Building Your Own Honors College: Professor Betsy James’ Journey of Creativity and Teaching
April 8, 2025 - Anna Abeyta
Student Lilah Hammad nominated Professor Betsy James for the April Faculty Spotlight. Hammad describes Betsy as an incredible teacher, noting, “She is a remarkable writer and artist who shares her passion with her students, inspiring them to create and share wonderful things.” When asked why she nominated Betsy, Hammad replied, “Betsy is just plain cool. I want to be like her when I grow up.” Read below to hear what Betsy has to say:
Honors is the college I wish I’d had. I was a bright, oddball kid—sound familiar?— talented in both writing and art but constantly told that I had to choose either one or the other. (“Interdisciplinarity,” the jewel in Honors’ crown, hadn’t been invented yet.) A National Merit Scholar, national writing awards, went off in glory to an Ivy League college, straight As my freshman year…
Then I crashed and burned. I was a Westerner from Podunk, Utah; in the sixties the academic track was hidebound, with no time for the off-trail, apparently irrelevant, wandering explorations that I now recognize as “creativity.” I crept home to the state university, feeling like a failure—and discovered that thee I had time to socialize, experiment, work-study as a scientific illustrator, volunteer in Mexico, learn Spanish, keep a sketch journal, teach myself to write and draw. It was my first lesson in something I now try to teach: “Build your own Honors College.” If you’re an atypical student—many Honors students are—it’s up to you to be proactive, to design a life discipline that works for you. (It was also a lesson in the enormous value of state universities: roomy and interesting, each with its own cultural flavor.)
In the course of designing my own “life college” I became a freelance illustrator specializing in museum work, a children’s book writer and illustrator, a hiker, a painter, a novelist, and a teacher of writing. I taught in the public schools, in Mexico, on the reservations, especially Zuni Pueblo; I went back for an MA in Education. I wrote and illustrated many books.
Most of my novels are “speculative fiction,” the umbrella term for many different kinds of fantasy and science fiction, and that’s what I teach in Honors: two courses, “World-building” and “Science Fiction and Fantasy as Critical Insight.” They aim to give students a taste of writers they may not have met and a lot of practice writing fiction. I had to unlearn a lot of what I’d been told in school, then figure out how to write from my own voice—mostly by writing a lot! I try to teach writing the way writers write, which often involves multimedia art and play. A notorious feature of my courses is the requirement that students fill a hundred-page unlined “daybook” any way they want. Write? Draw? Cut paste scorch sew dribble fold? Staple in an old sock? The only rule is “No body fluids… except tears.”
I was delighted when our latest Rhodes scholar, Abrianna Morales, credited my World-building course in her Rhodes interview. Yet what makes me happiest is when an old student contacts me and says, “I started keeping a daybook again,” “I started a writing group,” or “I’m on daybook twenty-eight!” I know then that they’re in touch with their creative self, working their wild mind, catching ideas and sorrows and dreams. And who knows where those will lead?
