A Blog on McConnell Center Life

The McConnell Scholars Program is based on the tenets of Leadership, Scholarship, and Service. One of the biggest drawing factors of the program and the university for me was the emphasis on service and community involvement. I have had the opportunities and experiences of volunteering in schools, occupational therapy centers, medical camps, and a number of other places in the city of Louisville. This barely scratches the surface of opportunities. This year our brilliant and talented service chairwoman Mary Kennedy has done a tremendous job of working with community agencies such as Americana Community Center and the Ronald McDonald House to provide a plethora of service opportunities for the McConnell Scholars. I am excited for the next year to come and am very excited for the new class of McConnell Scholars to commit themselves to all 3 tenets of the program!

After being down the entire game, the UofL Cardinals Men's Basketball team rallies to punch their ticket to the Final Four with a win over 7-seed Florida. They seal the deal with a pair of free throws. Somewhere in Central KY, 16 McConnell Scholars listen with bated breath, willing those free throws into the basket. "And it's good!" wails out the radio announcer, and the small band of students erupts with happiness. The seniors in the group don't attempt to contain their excitement. I couldn't give that moment justice... The small group of us were on a camping trip with Dr. Kleber and our only way of tracking the game was by listening to the radio in our 2 15-passenger vans. The Cardinals had not had a very promising season but had turned it around in the post-season: winning the Big East conference tournament and now making it much further in the tournament than any SportCenter commentator would have predicted. And now we are going to play in arguably one ...

I have been taking a class on the United Nations as well as an American Foreign Policy class this semester. They are nice compliments to each other if I do say so myself.   The universe of collective security is easily one of the most researched phenomenon in contemporary college classes. Throughout these two classes, I have read a lot on collective security; and yet, the question I want to pose is one that I seldom stumbled upon.   The question is this: Why most of the world is developing into democratic nations with seemingly American ideas of human rights and freedom; yet, there continues to be large amounts of deep anti -American sentiment throughout most of the world? I thought awhile about this question, and this is the base of that I came up with. After the cold war, America entered a unique phases of world dominance that no current nation had ever faced. The United States had almost no choice but to help rebuild most of the world; thus, many distinctly American idea...

“A family in harmony will prosper in everything.” – Chinese proverb With all the stress and difficult challenges I have been facing this semester, I am eternally grateful for the support I have received from my family.  Anytime I have a doubt about my life decisions or can no longer believe in myself, my parents and my sister are always there for me. Somehow, they can see the goodness and strength in me that I keep losing. They say you are who you hang out with. I take that one step further. You are who you love the most. And if I can be anything like the people I love the most – if I can be anything like my family – I believe I can make it through anything. Every once in a while I miss my family so much that I just want to go back home and stay there for days. But then I remember that I have a wonderful McConnell family that supports me too.  A.S. - 2014

Copyright - McConnell Center As a McConnell Scholar, I recently had the opportunity to attend a speech by Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta. Although the speech itself proved engaging and informative, the question and answer session that followed eclipsed it. When called upon to ask his question, the last selected audience member thanked the Secretary and his staff for coming to speak to him, before reminding the audience about the perilous progress of climate change in Cameroon. He then berated Senator McConnell for his failure to believe in climate change, and exhorted Secretary Panetta to join him in asserting that the Senator's views were wrong. I was shocked, not only at the wild impropriety of the man's comments, but at the reaction of the audience, many of whom met the remarks with enthusiastic applause. While I do not agree with the Senator's assessment of the nature and causes of climate change, I would never confront him at an event which I attended by his in...

I started this beautiful morning of Spring Break reading from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in preparation for our seminar next Tuesday. Reading about the Ent's assault on Isengard, Treebeard's description of their flooding of the place caught my attention. "Water may come through--and it will be foul water for a while, until all the filth of Saruman is washed away." Perhaps it was this account of the cleansing of Isengard that got me thinking of the importance of springtime renewal. Or perhaps it was the male cardinals calling and chasing after the females through the bare branches of my back yard trees that got me thinking about the wonderful changes that come with spring. Whatever it was, I soon moved myself off the deck and to the yard to do my part in the renewal process of the world. First I burned the ornamental grasses, the old stalks of last year making room for the new sprouts of April; their ashes nouris...

Like so many who have gone before us, we are absorbed with the pursuit of happiness.  We strive to choose the path of life that will bring us the most joy and the least amount of trials.  But in all of human history, has anyone truly made the right choice?  Has anyone ever been truly happy?  This is the topic of Samuel Johnson’s book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia .  Rasselas and his family live in Abissinia, a land known as “the happy valley.” The happy valley is an enclosed area, known only to the people who live within its gates.  “[R]evelry and merriment was the business of every hour from the dawn of morning to the close of even.”  It sounds like the perfect paradise, yet Rasselas is unhappy: “the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me to day, and will grow yet more wearisome to morrow.”  So he and a few others, including his sister and an old sage named Imlac, escape into the real world to discover who has truly achieve...

www.china.org.cn/english/features/museums/139265.htm One of the benefits of being a McConnell Scholar is the opportunity to travel to China for five weeks during the summer following your junior year. Over the past month, I, along with the remainder of the Class of 2013, have been preparing for this trip under the tutelage of Dr. Shiping Hua, a McConnell Center Fellow and political science professor at the University of Louisville. We have discussed Chinese politics, how to prepare for the trip, and what to see (or not see) based on the advice from Scholars who went on the trip last summer. These preparatory seminars have made each of us more excited about the privilege to travel to another country this summer. As a mini-assignment, I researched the Chinese Ethnic Park and Museum and look forward to seeing the variety of Chinese ethnic groups, architecture, dance and other cultural symbols on display. Unlike past McConnell Scholar groups that have traveled to the People's R...

Thomas More's "Utopia" is a book depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social, and political customs. More and his friend Peter Giles learn of Utopia from Raphael Hythloday, a philosopher and world traveler. More and Giles are convinced, after hearing Hythloday's opinion on the many societies he has experienced all over the world, that Hythloday should be a counselor to a king. Hythloday dismisses this out of hand, and with a number of examples shows the folly in such an experiment. A king will always surround himself with people who will generally agree with his plans, and so anyone who disagrees with him will be cast down as insane. This is to be expected when two people who see the world in different ways are forced to reconcile their differing opinions. Hythloday's description of Utopia is of a society based on rational thought, with communal property, great productivity, no rapacious love of gold, no real class distinctions, no poverty, litt...

So it is interview weekend. Applicants come eager and edgy not knowing what to expect. They are experiencing a whirlwind of emotions…and we also experienced a whirlwind in the atmosphere. I must say we had a very interesting interview day yesterday; one that definitely will not be forgotten. The tornado watch made for a noteworthy situation. Everyone was evacuated to the basement for shelter and there is where we waited for the storm to pass. The wait was long and tiring and after, interviews continued. The interviewees were drained and are certainly some people with drive. They came back this morning ready to conquer anything, even another natural disaster according to one applicant. I wish good luck to each candidate and I know that whoever is in the program will be a great addition.