Education Commons^™

The Role Of The Honors College Dean In The Future Of Honors Education, Peter Parolin, Timothy J. Nichols, Donal C. Skinner, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In this chapter, four honors deans reflect on the unique aspects of the honors dean's role. The authors argue that by being responsive to the challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities they face daily, honors deans can enable honors to deliver on its promises to students and to serve the whole university community. Attentive to changing dynamics in honors education nationwide, the authors address how deans must confront myths about honors that bear the legacy of past realities while actively tending to justice in the admissions process, to recruiting and serving diverse populations, and to supporting an honors environment that addresses the …

From The Top Down: Implications Of Honors College Deans’ Race And Gender, Malin Pereira, Jacqueline Smith-Mason, Karoline Summerville, Scott Linneman

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Most honors college deans are White males, yet most students enrolled in honors colleges are women; more often than not, there is glaring underrepresentation of diverse races and ethnicities among student populations in honors colleges. Considering these data, the authors ask whether honors colleges perpetuate the “Oxford College Don” model of White male privilege and power. Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and other students of color often look at the leaders of honors colleges and rarely see themselves, and White honors students lack the opportunity to see diverse leadership models. This chapter explains how and why faculty of color and women face …

Something Borrowed, Something New: Honors College Faculty And The Staffing Of Honors Courses, Erin E. Edgington, Linda Frost

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This chapter offers an overview of the most current and common methods of staffing honors college courses as well as the problems and possibilities of these methods. The chapter’s literature review notes the typical characteristics of the most successful honors faculty members as well as how those characteristics tend to mirror those of successful honors students. As honors colleges themselves have proliferated, so has the number of tenure-track faculty lines contained in them; the details of how several universities have evaluated those faculty are included. The authors make three final recommendations regarding honors college faculty and note that as honors …

Telling Your Story: Stewardship And The Honors College, Andrew Martino

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors administrators, particularly honors college deans, find themselves in positions not necessarily equivalent to academic deans in other disciplines. Often, honors college deans function more like provosts in that they need to attend to multiple disciplines simultaneously, while also often carrying obligations in teaching and advising. In addition, the initiation, cultivation, and stewardship of donors to the college are essential components to the honors college dean’s portfolio. This task may be particularly challenging for a dean in honors in that many potential donors are intellectually and emotionally tied to their specific major and/or school or college. And yet, fundraising, especially …

Cultivating Institutional Change: Infusing Principles Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Into Everyday Honors College Practices, Tara Tuttle, Julie Stewart, Kayla Powell

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Envisioning and implementing strategic changes around diversity, equity, and inclusion in honors can be paradoxical. While honors colleges are traditionally regarded as tight-knit communities that serve as centers of curricular and pedagogical innovation, they have also been sites of exclusion because of outdated definitions of excellence based on inequitable presuppositions inherent to the university admissions process. Because many honors programs endeavor to produce publicly engaged graduates, creating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable learning environment is a moral imperative. Not only does it provide a safe and welcoming environment for learners, but it also models the type of behavior we want …

Positioning Honors Colleges To Lead Diversity And Inclusion Efforts At Predominantly White Institutions, Susan Dinan, Jason T. Hilton, Jennifer Willford

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors Colleges are well positioned to be leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on the campuses of Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) by embracing motivated and engaged students from a broad range of backgrounds. Stretching the missions of honors education beyond narrowly defined academic excellence to embrace intellectually curious and creative students and not just those with stellar standardized test scores and GPAs will yield more dynamic and inclusive communities. Embracing holistic admissions practices allows honors colleges to build cohorts of students whose experiences may or may not include being recognized as the smartest in the class in their …

Honors Colleges As Levers Of Educational Equity, Teagan Decker, Joshua Kalin Busman, Michele Fazio

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

While higher education is widely imagined as a tool for social mobility, the realities of enrollment, retention, and professional trajectories betray the conservative mechanisms through which higher education too often reproduces the status quo of inequality. Honors colleges can and should strive to act as levers of equity in this scenario of entrenchment, but the nature of this project varies depending on the institution’s own class position vis-à-vis its students. Elite, highly selective institutions may advocate for enrollment strategies that target student populations that do not typically attend those institutions, but other institutions likely already enroll such students in large …

Promoting The Inclusion Of Lgbtq+ Students: The Role Of The Honors College In Faith-Based Colleges And Universities, Paul E. Prill

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

An estimated 11 percent of students at faith-based colleges and universities, identify as sexual-minority (LGBTQ+). Many of those students come from religious backgrounds and attend universities where they have heard and continue to hear that their sexual identity is in fundamental tension with their faith identity, leading to problems with mental health and, at times, physical health. On many such campuses, sexual minority students have become more vocal, asking that the university acknowledge their presence and provide services to help them succeed and thrive in college. Some of the schools have moved in that direction. Others continue to balk at …

Who Belongs In Honors? Culturally Responsive Advising And Transformative Diversity, Elizabeth Raisanen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Despite a rich body of scholarship that engages with university honors advising, advising to support diversity in higher education, and the overall need for better attention to diversity within honors, the literature has not fully explored the vital role that advising plays in supporting diversity and fostering belonging within honors programs and colleges. This essay brings together the too-often disparate threads of advising, honors, and diversity to advocate for a practice of culturally responsive advising within the honors environment in order to pursue truly transformative diversity. Holistic academic advising and related programming must play a central role in any honors …

Fostering Student Leadership In Honors Colleges, Jill Nelson Granger

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The architecture of student leadership in honors colleges is a formative decision that affects students’ experience and development. Through a broad view of student leadership structures across U.S. honors colleges, four common modalities are identified and described: governance, programming, mentorship, and ambassadorship. Relevant models, variations, combinations, and specializations are provided. Student leadership, as a hallmark of honors education, is one way in which honors colleges distinguish themselves both within and outside the university. As intentional learning communities, honors colleges incorporate student leadership into the nature of honors education, as part of mission, and as a defining outcome of the honors …

Honors Colleges, Transdisciplinary Education, And Global Challenges, Paul Knox, Paul Heilker

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The authors contend that the most significant comparative advantage of honors colleges is the combination of gifted and motivated students from every academic discipline and interdisciplinary curricula that train students to integrate diverse perspectives. The authors discuss how to harness this advantage to provide a truly transdisciplinary education through collaborative, project-based learning, both on campus and beyond. They assert that honors colleges are in a unique position to circumvent the siloed structures of academia by convening multidisciplinary groups of students guided by faculty from a wide range of disciplines. Doing so can help reimagine undergraduate education to address urgent and …

Teaching And Learning In The Fourth Space: Preparing Scholars To Engage In Solving Community Problems, Heidi Appel, Joy Hart, Paul Knox, Andrea Radasanu, Leigh E. Fine, Timothy J. Nichols, Daniel Roberts, Keith Garbutt, William Ziegler, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Kathy Cooke, Ralph Keen, Mark Andersen, Jyotsna Kapur

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors education has a rich history of preparing students to be good communicators, to think deeply and broadly, to collaborate effectively, and to be ethical citizens engaged in communities. The challenges of contemporary society, however, call for something more. To engage effectively with complex societal issues, students must identify and collaborate effectively with a broad range of stakeholders in the community, understand and employ systems thinking, value highly diverse perspectives, and develop communication skills for conflict management. To develop these additional skills and perspectives, the authors invoke the concept of fourth space as the deep engagement of honors students in …

Serving Our Communities: Leveraging The Honors College Model At Two-Year Institutions, Eric Hoffman, Victoria M. Bryan, Dan Flores

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors colleges at two-year institutions play a uniquely important role in twenty-first century higher education by providing additional opportunities, services, and programming that support greater outcomes for the community, especially for those members of underrepresented and underserved populations. Two-year institutions may wonder how the honors college structure could be valuable, particularly when honors programs are already well established, recognized, and understood among the faculty and staff as providing opportunities for students and supported by administration. Honors colleges can give honors a seat at the table in deans councils, budgetary discussions, campus planning, and curriculum development processes, which in turn allows …

Resisting Disciplinarity: Curriculum Mapping And Transdisciplinarity, Megan Snider Bailey

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

American higher education relies on a taxonomy of knowledge stemming from Puritan ways of thinking and knowing—a disciplinary classification system that sorts “questions asked” and “answers possible” into epistemic categories. This paper interrogates the notion of disciplinarity to better understand the arbitrariness of epistemic divisions and the harm that these decisions cause. The author explores transdisciplinarity as an emerging concept in honors education, one which rejects boundaries and explores problems through multiple, competing perspectives. Transdisciplinary pedagogical approaches offer honors educators a mechanism for pivoting teaching and learning away from outdated assumptions of honors as elitist, giving honors students a liberating …

Diversity In Honors: Understanding Systemic Biases Through Student Narratives, Aman Singla, Minerva Melendrez, Mable T. Thai, Sukhdev S. Mann, Denise Zhong, Kim T. Hoang, Isabella H. Lee, Andrea V. Aponte

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Centered on superiority over a certain group or individual, discrimination becomes predominant in prestigious institutions that pride themselves on exclusivity. Collegiate honors programs tend to deepen this practice by creating highly elite spaces accessible only to a select few. This rigidity can lead to an underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups, students who often lack the necessary resources for achieving academic excellence. This case study examines the ways honors programs inadvertently perpetuate discrimination among different social identities. Using inductive interviewing of honors students (n = 12) to gauge individual perceptions of program diversity, researchers rely on content analysis to generate …

Honors Flourishing In The Midst Of Change, Hao Hong, Robert Glover, Mimi Killinger, Jordan Labouff

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the wake of formidable institutional change, and in response to administrative concerns about honors’ place within the university, authors describe the development of a pilot course that led to a program’s critical self-study and course transformations that were long overdue. Citizen Scholarship and Human Flourishing incorporates specific practices such as peer instruction and “ungrading” to align with new institutional learning objectives and broadly defined undergraduate research experiences across disciplines. The experimental course presents honors as a model for progressive curricular change in the midst of shifting administrative landscapes.

Meet The New Boss: An Honors Faculty Member Weathers Administrative Change, Annamarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author reflects on the role of honors faculty in effectively responding to short- and long-term administrative change, discussing the value of resistance to deleterious administrative decisions and offering advice for successfully navigating cyclical administrative shifts in honors.

Regime Change As Opportunity: A Case For A Radically Inclusive Response, Massimo Rondolino

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author proposes a radically inclusive approach to reimagining and rebuilding honors education at a time of institutional change, suggesting that when directives do not include a clear vision for academic curricula in practice and orientation (and instead focus on budgetary bottom lines and cost-maximization), honors practitioners benefit from an invaluable opportunity to exert self-determination and agency. This essay describes the effective rebuilding of an honors program by leveraging faculty experience to establish a collaborative community framed within a model of student self-governance and grounded in principles of mindful leadership, anti-cruelty mentality, and maternal thinking.

Ready For Business: Developing An Online Business Honors Course For Quality, Engagement, And Inclusivity, Kayla N. Sapkota

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay presents the creation process for an online honors course in the field of business. Highlighting engagement, critical thinking, and inclusivity as central themes, the author describes the course’s inception, structure, outcomes, and post-teaching reflection. The pedagogical framework includes integrative current event assignments and team activities. Noting student responses as generally positive, the author suggests how future versions might expand on remote teamwork opportunities.

Leveraging Regime Change As An Opportunity To Reimagine, Reset, And Demonstrate Results In Honors, Irina V. Ellison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Regime changes in higher education can be a source of disruption and lead to a potential derailment of honors programs. This paper describes one honors program’s agility and effective negotiation through a rapid succession of upper administrative change, suggesting that when seen as opportunities these changes invite honors practitioners to re-envision, reset, and reevaluate programmatic set points for admissions, student learning, and curricular innovation.

A Relational Model For Honors Education: From Contagion To Permeability, Andrea Radasanu, Rebecca C. Bott, Leigh Fine, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Joy L. Hart, Timothy J. Nichols, Hedi Appel, Daniel M. Roberts, Paul Knox, William L. Ziegler

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article considers the value of honors education beyond its marked contributions to enrollment management goals. Suggesting that quantitative assessments toward understanding the value of honors fail to capture its breadth, interdisciplinary focus, and engagement, authors posit a new way of measuring impacts from “contagion model” (spillover to campus and beyond) to “permeability model” (interface across campus). Pointing to the benefits of permeability for both honors and the broader campus communities, authors encourage practitioners to foster exchange in curricular offerings, spatial inputs, scholarly outputs, extramural funding, and institutional support. The meaning and history of organizational permeability is explored, and examples …

Facilitating Change: Examining Honors Students’ Perceptions Of Learning Facilitation Techniques, Conner W. Suddick, Lindi Dice

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite advancements in global communication and interpersonal networks, in-person discussions and scholarly discourses often falter in the classroom—stifling innovation and preventing opportunities to foster deeper human connection. This study explores the remedy of facilitation: the art and science of enabling a group to unleash its creativity, address conflict, and unlock collective wisdom. Authors present a variety of facilitation techniques used in teaching honors students (n = 13) and closely examine how students articulate their personal learning outcomes after practicing effective facilitations. Liberating structures, which engage everyone in problem-solving, practicing self-discovery, and envisioning potential solutions, are used. Reflective assessments indicate …

Building An Honors Community That Values And Celebrates Faculty, Kristine A. Miller

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education” (2022) outlines the level of commitment, pedagogical innovation and inclusivity, mentoring, and intellectual leadership that honors programs and colleges expect from their faculty. These high expectations require institutional support structures that compensate faculty fairly, foster ongoing professional development, and build a sense of belonging and community in honors. Emphasizing the importance of faculty who teach, mentor, and guide honors students on their educational journeys, the author draws on firsthand experience to offer specific ideas about how to engage and reward honors faculty. The essay suggests that building a …

Developing Honors Faculty Through Faculty Development Programs, Aaron Hanlin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite its crucial role in student success, there is scant research on how honors faculty develop teaching expertise and pedagogical authority. This essay considers the ways in which faculty development programs assist instructors by enhancing the critical skills necessary for positive student outcomes and successful honors programs. While honors scholars continue to advocate for institutional support toward faculty development, this essay provides further rationale and a specific example.

Moving Forward Together: Reflections Of A National Survey Of Ot/Ota Students’ Perceptions Of Culturally Aware Educational Content Delivery, Adair M. Sanchez, Iris W. Burns, Tina M. Deangelis, Maclain Capron, Abigail Mills, Taylor Kligerman

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

In June of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd and the additional atrocities against historically marginalized people and communities across the United States, the Commission on Education (COE) of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) sought to act within its scope. A retrospective survey (N= 1,692) was developed, deployed, and analyzed in accordance with the COE’s standard operating procedures relating specifically to monitoring trends that impact the education of occupational therapy (OT) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students. This survey aimed to capture perspectives from OT/OTA students regarding the delivery of culturally aware educational content in curricula …

Advising To Support Meaning Making And Purpose: Helping Honors Students Focus On Priorities And Evaluate Opportunities Through Intention Setting, Kristy Spear, Ron Cahlon, Katherine Mccall

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

What is an intention?

The value of setting an intention

Setting an intention with honors students

Ron’s intention

Katherine’s intention

Final thoughts

The experiences provided are just two examples of how, with the guidance of an advisor, honors students might formulate and incorporate an intention into their lives. This simple yet profound technique is a useful addition to the advisor’s toolbox; it presents the opportunity to help students examine their values, who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to live their lives. This critical reflection can result in a clear focus and systematic …

On The Impossibilities Of Advancing Racial Justice In Higher Education Research Through Reliance On The Campus Climate Heuristic, Elvira Abrica, Deryl K. Hatch-Tocaimaza, Cecilia Rios-Aguilar

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Campus climates are often described as “hostile” for racially minoritized populations. However, growing recognition of complexities associated with intersecting and interwoven systems of social oppression compel the field of higher education to move away from overly simplistic portrayals of postsecondary environments as “welcoming/chilly” or “positive/negative.” More than this, there is a need to engage in a broader discussion of the field’s reliance on the metaphor of meteorological climate itself as a heuristic for characterizing the nature of college learning environments. The central argument presented in this theoretical article is that racial justice is impossible when operationalized through a lens of …

Teaching Justice Through Literature: How Higher Education Informs Ethics And Identity, Kami Mittlestadt

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This thesis argues that literature is a valuable tool in examining issues of justice, and teaching ethics through literature is a way to build critical thinking skills and awareness of the world. In this thesis, I examine research and teaching methods that have already been studied and implemented in the teaching of ethics and justice in companionship with literature, and use these resources to propose my own syllabus for a community college class on Ethics in Reading. The syllabus is broken into 7 units: an overview of justice in literature, five specific justice issues (race, feminism, queer studies, eco-criticism, and …

Effects Of Synchronous And Asynchronous Online Instructional Approaches On English-Learning Undergraduate College Students: An Exploratory Study, Ivana Markova, Cristina Azocar

Journal of English Learner Education

Although the significance of the use of online classes remains evident due to their growing prevalence at US universities, they still remain an untested experience for countless English learners (ELs). This research explores EL students’ perceptions of the opportunities for interaction in synchronous and asynchronous online university classroom modalities. It also examines how socioacademic relations and Bandura’s social learning theory can explain the interactions between students and instructors that influence EL students’ literacy development. Participants (n=105) were selected from a large sample pool of 261 EL undergraduate student participants aged 18 to 35. A mixed methods design was …

Foreign Language Education Perception Of Tourist-Guidance Students As A Factor In Intercultural Communication, Bekir Esitti

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Tourist guidance higher education is designed to provide a variety of intercultural knowledge and experiences for students. Intercultural communication covers tourists from different cultures interacting with their guides, sending and receiving messages to each other, creating meaning and making meanings common. In this context, the ease of communication provided by the proficiency obtained through foreign language education is essential for tourist guidance students who are candidate guides to overcome the intercultural communication problems they will encounter in the profession. In the study, open-ended questions about intercultural communication experiences and the relationship between foreign language education and intercultural communication were asked …