A presentation for attendees of the Southern Regional Honors Council conference in Louisville, Ky., April 2013.

1. EKU Honors Involvement
in the Chautauqua
Lecture Series
Jacob Blair

2. Background
 The current Chautauqua Lecture Series was introduced to the University in the year 2000.
 It is based on the idea of Chautauquas from the Chautauqua Institution in New York during
the 1920s.
 Honors Professor Dr. Bruce R. MacLaren was the coordinator for the series from its
inception until 2010.
 The current Chautauqua Lecture Series Coordinator is Dr. Minh Nguyen, this is his third year
of coordinating the lecture series.
 The current series this year is titled Crossroads.
 The purpose of Chautauqua lectures is to increase critical thinking, and to encourage critical,
but civil discussion.
 Chautauqua is an expansion of a liberal arts education beyond the classroom.
 It localizes global issues with critical thinking.

3. From Humble Beginnings…
 Dr. Bob Kustra and MacLaren went to small colleges that brought in many outside speakers.
 After realizing that more faculty remembered speakers more than their own professors classes,
Maclaren wrote a note to President Kustra asking him to start a lecture series with notable
speakers.
 Kustra thought the idea was great and the university provost told MacLaren to follow through
with a funding proposal after Kustra picked him to serve as coordinator.
 MacLaren asked for $200,000. He was offered $20,000.
 Dr. MacLaren’s first Chautauqua series was about evolution.
 Most of the speakers were locally known, instead of on a national scale, because Chautauqua
didn’t have that much money. However, many speakers at Chautauqua that come from the
University have published research in their respective disciplines.
 One of the lectures about evolution was given by his colleague Dr. Malcolm Frisbie, and it
was about dinosaurs. He even had a group of kids there at the lecture assisting him in his
discussion.

5. What Chautauqua Institution
Did…
Goals:
Refreshing minds.
Renewing intellectual curiosity.
Encouraging individual
expression.
Promoting civil discourse.

6. What We Do…
 Explore a single idea, or connected ideas in a given lecture series.
 Educate by engaging people in free and open conversation.
 Challenge individuals to explore their assumptions.
 Use a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives.
 Explore great ideas not a part of any standard curriculum.
 Share the events as a common good.
 Live an evening that will not be forgotten.
 Have a conversation with a notable person.

7. What We Do…
 Explore ideas that are simultaneously simple and complex.
 Read books on topics that one does not know.
 Laugh and cry in public.
 Exercise our rights to free speech.
 Listen to perspectives of others and to challenge their claims.
 Celebrate the liberating arts and sciences.
 Forge a community of thinking, talking, questioning individuals.
 To help acquire the skills of critical and creative thinkers.

8. A Typical Chautauqua Lecture
 It’s a University-wide effort!
 Discussion: 4:45- 5:45 p.m.
 The speaker along with the coordinator host a discussion typically in the Grand
Reading Room of the John Grant Crabbe Library on-campus.
 Supper: 6:00-7:15 p.m.
 The speaker is invited to dine with members of the community in the Faculty
Dining Room of the Powell Building.
 Lecture: 7:30-9:00 p.m.
 The speaker delivers a lecture to 400 people inside the O’Donnell Hall auditorium
in the Student Success Building (soon to be named the Charles D. Whitlock
Building).
 Book Signing: 9:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
 The speaker chats with guests and offers to sign books that they purchase from the
table sponsored by the Barnes & Noble at EKU Bookstore.

9. Chautauqua Series Venues
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
Capacity
Capacity

10. Venues
 The typical Chautauqua Lecture will be held in O’Donnell Hall in the SSB.
 O’Donnell Hall has a seating capacity of 400 people.
 Though there are some events when there are more people that have to stand in
the back.
 The Chautauqua Lecture series has a priority registration for the room after an
act of benevolence by the EKU President and Provost following “Ethics and
Animals: Extending Ethics Beyond Our Own Species” delivered by Peter
Singer where they ran out of seating.
 40 students from Western Kentucky University had to stand in the back, and even
the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences did not have a seat.
 If a larger venue is needed, the lecture can be held in Brock Auditorium,
streamed via closed television circuit across campus, or moved to the EKU
Center for the Arts.
 Has a 2000+ seating capacity, and it only costs $300 per event for the
Chautauqua series.

11. Why do EKU Honors students
come to Chautauqua?
 Advertising!
 Dr. Minh Nguyen does a really good job. Instead of other events on-campus where
you see chalk or a few fliers, he posts the event to social media and distributes
information to area schools and to the rest of the University via email.
 Dr. Bonnie Gray, who served as the Honors Director prior to Dr. Linda Frost
being hired encouraged some students to come. For some classes, they got credit,
but Dr. MacLaren says that many more students came just because they were
interested in the topic.
 When Dr. Bonnie Gray was leading EKU Honors, she started Honors
Chautauquas, meant to be many events that were learning outside of the
classroom. Some were lectures by well-known people, but more now are geared
toward service-learning projects. With the inclusion of the Chautauqua series.
 The students, along with others, come to be challenged. They want more out of
the college experience than just living in the residence hall and going to classes.

12. Why has EKU Honors been so
important to Chautauqua?
 Honors students typically showed up to more of the lectures, because the
lectures were given by theirs faculty and even sometimes by the authors
of their books used in Honors Courses.
 For example, one of the Chautauqua Lectures was given by Kwame Anthony
Appiah, whose book Cosmopolitanism was used in Honors Humanities II.
 Dr. MacLaren even had a student worker to put up posters, and complete
other tasks while hosting the lecture.
 A number of Honors Professors sit on the Chautauqua Lecture Series
Committee, and these members are appointed by the University
President.
 Current Honors Professors that serve on the committee are:
 Dr. Linda Frost, Dr. Eric Liddell, Dr. Malcolm Frisbie, and Dr. Ron Messerich.

13. HON 100 Seminar Questions
 Honors students are required to go to a set number of Chautauqua or Honors
Chautauqua events.
 Here are some of the questions they must respond to while completing an event
response form in their HON 100 class.
 1.Briefly describe the event that you attended.
 2. What do you think was the purpose of the event? (What were the people behind the
event—organizers, performers, etc.—trying to achieve?)
 3. Describe your response to the event.
 4. What components of the event itself influenced the response you described in (3), above?
 5. What aspects of your background and situation contributed to your response to the event?
 6. Are there other comments you wish to make about the event.

14. Implementing Lectures Across
Campuses
 When speaking with the coordinators, here is some advice they gave
for other universities who might want to implement a lecture series:
 Talk to the Provost and the President…get them on your side and you
have a better chance of getting funding.
 A series founded in the same style as Chautauqua has to be geared
toward a liberal arts education and expanding your critical thinking
skills.
 A series must create CRITICAL but CIVIL discussion.
 Minh Nguyen says one of the most important things is the meal.
There’s never a huge crowd there, but it contributes to intellectual
discussion: “As long as I’m in charge, I’m going for the meal.”
 It cost the Chautauqua budget $8 per person for the meal, but the patrons
do not have to pay for the meal.

15. We’re all in this Together
 It’s not just about reaching out to your campus…
 40 people from Western Kentucky University showed up for the Peter Singer
lecture.
 An entire high school Physics class from Georgetown, Ky. came to see
Richard Muller’s lecture about Physics and Technology for Future Presidents
in September of 2012.
 Transylvania University was hosting a historian, but a history class from there
came to Dr. Eric Foner’s lecture on the same night (March 5, 2013) since he
was the author of one of their books used for the course.
 Dr. Frisbie’s evolution lecture feature a group of children.
 We had people coming from out-of-state to see Dr. Temple Grandin and Dr.
Richard Dawkins.
 Dr. Minh Nguyen says “You never know, some of those kids may be the
next Nobel Prize winners.”

16. The Future of Chautauqua
 Next year’s series will be Beauty Matters.
 The future entirely rests on the nature of the new President and our Provost.
 Chautauqua is a University Program and our entire University is having to trim and
reallocate $23 million dollars.
 As we look to the future, we must keep in mind that Chautauqua is about critical thinking
and how it relates to issues or events within our society.
 Dr. Minh Nguyen has been told by people at the University of Louisville that our lecture
series is the best in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We bring in 15-20 people per
semester and nobody else does that.
 For Chautauqua to host 400-500 people every other week is a considerable task.
 Dr. Minh Nguyen is appreciative of the attendance and response from students and other
community members.
 Some events attract mainly local people, for example L. Henry Dowell portraying Colonel
Sanders was a more local event, but other events such as Richard Dawkins coming to
campus and Dr. Temple Grandin’s presence on campus brought people from out-of-state as
well.

17. than just going. If
you go and ask one
question, you will
have a memory that
will stick with you.”
–Dr. Bruce R.
MacLaren