Honors College Students Present Family History Narratives at Virtual Class Symposium

This April, students in the honors seminar course Genetics and Genealogy presented their family history narratives in a virtual Class Symposium. As part of this course, students shared inspiring stories of survival, migrations, family traditions, and perseverance. Each student learned something new about their families and where they come from and how they have evolve.

The class research was twofold: students completed genetics studies showing their ancestral markers and also completed a genealogical research project to uncover historical records and other documents. These projects allow students to have a personal connection with historical events. Genetics and Genealogy is unique in that it is taught collaboratively from both a humanities and science perspective by professors James Doan, Ph.D. from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Emily Schmitt Lavin, Ph.D. from Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography.

In addition to these faculty members, the students collaborated with the Alvin Sherman Library to access genealogy resources. This was done with the help of Nora Quinlan, Director of Reference and Instruction. She created a genealogy library guide: https://nsufl.libguides.com/genealogy.

This course is offered through the Honors College under Dean, Don Rosenblum along with a variety of other unique course offerings: https://honors.nova.edu/honors/courses.html

Since the completion of the course, several of the  students have contributed their work to the NSU Works Genealogy Reports Site located at https://nsuworks.nova.edu/genealogy-reports/.