HONR 1102View Syllabus
Honors Discovery

Honors Discovery

An interdisciplinary Honors seminar exploring leadership, systems thinking, digital storytelling, community engagement, interdisciplinary research, and reflective learning.

Honors ProgramLeadershipCommunity EngagementStorytellingSystems Thinking

About

Developing a global perspective.

Honors Discovery is designed to help first-year Honors students understand how to make a socially conscious impact in the communities they inhabit. Rather than jumping straight into advocacy, the course began with self-exploration — examining personal goals, values, and lived experiences to understand what kinds of change feel authentic. From there, I selected an impact area aligned with those values and used interdisciplinary thinking to study its complexity from multiple angles.

The capstone Honors StoryMap assignment asked us to translate that learning into digital storytelling: introducing ourselves as Honors students, defining our impact area, and mapping organizations creating change in real places. Along the way, coursework in Asset-Based Community Development, source evaluation, GlobeSmart cultural dimensions, and reflective journaling pushed me to engage communities with care — not as subjects to study, but as partners whose strengths should shape how research is communicated.

Skills

Core competencies from this course.

Self-Exploration & Values
Impact Area Research
Knight Lab StoryMap
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Source Evaluation
Asset-Based Community Development
Place-Based Storytelling
Reflection Journaling
Stakeholder Analysis
Global Citizenship
Professional Networking
Scholarly Attribution

Featured Project

A semester-long journey in digital storytelling.

Honors StoryMap Capstone

Interactive Honors StoryMap

My Honors StoryMap unfolds in three movements. It opens with my Honors student biography — the personal background that led me to youth mental health and digital access as an impact area. The narrative then explores that issue in depth, examining who is affected and why geography matters when access is uneven. The final section maps organizations creating change, from Boston Children's Hospital and the Digital Wellness Lab to JED, Crisis Text Line, and community programs across Massachusetts — showing how interdisciplinary teams address a challenge no single institution can solve alone.

Open StoryMap ↗Reflection Essay

Interactive StoryMap

Explore the capstone project in full.

Assignment Overview

The Honors StoryMap capstone unfolded across three major components — each building on the last to move from personal narrative toward community-centered research.

1

Personal Biography

Introduce who you are — the values, experiences, and locations that shape how you see the world.

2

Exploring an Impact Area

Define a social or environmental issue aligned with your values and examine who it affects.

3

Organizations Creating Change

Map the institutions, nonprofits, and community partners working to address your impact area.

storymap.knightlab.com
Launch Interactive StoryMap ↗

Reflection Essay

Connecting research to personal growth.

Reflection Essay

Final reflection on how the StoryMap reshaped my understanding of youth mental health, digital access, and community-based solutions.

Open PDF

Learning Outcomes

What this course taught me to do.

1

Interdisciplinary Thinking

Analyzing how two or more fields collaborate to address complex social and environmental challenges.

2

Community Engagement

Identifying stakeholders affected by an impact area and recognizing community strengths through ABCD.

3

Asset-Based Community Development

Focusing on what communities do well rather than deficit-based narratives when researching local issues.

4

Research

Locating academic and non-academic sources, annotating them, and evaluating reliability with proper attribution.

5

Digital Storytelling

Communicating findings through a Knight Lab StoryMap that links narrative, media, and geography.

6

Systems Thinking

Seeing how schools, nonprofits, hospitals, and policy actors interact within a single impact area.

7

Reflective Learning

Using journal prompts and the final reflection essay to connect coursework with personal growth.

8

Ethical Reasoning

Considering privacy, equity, and social responsibility when researching vulnerable populations.

9

Global Citizenship

Applying GlobeSmart cultural dimensions to communicate and make impact across diverse communities.

10

Communication

Presenting research clearly through maps, discussion posts, and the Honors Resource Fair.

11

Leadership

Examining personal goals and values to understand how you can lead through service and discovery.

12

Professional Growth

Building networks, exploring Honors resources, and planning pathways toward the Honors Impact Badge.

Reflection

Seeing global issues through multiple perspectives.

Creating the StoryMap changed how I understand youth mental health and digital access. What began as a broad interest became concrete once I chose meaningful locations — Weymouth, Milford, Boston, and Northeastern — and mapped the organizations operating in each place. Connecting personal memories from my hometowns with community-level barriers made the issue feel less abstract and far more urgent.

The project also clarified where I hope to contribute next, whether through research at the Digital Wellness Lab, data roles at organizations like JED or Crisis Text Line, or co-ops in ed-tech. It left real questions I still carry: how schools evaluate digital mental-health tools, how youth data privacy is protected, and how to ensure access reaches students who need it most. Those questions — and the interdisciplinary habits Honors Discovery built — are shaping my long-term path in data science and business administration.