Dear Honors Program Students,

I'm excited to introduce myself as the newly appointed Director of the University Honors Program and honored to have a supporting role in your Honors Program experience at the University of Iowa.

The Honors Program exists to enrich students' experience, both in and out of the classroom. This new role for me in the Honors Program reflects my involvement with honors education and undergraduate student success at Iowa for many years.

I have been at Iowa since 1998 as a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. I trained as a cognitive psychologist (BS, University of Oregon, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University) with a specialization in visual attention and perception. I am a first-generation college graduate.

In my Elementary Psychology course, I developed an honors contract "book club" option for interested students in that course. One year, we read Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind, which led to wide-ranging discussions about mushroom identification, psychological assessment, and neurotransmitters. (As some of my students know, reading the book led me to learn to cultivate my own oyster mushrooms.) I continue to teach an honors first-year seminar titled How Psychology Can Save the Planet and to participate in Honors Primetime.

As I transition to this new role, I have been excited to see many familiar student names and faces from my Honors Program involvement. It is wonderful to discover that many of you who I know from a class or seminar are engaged with the program, from participating as a peer mentor or a program admin to serving in admissions. Likewise, many honors students from my classes are pursuing research and other experiential educational opportunities. I have watched as you have joined colleagues' labs (or my own lab!) during your time here at Iowa.

My first official day on the job is September 20. Dr. Emily Hill will continue to serve as Interim Director of the Honors Program until then. She will resume her position as Associate Director after the transition. Thank you to Dr. Hill for providing the program infrastructure during the transition. We're lucky to have her knowledge and skills. Thank you also to the dedicated Honors Program professional staff who always put student experience and success at the forefront of their work. It has been my privilege over the years to work with and learn from the Honors Program team through my Honors classes and seminars. The Honors team will make you and your time in Honors at Iowa our priority.

Please reach out and connect with me, even if only for a short introduction. I have office hours this semester Mondays 1230-230 and Tuesdays 1-2 in BHC 447, or email me (shaun-vecera@uiowa.edu) to schedule a time to chat over Zoom.