Last Tuesday, the Honors Council hosted a lecture by Dr. Kyle Kopko ‘05 as the first event of the new Honors Lecture Series.

Kopko, an assistant professor of political science and the director of the pre-law program at Elizabethtown College, will succeed Director of the Honors Program and Associate Professor of English Dr. Dana Mead as the director of the honors program by June of next year.

Kopko’s presentation, entitled “Thinking Like a Social Scientist,” drew an audience of about 20 students to Hoover. Most of those students are members of the honors program.

Sophomore biology major Philip Belder, who is the honors council president, facilitated the hour-long program. “This is an event that we hope to continue on for the rest of the semester and onwards,” Belder said.  “This is basically a student event where we invite speakers out of our honors professors, faculty and administration.”

The Honors Lecture Series may involve “speeches or discussions or any type of event they [the honors faculty members] want that relates directly to the students and will be useful for you [the students],” Belder said.

“What I want to do today is tell you a little bit about my own personal story, how I got to be where I am today and share some insights on leadership,” Kopko said.  “I want to talk about some of the research projects I’ve conducted since my undergrad days all the way through today.”  Before continuing, he discussed the definition of the term “social science” with the student audience and mentioned how it can be applied in different careers.

“I think even [the idea of] thinking like a social scientist has implications in just about any profession … any type of leadership position,” Kopko said. Kopko invited students to ask questions throughout the presentation as well. “By all means, just raise your hand, and we’ll get into it,” he said.

He also prefers that students call him by his first name.  “At the end of the day, I’m a pretty down-to-earth guy, and I just want to be able to have a conversation, help you achieve whatever academic and professional goals that you might have, so whatever works for you works for me,” he said.

Kopko began by giving students some of his background. “I’m originally from central Pennsylvania, my father’s a police officer, [and] I grew up in a household where my dad told me if I ever became a cop, he’d kill me, so I figured, ‘Oh, I’ll become a district attorney.  That’s the next best thing, and I always thought that I would go on to law school and become an attorney … and then I got involved with my first-year seminar,” Kopko said.  “I was in Dr. Kanagy’s first-year seminar. The honors program has given me so much throughout my academic career, and it has helped me throughout all of graduate school.” According to Kopko, that first-year seminar experience and the honors program shaped his career path to academia. He went on to share research that he worked on at Etown and eventually had published with the support of his honors professors. The honors experience influenced “what I do today as a professor, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to take this on,” Kopko said.

Students had the opportunity to eat dinner with Kopko in the Marketplace following the event.

The event also counted for Called to Lead, which offered 30 points to each student who attended the lecture.