Florida Atlantic: Trailblazers Reunion

Florida Atlantic University initiated a bold venture in 1999: a new northern Palm Beach County campus anchored by a freestanding honors college with a premier, comprehensive liberal arts education.

The Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College emerged from land donated by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as one of the first stand-alone public honors colleges in the United States. Not only was the college a new endeavor for Florida Atlantic, but its newly minted John D. MacArthur Campus was also designed as a cornerstone of a new 2,000-acre, master-planned community in Jupiter called Abacoa.

The Honors College welcomed its first class of 77 freshmen in Fall 1999. Dubbing themselves the "trailblazers," these students and the founding faculty ignited the momentum for it to become one of the top-ranked honors colleges in the nation.

More than two decades after the original cohorts graduated, a group of the pioneering alumni recently organized a reunion. They traveled from all over the country back to Jupiter to reconvene at the site that served a foundational moment in their lives — and is an important part of the University's history.

When the first Honors College students arrived all those years ago, the MacArthur Campus consisted of just three administrative buildings, one incomplete residence hall and a utility building. The dining hall was then completed after classes had commenced. The shops and restaurants of what is now downtown Abacoa had yet to be completed. Because of the isolation and the general "newness" of everything around them, the alumni described their time at the college as a great experiment in which they were able to pave the way for the generations who came after.

"For me at the Honors College, my big takeaway was that you don't have to wait around for something to exist," said Leisy Maria Arencibia, a trailblazer and reunion organizer. "You have the power to create it. If you want to get something off the ground, you have to be the fire. You have to ignite other people and create it, because it's not just going to get handed to you."

It was this industrious, self-starter attitude that inspired a group of six Honors College alumni to organize a multi-day event centered around the unique experience that brought them together. In addition to Arencibia, the planning committee consisted of Patricia Antonucci, Joanna Burchfield, Jennifer Chiampou, Joe Colucci and Jake Leech, Ph.D.

"I really credit the Honors College with continuing me on my path to wanting to be very accepting and accommodating and welcoming of everybody from all walks of life," said Antonucci, who entered her freshman year in the second class of students in 2000. "In a lot of ways, I think we were all very different, but we were all here together and we had this thing in common that we were at this weird experimental place. We got that shared experience, and it held us together."

The reunion was organized like an Honors College semester of classes. It kicked off with Honors [Re]Introduction to Academic Life – also known as a happy hour. Saturday activities included walking tours of the MacArthur Campus (Honors Sense of Place Across Time) and an on-campus reception and faculty panel (Honors Technology and Culture).

From starting their own clubs to forming a Jupiter campus student government to being the first students to engage with a brand-new curriculum, the trailblazers described a strong sense of ownership of their college experience and how those lessons have carried on through their lives and careers.

"I think the quality of education was head and shoulders above anything else my high school peers got [at college]," Leech said.

He cited small class sizes, the sincere engagement between students and faculty, and the opportunity to explore a variety of intellectual interests as tangible differentiators that prepared him for professional success. Leech is a senior program officer at ICLEI USA, a nonprofit organization devoted to solving sustainability challenges.

"The culture of the school was making sure that everyone gets to be part of the discussion and heard," Antonucci said. "I think that has served me well as a mediator, because it's all about the party's selfdetermination, how to respond, and how to make sure people feel comfortable and part of the conversation."

Arencibia is now an elementary school teacher, and credits how the Honors College's teaching model informed how she approaches education.

"What the Honors College gave me was the term interdisciplinary," she said. "You don't have to compartmentalize everything. Science and art can hold hands, and they have value."

For many of the alumni in attendance at the reunion, it was the first time returning to explore their old haunts and witness the expansion of both the MacArthur Campus and the surrounding community. Though a lot has changed, particularly the establishment of the campus's life sciences and biomedical research hub, the essence of the "small but mighty" Honors College they helped establish remained in place.

"We really did create our own culture that permeates to today," Arencibia said.