The Honors Program is taking their work south of the border to Texiguat, Honduras where they are working to renovate an old military headquarters building into a museum. The project is being taken on by Morgan Greenbury, architectural engineering; Karis Johnson, civil engineering; Samantha Sterritt, computer science; and Annabelle Varsek, architectural engineering. Together the team is tackling three main components: curating the museum, creating the website and fundraising. 

The museum will be about Francisco Morazan, a Central American politician and general who supported independence from Spain and democracy. He was the head of state of Honduras and then served as the president of the Federal Republic of Central America from 1830 to 1839. The building the group is renovating is Morazan’s former military headquarters building.

 The website will highlight the museum as well as focus on the town and local businesses. “They want to draw in tourists, but do not have any accessible information about the town online, so we will be helping with that,” said Varsek. “We are dividing up the responsibilities between the team to help ensure the project is completed efficiently, accurately and to the best of our abilities.”

The project kicked-off this summer when Varsek and Dr. Patrick Jung, Humanities, Social Science and Communication professor, traveled to Honduras to learn about the community and discuss the project with community leaders. They met with a citizens’ committee in Texiguat; Erik Mejia, the mayor of Texiguat; and Gerardo Torres, vice minister of international relations and cooperation. Varsek explained the museum project to Torres, who “expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the project and promised to support the student team,” said Jung.

The Honors Program offers opportunities for students to combine experiential learning, real-world projects and community service. For Varsek, this project was a chance to meld her love of traveling and volunteering. “This was the perfect opportunity to combine these two passions of mine and to serve another community while learning about it at the same time.”

This project empowers students to exhibit the MSOE Mindset. The MSOE Mindset identifies graduates as leaders of character, responsible professionals, passionate learners and value creators. “I really have had to embody the MSOE Mindset throughout this project,” said Varsek. While on the Honduras trip, Varsek reminded herself to never assume and always ask questions. “This allowed me to be more useful and gain more knowledge that will help serve the town, the team, and myself as this project progresses.” She is also learning Spanish so she can better communicate with the community of Texiguat.

With the start of the new school year around the corner, the group plans to focus on next steps and recruit additional team members to support the project. “One of the main steps is getting the final plans for the renovation confirmed,” said Varsek. “We also want to research and curate what is going to go into the museum once it’s renovated.” The group has already began collecting photos, videos and maps of the town for the website, which they will begin to build out in the coming months.