PRCC student attends Phi Theta Kappa Honors Institute

HATTIESBURG – A Pearl River Community College student recently spent a week at Boston University studying communication as part of a Phi Theta Kappa Honors Institute.Kimberly Williams of Hattiesburg, a student at PRCC Forrest County Center, will use what she learned as webmaster for Phi Theta Kappa Mississippi-Louisiana region.Although the topic – The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, and Promise – sounded somewhat obscure, Williams described the week as dynamic.You could just tell everybody was really excited to be there, she said. The first gathering, you could just feel how excited everybody was.The conference focused on using different types of communication for specific purposes and included retired astronaut Fred Haise, a Biloxi native; mystery author Dr. Sara Paretsky, and Aasif Mandvi of The Dailey Show as guest speakers.We use different types of communication for different information depending on what were doing, Williams said. Fred Haise went over the whole Apollo 13 mission from start to finish with photos and talked about the communication between the spacecraft and the ground and how it worked. They had so much they had to communicate when everything happened.Mandvi presentation dealt with a different type of communication.Every other word out of his mouth was the f word, she said. He talked about the fake news and how a lot of people are going towards that.Williams was selected to attend the Honors Institute because she is a regional PTK officer. Phi Theta Kappa is an international honorary society for students enrolled in two-year colleges.What she learned will be helpful to the Beta Tau Gamma PTK chapter at the Forrest County Center as it works to achieve Five-Star Status, the highest ranking for a chapter, said Dr. Ryan Ruckel, chapter sponsor.She will help us think through the ways we could get our chapter and our campus to interact with and discuss the honors topic, he said. Integrating the honors study topic is one of the major components in achieving Five_Star Status.A sophomore, Williams is an English major with an emphasis in creative writing and received the Outstanding Student in English Award for 2010-11.

Each community college president is asked to bring two (2) wrapped door prizes, minimum value of $50 each. We will have a station set up at the conference for you to drop off the door prizes.

Each community college is asked to provide name tags for their Board members, administration, and staff attending the conference.