WEST LAFAYETTE — The Purdue Honors College was approved by the Board of Trustees on Friday to be named after alumnus John Martinson after his $25 million gift.
The college will now be known as the John Martinson Honors College. According to Purdue, Martinson's gift will go towards: "undergraduate research; scholarship and creative activity; leadership and professional development; global and community engagement and innovative pedagogies."
The honors program was established in 2005 to join together the distributed honors programs across the various colleges. This establishment led to the formation of the Honors College, which held an inaugural class of 556 students in 2013, and currently enrolls over 2,700 students, according to Purdue.
"The Honors College is unique among other higher education programs because of its individualized experiences housed within a public Research 1 university consistently named one of the Top 10 Most Innovative,” Rhonda Phillips, dean of the Honors College, said in Purdue's release. “With these resources, the Honors College serves as a test bed for designing and deploying creative pedagogy to equip our graduates with the research and entrepreneurial skills they need to lead in an era of unprecedented global change.
"The incredible Martinson investment in our distinctive offerings will establish the Honors College as a top program nationally with methods that can be exported to other colleges and schools for greater societal impact."
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