Dr. Liesl Ward, a faculty member at Jefferson State Community College, has been appointed to Phi Theta Kappa’s Honors Program Committee. She will serve a four-year term on the committee, effective July 2008.

Dr. Ward will serve as the Humanities Representative on the committee. The Honors Program Committee leads Phi Theta Kappa’s exploration of the Society’s interdisciplinary Honors Study Topic. The 2008-2010 topic is The Paradox of Affluence: Choices, Challenges, and Consequences.

“We are privileged to have Dr. Ward as a member of our Honors Program Committee,” said Phi Theta Kappa Executive Director Rod A. Risley. “Her vast teaching experience in the area of humanities will be invaluable to the committee in exploring this topic,” Risley said. “We welcome her expertise as a dedicated Phi Theta Kappa advisor and as a highly respected member of Jefferson State’s faculty.”

Dr. Ward serves as Chair of the Department of Communications and English at Jefferson State’s Shelby-Hoover Campus where she teaches composition and literature and has served as advisor of Phi Theta Kappa’s Beta Lambda Delta Chapter for five years.

She has also served as a Faculty Scholar for the Society’s Honors Institute and is a certified instructor for the Leadership Development Studies Program.

Dr. Ward received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Samford University in English and history, a Master of Arts in English from University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-paign.

The Phi Theta Kappa Honors Committee, composed of Phi Theta Kappa regional coordinators, faculty advisors and consultants, biennially selects the Society’s Honors Study Topic, an interdisciplinary study used by chapters and colleges as the basis for honors study in colloquies, courses, seminars and the Honors Satellite Seminar Series.

The Honors Committee also publishes the Honors Program Guide, a resource for exploring the Honors Study Topic, and assists in planning the Society’s Faculty Scholar Conference and Honors Institute, a weeklong summer conference focusing on the Honors Study Topic.

Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society, headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi, is the largest honor society in American higher education with 1,250 chapters on two-year and community college campuses in all 50 of the United States, Canada, Germany, the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the British Virgin Islands, the United Arab Emirates and U.S. territorial possessions. More than two million students have been inducted since its founding in 1918, with approximately 100,000 students inducted annually.