Our Faculty

Barrett honors faculty

Barrett Honors Faculty constitute a distinguished cohort of master teacher-scholars who perform the essential teaching, mentoring and leadership roles that help make Barrett, The Honors College widely recognized as the gold standard in honors education.

This interdisciplinary and talented faculty publish research in top-tier academic journals, write award-winning books and win national teaching awards.They are deeply committed to sharing their scholarly passions with honors students in the classroom and beyond.

In addition to teaching the core honors classes, this faculty works closely with Barrett students on research, creative projects and unique programming that bridges Barrett to global communities. Barrett faculty work with honors students to build new programs, clubs and initiatives that address the most urgent issues of our time. The Barrett faculty meet students during their first week at university, and support and guide them over the course of their undergraduate education. Honors students at ASU, the most innovative university in the nation, are able to follow their passions in achieving their education with strong and sustained mentorship from this dedicated faculty.

Faculty spotlights

Barrett Faculty, Christiane Alcantara

Christiane Alcantara

Honors Faculty Fellow

What is the focus of your scholarship and how does it shape your teaching at Barrett?
My scholarship is focused on understanding and analyzing beauty in Western culture to try and understand how time and place shape social values. In my teaching, I often ask students examine the importance of aesthetics in the world. For example, in HON 171 I teach Plato’s Symposium. The “ladder of love and beauty” described by Plato’s character Diotima helps students understand formalism (without necessarily knowing what it is called) and think about beauty as a feature that extends beyond the physical world.

What are you teaching in The Human Event this year that you’re especially excited about?
This is probably the hardest question. Some of my favorites this fall are The Popol Vuh, The Epic of Sunjata, The Daodejing, and The Bhagavad-Gita. I am especially interested to learn what students think about the Persian poem Conference of the Birds. In this text, a Muslim sheik falls in love with a beautiful Christian woman, and she is blamed for his religious falling. We do not even know the woman’s name and the sheik does not know her either, but her beauty is enough to make him renounce his religion and his friends.

What is an experience that you’re looking forward to in the year ahead at Barrett?
There are many experiences I am looking forward to! I am excited about my students’ thesis defenses and graduation. It is very rewarding to be part of their journey and to see their happiness once they accomplish their goals. I am always excited to hear what students have to say about the more contemporary and controversial readings we read in the second half of The Human Event, HON 272. I think HON 272 definitely helps students learn to be civil while in disagreement, which is vital to the survival of any democracy.

Could you share a student success story with us?
Recently, I had a positive experience mentoring a student was struggling in my Human Event class. They were clearly overwhelmed by their freshman year and had trouble keeping up. As someone who struggled during their first year in college and almost gave up, I try to help my first-year students in different ways that go beyond the content of The Human Event. For example, I teach students how to take notes, how to email professors, or how to apply for internships or study abroad programs. Sometimes the most meaningful mentoring begins in moments of failure: the process of intellectual growth is a process of being challenged, facing setbacks, and overcoming them, and I love helping Barrett students through that.

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Barrett Faculty, Janelle Kappes

Janelle Kappes

Honors Faculty Fellow

What is the focus of your scholarship and how does it shape your teaching at Barrett?
My research is focused on educational leadership and policy, student success, and access and inclusion in higher education. I teach an upper division course on justice, equity, and inclusion. My research lens leads to frequent discussions about the role education plays in our society.

What are you teaching in The Human Event this year that you’re excited about?
This year, I’m teaching a new text entitled Life Worth Living which uses guided questions to help students thoughtfully consider the characteristics of a meaningful life. Drawing from ancient philosophy, secular work, and major world religions, this text probes the most important questions of our time: what makes life great, and how does one define and create a flourishing and meaningful life experience.

What is an experience that you’re looking forward to in the year ahead at Barrett?
I’m really looking forward to working with students on their Honors Thesis. This fall, I’ll be teaching a Thesis Cohort focused on topics related to education, leadership, and diversity. It’s a privilege and joy to guide with students through the thesis experience, from research idea to thesis defense.

Could you share a student success story with us?
As a Barrett faculty, I’m witness to student success stories on a regular basis. The most meaningful success stories involve students who, after thinking critically about their future, decide to change their major or add a minor. Bearing witness to a student’s major transformation during class discussions or one-on-one meeting is an awe-inspiring experience.

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Barrett Faculty, Alex Young

Alex Young

Honors Faculty Fellow

What is the focus of your scholarship and how does it shape your teaching at Barrett?
My scholarship focuses on how the contemporary literature and culture in the United States—especially the Western United States—has been shaped by the transnational history of settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance. I draw on my research to teach upper division courses on topics including the Western genre on film and United States gun culture. My focus on our regional culture in its transnational contexts also shapes how I teach The Human Event: as I teach the multicultural history of human history and thought from prehistory to the present, I also work to bring students from the global to the local as we consider texts closer and closer to our lives here in Arizona.

What are you teaching in The Human Event this year that you’re especially excited about?Always a difficult question to answer because I’m excited about a lot of them! In HON 171, the first half of The Human Event, I enjoy teaching Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, which engages questions of ethnic difference and the law in ways that feel startlingly contemporary. In HON 272, I’ve been teaching Lauren Redniss’s multimedia nonfiction book Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West, which helps students relate the global histories we have been studying to the voices of everyday contemporary Arizonans navigating a conflict in our own backyard.

What is an experience that you’re looking forward to in the year ahead at Barrett?I’m excited to be working with a new research center at ASU, headed by sociologist Jennifer Carlson, called the BRIDGS Center: Bringing Research & Innovation into the Debate on Guns in Society. I’m directing several Barrett seniors working on thesis projects about gun culture, and to be able to put them in touch with Professor Carlson and the many top gun researchers she plans to bring to ASU in the coming year will be really exciting. To be able to coach top-notch students through the research process in conversation with leading scholars from around the country: that really sums up, for me, the most exciting part of the Barrett experience.

Could you share a student success story with us?
One of the cool things about Barrett is that it fosters unlikely interdisciplinary mentorship relationships. I work in the humanities, but I have had close relationships with students going on to work in law, social work, and various medical fields. When I started here, I was surprised when the first medical school applicants asked me for letters of recommendation, but now I relish the opportunity to help round out medical school applications by speaking to the applicants’ communication and critical thinking skills. Recently, Sarah Lopez, a student I had the honor of working with from HON 171 to her thesis, was admitted to The Mayo Clinic’s medical school, where she’s pursuing her dream of pursuing a career in women’s health – I continue to be inspired by Sarah’s story!

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Faculty Honors Advisors

Faculty Honors Advisors (FHAs) are disciplinary faculty members who serve as mentors to Barrett students in each academic unit. In addition to their primary faculty responsibilities, FHAs have chosen to be the point-person for honors students in their particular unit. FHAs help honors students identify thesis topics and find an appropriate thesis director, offer advice on undergraduate research or internship opportunities within their discipline, and provide general mentorship as honors students explore interests in their academic unit.

Faculty Honors Advisor with a student at graduation

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Barrett honors faculty

Faculty spotlights

Christiane Alcantara

Honors Faculty Fellow

Janelle Kappes

Honors Faculty Fellow

Alex Young

Honors Faculty Fellow

Faculty Honors Advisors

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