A Love of Education, Knowing, and Learning

Story by Daisy Arvonen

The Honors Program is full of life-changing unexpected connections—even in love. It was through the Honors Program that Gloriana Guillermo, a senior studying Strategic Management, was able to create such a special connection.

Guillermo met Fletcher Smith at a game night with her roommates. At the time, she was taking an unexpected connections class about the history of the atomic bomb, and it happened that Smith was going into nuclear engineering. The two were clearly interested in each other, and their connection grew even stronger when Guillermo pulled out her textbook from her unexpected connections class so they could chat about it. “I was able to actually talk about it…I had a talking point that he loved,” she explained. Smith actually ended up using her textbook for the nuclear materials class he was taking at the time, and their relationship grew stronger because of it.

Unexpected connections, whether in academics or in love, were one of Guillermo’s favorite parts of the Honors Program. “It forces you to go outside your comfort zone and explore areas that you wouldn’t, and it creates these bonds between different subjects,” she said. She recalled going birding in an unexpected connections class about birdsong and music, an opportunity she never would have experienced in the classes she was taking through the business school. Another class she took explored death through the lens of literature and biology, inspiring the topic of her Great Questions Essay: what is death? Guillermo has continued to use interdisciplinary thinking along with research skills she has developed in the Honors Program as she has worked on her thesis project and prepared for her career.

In her thesis, “Do ESG Ratings Do Any Good? The Problems of Aggregation in Corporate Social Responsibility Literature,” she researched ESG ratings (a measurement of environmental, social, and governance factors in a company) and their effectiveness in changing the behavior of companies. Upon graduating, she plans to study corporate law. She said that the skills she has developed while working on her thesis is something she wants to use in law school. “Being able to quickly make a lot of those connections, and being able to quickly research and understand at a base level these other complicated things, I think is one way I’ll take it with me,” she said. “But another thing that I really want to take is just this value and love of education, knowing, learning and a deeper knowledge.”

The Honors Program has helped Guillermo prepare for her career in law, but perhaps one of her greatest Honors achievements came through her unexpected connections with Smith. “If I hadn’t taken that class, I wouldn’t have had that springboard to help me get married,” she said. Guillermo is graduating in April and is marrying Smith in May. She is planning on using what she has learned in the Honors Program throughout her life, especially her love for unexpected connections. “All subjects are important, and it all comes together,” she said. “Everything does work together in different ways,” she said.