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Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Forum that opens this issue of JNCHC is devoted to the topic “Social Class and Honors” and appears in the midst of economic and social turmoil unlike any since honors education started gaining momentum in the 1960s. As a prelude to the Forum, the time seems right to exercise some editorial prerogative and address potential implications that the financial meltdown might have for honors programs and colleges.

Editorial Matter

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Front Cover

EDITORIAL POLICY

DEADLINES

JOURNAL EDITORS

EDITORIAL BOARD

CONTENTS

CALL FOR PAPERS

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Class, Honors, And Eastern Kentucky: Why We Still Need To Try To Change The World, Linda Frost

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Norm Wiener’s piece “Honors Is Elitist, and What’s Wrong with That?” couldn’t have come at more opportune moment for me. Having recently accepted the directorship of a well-respected program founded by the legendary Dr. Bonnie Gray and seated in one of the poorest regions of the nation—Appalachia where, as Philip Cohen sang in “No Christmas in Kentucky,” “the trees don’t twinkle when you’re hungry”—I’ve been thinking a lot about class and honors lately. Eastern Kentucky is a place marked by tobacco barns, mountaintop-removal coal mining, infamous mining strikes (Harlan County U.S.A., Barbara Kopple’s film about one of those, …

List Of Journal Themes 2000-2009

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

 Liberal Learning In the New Century Vol. 1 No. 1 (2000) (the only issue not available digitally)

 Science in Honors Vol. 1 No. 2 (2000)

 Educational Transitions with Special Forum On Honors Education Vol. 2 No. 1 (2001)

 Honors and the Creative Arts Vol. 2 No. 2 (2001)

 Liberal Learning Vol. 3 No. 1 (2002)

 Technology in Honors Vol. 3 No. 2 (2002)

 Students and Teachers in Honors Vol. 4 No. 1 (2003)

 Multiperspectivism In Honors Education Vol. 4 No. 2 (2003)

 Research in Honors Vol. 5 No. 1 (2004)

 …

Dealing With Subjective And Objective Issues In Honors Education, Michael Giazzoni, Nathan Hilberg

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Professionals working in higher education who are concerned with social justice need to consider questions of objectivity and subjectivity. Even though some assessments are objective and some subjective, neither kind of assessment is guaranteed to separate out the effects of socioeconomic benefits from student ability. Honors programs and colleges should therefore concern themselves with the problem of awarding membership based on test criteria because the benefits inherent to honors programs could end up being given more often to those families with extra means and therefore the ability to provide opportunities like private tutoring and test preparation classes. Such actions can …

A Blue-Collar Honors Story, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In “Honors is Elitist, and What’s Wrong with That?” Norm Weiner contemplates definitions and perceptions of elitism, looking specifically at the intersection of academic elitism and socioeconomic elitism in honors education and arguing that honors programs at state schools or smaller private schools are successful at assisting students who are intellectually gifted but economically disadvantaged to “step up the social ladder” toward middleclass careers and values. My own personal and educational experiences exemplify this sentiment, and I sometimes feel as if I could be the poster child for socioeconomic ascendance through honors education—except for the fact that, despite the improvement …

Honors Needs Diversity More Than The Diverse Need Honors, William A. Ashton

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Awareness of and sensitivity to social class, economic class, ethnicity and gender have been important goals of the academy and of honors for the past few decades. During this time the academy, which has always been the domain primarily of the middle and upper class, has reached out to help those whom they call “the disadvantaged.” Typically, academics see such attempts at outreach as acts of generosity or social consciousness, a kind of noblesse oblige. The truth is that attracting students from different social classes as well as ethnicities and nationalities brings at least as much benefit to the college …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2009

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

CONTENTS

Call for Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Submission Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Dedication to Mitch Pruitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Editor’s Introduction (Ada Long) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

FORUM ON “SOCIAL CLASS AND HONORS” …

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

William A. Ashton

Bernice Braid

Craig T. Cobane

Rose Cole

Lisa DeFrank-Cole

Linda Frost

Keith Garbutt

Michael Giazzoni

Annmarie Guzy

Nathan Hilberg

Kyle McKay

Charlotte Pressler

Anne N. Rinn

Robert Spurrier

Norm Weiner

Predicting Retention In Honors Programs, Kyle Mckay

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

A number of challenges exist in providing the honors experience. Programs must compete for resources, coordinate departments, design dynamic curricula, and work toward changing goals. Among the many challenges, one of the hardest begins before students even enter the program. Honors admissions must select the students who will likely succeed in the program. After admissions, programs must then ensure that the program design encourages academic achievement and persistence in honors. To accomplish the goals and overcome the challenges of honors, a better understanding of the predictors of success is necessary. Using a logit regression model, my study will add evidence …

Does Broad-Based Merit Aid Affect Socioeconomic Diversity In Honors?, Lisa Defrank-Cole, Rose Cole, Keith Garbutt

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The honors college at West Virginia University (WVU) has seen an influx of high-achieving West Virginia students since 2001, when the PROMISE Scholarship was implemented. The PROMISE Scholarship is a merit-based financial aid award for West Virginia residents. If a student qualifies by achieving a certain GPA and ACT/SAT score, he or she receives a scholarship that covers the full cost of tuition at any state college or university in West Virginia. West Virginia University has benefited greatly from the PROMISE Scholarship. About half of all PROMISE Scholars attend West Virginia University (Higher Education Policy Commission, 2007), and many are …

The Two-Year College Honors Program And The Forbidden Topics Of Class And Cultural Capital, Charlotte Pressler

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

From my position as honors director at a two-year college in rural Florida, in the citrus and cow-hunter country south of I-4 and north of Okeechobee, Norm Weiner’s positing of honors education as a way to give students a chance to climb the class ladder seems persuasive. Honors education can, and does, help our students fulfill their middle-class aspirations. Yet much still remains to unpack in this middle-class-ness, especially in its connection to education. This territory is uncomfortable to Americans, for whom, as Weiner writes, “a basic . . . value is equality” and for whom the notion of social …

To The Charge Of “Honors Is Elitist,” On Advice Of Counsel We Plead “Guilty As Charged”, Robert Spurrier

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Norm Weiner’s introductory essay for this issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council challenges us to face the charge of elitism that so frequently is lodged against honors programs and honors colleges (as well as against those of us who are involved in honors education as administrators, faculty, and students). On advice of wise counsel, my plea to the charge is “guilty as charged.”

Honors Is Elitist, And What’S Wrong With That?, Norm Weiner

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Like many other concepts in the sociological literature, social class is easier to discuss than to define. Nonetheless, define it we must in order to have some common ground for discussing it and for explaining it to our students. Aquick scan of basic textbooks, those defenders of sociology’s virtues, gives us a definition something like this: “A social class is a group of people [in sociology, it’s always safe to start this way] who share the same level of income and education and therefore share roughly the same norms, values, and lifestyle.” To be perfectly clear about this, sociologists aren’t …

Nchc Order Form

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

NATIONAL COLLEGIATE HONORS COUNCIL MONOGRAPHS & JOURNALS

Elitism Misunderstood: In Defense Of Equal Opportunity, Anne N. Rinn, Craig T. Cobane

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

At one time or another, we have all dealt with colleagues who expressed doubts about dedicating resources to honors students. They argue that gifted and high-achieving students do not need or deserve additional resources to pursue their educational goals; they will do just fine on their own. Critics of honors often comment that money spent on honors students, who will graduate anyway, should be invested in helping students with traditionally low retention rates; these latter students are the ones who need the resources. At some time in the discussion, such critics typically say that honors education is inherently “elitist” because …

Writing War: The Memorial Design Project, Janine Utell

Honors in Practice Online Archive

It seems a fortuitous—and frightening—time to be teaching a course on literature and art of war in the twentieth century. As an assistant professor in a small English department within Widener University’s humanities division, which serves a range of students through our general education program, I am constantly mindful of making the aesthetic socially and ethically relevant. Furthermore, as a sometime-teacher in the General Education Honors Program, I am conscious not only of making the arts and humanities relevant to a diverse body of students but of challenging some very driven and engaged thinkers and writers.

Ending In Honors, Samuel Schuman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

What follows is a slightly revised version of a presentation given by Sam Schuman at the 2008 NCHC conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Stability In The Context Of Change, Hallie Savage

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Last year at this time, I began to think about what I might adopt as a presidential theme. What could NCHC reasonably accomplish in 2008? If you recall, at that time we hired Liz Beck as Interim Executive Director, and one month before the conference we hired Cindy Hill. Major changes were inevitable in our organization. I began my presidency with a goal to work with the Board of Directors to establish stability in the face of these organizational changes. The goal of stability was in response to the need for a national office that would provide the resources for …

Implementing Honors Faculty Status: An Adventure In Academic Politics, Jesse Peters

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Ijoined the faculty at the University of North Carolina Pembroke in 1999. At that time there were about 3200 students, and we were mostly a commuter campus. Currently we have just over 6000 students, and the campus has shifted to a much more residential student body. The physical plant has expanded and improved, and the faculty has almost doubled. We have added several new degree programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The focus of this essay is the expansion of the honors college, particularly the implementation of a system granting official honors faculty status. This system has helped …

Networking An Honors Community Out Of Fragmentation, Karlyn Koh, John Chaffee, Edward Goodman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

What makes an honors program a community? And how does one build a vibrant honors community at a commuter community college? In the City University of New York’s LaGuardia Community College Honors Program, we have been grappling with such questions especially because ours is an urban, non-residential campus that serves a diverse, non-traditional student population. Our student population is roughly 38% Hispanic, 21% Asian, and 20% Black; in 2007, 58% of our students were foreign born, 19% took evening classes, and 46% were part-time students. How can we provide the program with a sense of cohesion without the infrastructure of …

Separate But Equal: Will It Work For Professional Honors Programs?, Beata M. Jones, Peggy W. Watson

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Developing honors opportunities for students in professional schools can be difficult, as noted by, for example, Giazzoni (2007), Bishop and Sittason (2007) and Noble and Dowling (2007) and also as demonstrated by honors program statistics at Texas Christian University (TCU). Despite the difficulty, high achieving students in professional schools should have the opportunity to benefit from an honors education. According to Bruce (2008), “honors education looks different from other types of education. . . . Honors pushes our comfort zones . . . [and] . . . challenges us to . . . be open to new ideas” (19–29). This …

Honors Ex Machina: Changing Perceptions Of Honors Through Horizontal Integration, A Case Study, Timothy Hulsey

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Honors programs and colleges face numerous pressures from raising money to managing growth to developing and maintaining curricula. None of these challenges, however, are unique to honors. What has, unfortunately, proven to be unique to honors has been the continuing question of relevance. Over the years, “making honors relevant” has been an ongoing part of the national honors discussion.

In the fall/winter 2007 volume of the JNCHC, Ira Cohen used a Robert Burns poem to remind us that others often do not see honors as we see ourselves: “The observation by Burns clearly applies to honors: the viewpoint of those …

Bridging The Divides: Using A Collaborative Honors Research Experience To Link Academic Learning To Civic Issues, Alix Dowling Fink, M. Leigh Lunsford

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The National Science Education Standards assert the vital importance of the inquiry process: “Inquiry into authentic questions generated from student experiences is the central strategy for teaching science” (National Research Council 1996). Yet students in U.S. high schools have highly variable laboratory experiences, and attempts at inquiry-oriented learning are often “cookbook” activities isolated from the larger flow of science and mathematics learning (Singer et al. 2006). In the higher education environment, it is similarly uncommon for students, particularly first-year students in science and statistics classes for non-majors, to have the opportunity to practice authentic research from formulation of a research …

Enhancing Environmental Literacy And Global Learning Among Honors Students, Liza Davis

Honors in Practice Online Archive

In 2005, the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF) released a summary of a decade’s worth of research into environmental literacy among Americans, collected in collaboration with Roper Reports. The report included some disturbing statistics: 45 million Americans think the ocean is a fresh-water source, for example, and only 12% of those surveyed were able to pass a basic quiz on energy awareness. As the report’s author laments, “Our years of data from Roper surveys show a persistent pattern of environmental ignorance even among the most educated and influential members of society” (Coyle v). Like most Americans, honors students …

Honors Ambassadors: A Framework For Enhancing Student And Program Development, Kristy Burton, Erin Wheeler Mckenzie, Patrick Damo

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Many honors programs struggle with how to attract the best and brightest students, primarily because the students we seek often have multiple lucrative offers from highly rated institutions. At Miami University, we found ourselves in the unfortunate position of losing top-tier students to competitor programs in the region and state and thus needing to take action. Our first step was to take a critical look at the scope and type of communication we were having with prospective students. What we found was that although we offer an excellent honors program with learning opportunities that are equivalent to or perhaps better …

Honors In Practice, Volume 5 (Complete Issue)

Honors in Practice Online Archive

CONTENTS
Editorial Policy
Submission Guidelines
Dedication to Earl and Maggie Brown
Editor’s Introduction Ada Long

IMPORTANT SPEECHES OF 2008
Stability in the Context of Change Hallie E. Savage
Ending in Honors Samuel Schuman
People Who Think Otherwise Kevin Donovan

ADMINISTRATIVE DESIGNS
Implementing Honors Faculty Status: An Adventure in Academic Politics Jesse Peters
Building an Honors Development Board Scott Carnicom and Philip M. Mathis
Honors Ex Machina: Changing Perceptions of Honors through Horizontal Integration, A Case Study Timothy L. Hulsey
Separate but Equal: Will it Work for Professional Honors Programs? Beata M. Jones and Peggy W. Watson

CURRICULAR DESIGNS
Combining Chemistry …

Bridgewater State College Factbook, 2008-2009, Office Of Institutional Research And Assessment, Bridgewater State College

Factbook

No abstract provided.

Success And Failure In The College Presidency, Stephen Nelson

Secondary Education and Professional Programs Faculty Publications

The author presents his observations on the state of college presidency in the U.S. He mentions several successful college presidents including Carleton College’s Rob Oden, New York University’s John Sexton and University of Pennsylvania’s Judith Rodin. He discusses the failure of Duke University’s president Richard Brodhead in handling the lacrosse team fiasco. He cites the need for presidents to become true leaders of faculty colleagues.

The College Presidency: An Interview With Stephen J. Nelson, Stephen Nelson

Secondary Education and Professional Programs Faculty Publications

College presidents continue to fill prominent critical roles in colleges and universities and society. Thus an examination of the reasons for their success and failure is vital. Four major criteria are presented as a baseline for fair judgments of presidents and their leadership. Current trends in the presidency and presidential selection are explored and presented in order to increase understanding about how presidents can best "fit" the demands of these important leadership posts.