assessment data, assists the Honors Executive Secretary with organization records and correspondence, and coordinates the publication of Epilogue, the Honors alumni newsletter.

Honors Lab Manager... Sara Cobaugh

cobaugsa@jmu.edu
(540) 568-2302

Sara is a senior in the School of Media Arts & Design with a concentration in Corporate Communication and a minor in Women's Studies. She hopes to attend portfolio school after graduating and then work in the creative side of advertising as a copywriter. Sara serves as the administrator of the Honors Opportunities Program, which is required of all first-year Honors Students at the University. She is an Honors Scholar in the program and is also the co-editor of Fugue. You can contact Sara at cobaugsa@jmu.edu.

Student Staff

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Ryan James
Jeffrey Mullen
Stefani Thachik

Honors Mascot

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Miles

Honors Advisory Groups

Honors Program Committee
The Honors Program Committee, chaired by the director of the program and composed of faculty and students, guides the direction of the Honors Program. It makes policy and procedural decisions governing the administering of the program, reviews course proposals for approval or rejection and assists in the recruiting of students for the Honors Program. Members serve three-year terms.Please click here for the current list of members.

Honors Student Advisory Council (HSAC)
The Student Advisory Council is composed of about eight honors students who discuss ideas for advancing the success of the Honors Program community. Members will organize social events for the Honors student community, represent the Honors Program during admissions recruiting events, and offer recommendations and suggestions to the Honors Program directors and the Honors Program Committee concerning the policies, regulations, curriculum and activities of the Honors Program. Students apply for membership on the council at the beginning of the school term. Members serve one-year terms and may be re-elected.