Orientation

Two Honors Orientation Mentors smiling in front of Orientation participants

The Honors College Orientation is held twice a year: the week prior to the start of the classes for students joining the Honors College in the fall term and again in the first week of the spring term for Honors students joining in the spring. Honors Orientation is a mandatory, free program designed to introduce incoming students to the foundations of undergraduate honors education, and provides opportunities to:

Orientation for Honors students admitted for the fall is will be held on the Wednesday and Thursday prior to the start of the fall term. Both days are required for successful completion of the program. The Fall 2024 Honors Orientation will take place on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 21 and the morning and afternoon of Thursday, August 22.

Honors Orientation is separate from campus-wide New Student Orientation overseen by the office of New Student and Family Programs. That program is mandatory for all new 色花堂 students and incurs a fee. Contact New Student and Family Programs with any questions regarding New Student Orientation.

Fall 2024 Orientation

Fall 2024 Honors Orientation will take place on August 21鈥�22 for incoming freshmen, students transferring from other institutions, and continuing 色花堂 students joining for the fall term. There is no cost to attend Honors Orientation. Incoming Honors students received information about Honors Orientation sent to their 色花堂 email addresses.

  • Incoming Honors students who elect to live on-campus will move into their on-campus housingon August 20, in advance of Honors Orientation. Scheduling of move-in times is organized through the Housing & Residence Life office, which can also answer any other housing-related questions you may have.

Honors College Common Read 

A common read is a required part of the Honors Orientation experience in August. This program provides an opportunity for Honors students to explore issues that contribute to the development of critical thinking skills while fostering intellectual ties between Honors students, faculty, and staff.

The goals of the Honors College Read are:

  • Provide incoming students a chance to connect with other students
  • Provide incoming students simulated classroom discussion experience led by faculty
  • Provide students with a learning opportunity that relates to the academic expectations of the Honors College
  • Create an opportunity for critical thinking and ethical engagement

Honors Orientation 2024 Common Read

Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write

Dennis Yi Tenen

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN 9780393882186

Discussion Questions

The following questions will guide our discussion of this book at the Honors College Orientation. Please prepare typed responses to these ten questions. Some questions may only require a sentence or two while others may need a longer response. Responses will be collected and evaluated by Honors College faculty and staff, so be sure to print out your answers before you arrive with your full name and your orientation group name at the top of the page(s) that you submit. Don鈥檛 forget to bring these answers to the Thursday Orientation!

  1. If you had to summarize the point of this book in one sentence, what would you say?
  2. Is a human being鈥檚 intelligence completely contained within the individual鈥檚 skull? If someone asks whether I 鈥渒now鈥� a certain phone number, am I allowed to reply 鈥測eah, I know it鈥� if I have it stored in my phone, but couldn鈥檛 recite it off the top of my head?
  3. Tenen seems to be a big fan of templates. When might templates be useful to humans in writing? When should they be avoided?
  4. Tenen says things like, 鈥渃omputers have learned to write meaningful stories.鈥� But he sometimes plays fast and loose with the notion of 鈥渕eaning.鈥� What are the different possible meanings of 鈥渕eaningful鈥� here? In what sense(s) can a computer write a 鈥渕eaningful story鈥�? In what senses is this probably not yet possible?
  5. Science fiction has long explored the possibility of machines that are conscious. Suppose someone claimed that a certain computer program is conscious, and that you can communicate with it by way of a built-in chatbot. What would it take for the computer to convince you that it really is conscious?
  6. And by the way, what even is consciousness? Tenen puts this question aside as too philosophical. But he seems to suggest that, whatever consciousness is, it鈥檚 not necessary for intelligence. Does this make sense to you? Can there be intelligence without a consciousness that has the intelligence?
  7. Many college students would like to be able to use ChatGPT or other large language models to write sizeable parts of their university writing assignments. Putting aside the question whether this counts as cheating (it usually does), what do you think of this? Is the use of LLMs in academic writing a path to greater efficiency for 鈥渒nowledge workers鈥�? Or is it just a path to mediocrity?
  8. How worried should you be that the 鈥渄ead internet鈥� conspiracy theory might soon become true? (This theory predicts that, before too long, the vast majority of the content we see online that purports to be from a real human will actually be AI-generated.)
  9. Imagine it鈥檚 2050, and you鈥檙e thinking back on the 鈥淎I-Revolution of the early 2020s.鈥� Do you think you鈥檒l look back on this moment as a massive game-changer, where nothing was the same afterwards? Or will you look back on it as just one minor landmark in the broader history of the progression of technology?
  10. I asked ChatGPT whether it is familiar with Tenen鈥檚 book. After it claimed that it is, I asked it to write me a discussion prompt for 鈥渟ome very smart college freshmen who are going to read and discuss Tenen鈥檚 book.鈥� Here鈥檚 what it came up with:

"In Literary Theory for Robots, Dennis Yi Tenen explores the concept of agency and autonomy through the lens of robotic and AI characters in literature and film. Choose a robotic or AI character from a work of fiction that raises questions about agency and autonomy. Discuss how the character's interactions with humans and other entities reflect its quest for autonomy. Consider the following questions: What barriers does the character face in achieving autonomy? How do power dynamics between humans and machines influence the character's journey? How does the narrative challenge or reinforce traditional boundaries between 'self' and 'other'?"

How do you think it did? Is this a good discussion prompt? Should I have outsourced my literary 鈥渒nowledge work鈥� to ChatGPT for questions 1鈥�9 also?

The directions and full list of questions are also downloadable:

Spring 2025 Orientation

Spring Honors Orientation is required for incoming freshmen and students transferring from other institutions who join 色花堂 or the Honors College for Spring 2025. There is no cost to attend. Enrolled incoming students are required to register online to confirm their attendance at Honors Orientation, and details on the program will be communicated to admitted students in their decision letter in January 2025.