Education Commons^™

Teaching Self: The Ambiguity Of Lived Experience In Classroom Discourse, Scott V. Gealy

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Inspired by Paul Heilker’s notion of the essay as a form of exploration over argument, embodying an anti-scholastic and chrono-logical approach, and Candace Spigelman’s endorsement of experience as evidence in academic discourse, this thesis weaves memoir into more traditional scholarship in an effort to complicate the archetype of the effective teacher. Furthermore, the essay seeks to deconstruct conventional student, teacher, and cultural binaries with the help of the theoretical work of Deborah Britzman, Parker Palmer, Mikhail Bakhtin, Joy Ritchie and David Wilson and others, while using Scott Russell Sanders’ narrative essay “Under the Influence” as a mentor text for …

Engagement In An Online Course: Thestudents' Viewpoint, Michael B. Miller

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Distance education is not a new phenomenon, distance education had its beginning with correspondence education through postal services in the 19th century (Daniel, 2000) and progressed into the 21st century with the use of computer-mediated instruction. Еvеn with аll оf itѕ соnvеniеnсе аnd роrtаbility, thе оnlinе сlаѕѕrооm iѕ ѕtill ѕееn by mаny аѕ lасking thе humаn “соnnесtivity” оf fасе tо fасе соurѕеѕ. Rесеnt findingѕ hаvе ѕhоwn thаt оnlinе lеаrnеrѕ’ lеvеlѕ оf ѕаtiѕfасtiоn, реrfоrmаnсе, аnd ѕеnѕе оf соmmunity аrе rеlаtеd tо thе intеrасtiоnѕ thеy hаvе with thеir inѕtruсtоrѕ, inсluding thе tyре аnd frеquеnсy оf fееdbасk thеy rесеivе оn аѕѕignmеntѕ аnd соurѕе …

Linguafolio Goal Setting Intervention And Academic Achievement: Increasing Student Capacity For Self-Regulated Learning, Oxana D. Clarke

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In the last few decades there has been a shift from thinking less about teaching and more about learning. Such a paradigm shift from teacher-centered to student-centered instruction requires students to think about their own learning and to monitor their own learning development and language achievement. Researchers have identified goal setting and self-regulated learning as crucial factors that affect academic achievement. Goal setting improves student performance and enhances achievement by allocating attention, activating effort, increasing persistence and motivation which in turn leads to the development of self-regulation skills. With this belief, LinguaFolio was integrated into foreign language classrooms to support …

Increasing Access To Post-Secondary Education: A Mixed Methods Study Of The Charleston Clemente Program, Mariane A. Doyle

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There is an economic gap that favors adults who have higher levels of educational attainment (United States Department of Labor, 2010). With more than 9.3 million Americans over the age of 25 facing unemployment as of June 2012 and over 79% or 7.4 million of those unemployed Americans having attained less than a Bachelor’s degree (U.S. Department of Labor, 2012), the current need for college access measures and programs that address the adult population is an imperative one.

The Charleston Clemente Program provides a tuition-free course in the Humanities to economically-disadvantaged adult students for a total of two-semesters. Along with …

Profiles Of Productive Educational Psychologists, Melissa M. Patterson Hazley

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The present study aims to answer the questions: Who are presently the most productive educational psychologists? How do they accomplish so much? And what advice might they give to young scholars? To identify the most productive educational psychologists, a survey was sent to Division 15 members (educational psychology) of the American Psychological Association. The top four educational psychologists were Patricia Alexander, Richard Mayer, Dale Schunk, and Barry Zimmerman. Using instrumental case study methodology, three broad themes were identified that allow these scholars to be so productive. These included professional influences, time management, research and writing techniques, and time management. The …

The Nature And Predictive Validity Of A Benchmark Assessment Program In An American Indian School District, Beverly R. Payne

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This mixed methods study explored the nature of a benchmark assessment program and how well the benchmark assessments predicted End-of-Grade (EOG) and End-of-Course (EOC) test scores in an American Indian school district. Five major themes were identified and used to develop a Dimensions of Benchmark Assessment Program Effectiveness model: Professional Development, Assessment Literacy, Data Literacy, Instructional Practice, and Program Effectiveness. The study found that Professional Development, Data Literacy, and overall Program Effectiveness were strengths of the district’s benchmark assessment program. Assessment Literacy and Instructional Practice were found to be weaker areas of the district’s program. Benchmark assessment scores correlated strongly …

The Little School Of The 400: A Mexican-American Fight For Equal Access And Its Impact On State Policy, Erasmo Vázquez Ríos

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Founded in 1957, the Little School of the 400 (LS400) was a Mexican-American led effort to acculturate and assimilate Mexican schoolchildren in Texas to the dominant Anglo-led society. By the mid-20^th Century, more than a hundred years of discrimination and racism had produced an environment where Mexicans were treated as second-class citizens. Early 20^th-Century activism had replaced armed and violent resistance such as the Cortina Wars of the 1850s but Anglo institutions ensured that any opposition from Mexicans and Tejanos toward the status-quo was met with indifference and perhaps worse.

My argument centers on the fact that …

Meeting The Aims Of Honors In The Online Environment, Melissa L. Johson

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In 1998, the Boyer Commission called for using more innovative methods of course delivery, moving away from the traditional lecture toward inquiry-based learning. The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) has long held that undergraduate honors education is one arena where pedagogical innovation takes place. Members of the honors community note that what makes honors unique is that honors courses serve as laboratories of curricular innovation and experiential learning (Braid, “Cultivating”; Braid, “Majoring; Bruce; Hutgett; Lacey; Schuman, “Cultivating”; Strikwerda; Werth; Wolfensberger, van Eijl, & Pilot). Exemplary honors courses should include participatory learning, an emphasis on primary sources, interdisciplinary and experiential themes, …

Improving Retention And Fit By Honing An Honors Admissions Model, Patricia Joanne Smith, John Thomas Vitus Zagurski

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

For over a century, admissions officers and enrollment managers have relied on external validation of merit in selective admission of undergraduates. A main criterion used for selection is standardized testing, i.e., the SAT and ACT. Since these tests have been long-suspected and then shown to contain class and race biases while not accurately predicting retention (Banerji), the Schedler Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) shifted to a holistic, multi-criterion selection process, de-emphasizing standardized tests, and then analyzed the outcomes. The statistical analysis served two goals. The first was to test whether variables in the admissions model, developed …

An Honors Koan: Selling Water By The River, Jeffrey A. Portnoy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Since Jerry Herron begins his forum essay, “Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy,” with his anecdotal True Genealogical Confessions, I feel obligated to begin in a similar mode. One side of my family was in the real estate business in St. Louis, and the other operated on the production side of industry—garment manufacturing, in the schmatta business so to speak. Like Herron, I have benefitted from a familial confluence of disparate skill sets in my position as Director of the Georgia Perimeter College Honors Program, which during the recruiting and registration season I would liken to that of …

The Confidence Game In Honors Admissions And Retention, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In “Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy,” Jerry Herron argues that “a well-conceived admissions policy tells us much more than whom to recruit; it becomes the basis for a quantitative defense of what we do with data and puts a convincing dollar value on the good evangel of excellence.” As a rhetorician who worked at an advertising agency in a previous life, I can certainly acknowledge the value of promoting a product, whether we are pitching our programs to prospective students or performing feats of statistical prestidigitation for upper administration. I am also, however, skeptical about administration’s increasing …

Predicting Student Success, Ameliorating Risk, And Guarding Against Homogeneity In Honors, Scott Carnicom

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Jerry Herron’s thought-provoking essay raised three key issues in my mind that I hope to describe in this humble response to his fine work. The overarching theme of his essay was to inquire how honors administrators predict student success and how they use that predictive power wisely and objectively to admit students and maintain quality. I want to expand on this idea and point out that such algorithms ideally could also predict students at risk so that institutional personnel could mobilize support efforts more proactively. Additionally, Herron notes the honors community’s appropriate and unyielding focus on academic quality at a …

Admissions, Retention, And Reframing The Question “Isn’T It Just More Work?”, Michael K. Cundall Jr.

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the lead essay of this Forum, one of the questions Jerry Herron asks in discussing honors admissions is “What are we offering?” This question relates directly to the question often posed by well-meaning parents, wellintentioned students, and inquisitive administrators who want to know if honors is just more and/or harder work and hence not worth the risk. Having gotten a B in honors calculus will do damage to a GPA when the student could have earned an A in a non-honors calculus course. Students and parents might thus perceive the cost of honors work to outweigh the possible benefits, …

Propensity Score Analysis Of An Honors Program’S Contribution To Students’ Retention And Graduation Outcomes, Robert R. Keller, Michael G. Lacy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors directors and deans know or presume that retention and graduation rates of honors students substantially exceed those of non-honors students. In our research, we have attempted to better determine what portion of this success is attributable to the academic and other benefits of honors programs as opposed to the background characteristics of the students. Among the former, we would point to innovative and small classes, more individual attention for honors students from faculty and staff, residential learning communities, thesis experiences, and extra-curricular opportunities, all of which might be expected to make the college experience more engaging for honors students …

Dedication

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

With this issue we honor Deborah Sell Craig, longtime staff member at the Kent State University Honors College, who passed away in July surrounded by her family. Deborah received her BA in political science from Wittenberg and followed it with two master’s degrees (political science and education) and a PhD in educational evaluation and measurement from Kent State University. Her 1987 dissertation, “Predicting Success in an Honors Program: A Comparative Multiple and Ridge Regression,” was an early example of honors research. Her 1981 annotated bibliography of “The Honors Movement in the United States” in Forum for Honors and her subsequent …

They Come But Do They Finish? Program Completion For Honors Students At A Major Public University, 1998–2010, Lynne Goodstein, Patricia Szarek

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In recent years the option of enrolling in honors programs and colleges at major public universities has increasingly become an alternative to elite private and public institutions for some of the brightest and most academically talented high school graduates. To attract these high-achieving students, universities may offer applicants incentives such as merit scholarships, smaller classes, honors residential options, research experiences, and enrichment programs. The message to prospective students is that, by enrolling in an honors college or program, they will receive an education that rivals what would be obtained at an elite private school and at a much lower price. …

Factors Influencing Honors College Recruitment, Persistence, And Satisfaction At An Upper-Midwest Land Grant University, Timothy J. Nichols, Kuo-Liang Matt Chang

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Student success and the “completion agenda” are important issues in higher education today (Complete College America). For honors programs and colleges, understanding and advancing these issues requires data-driven approaches tailored to the unique honors student population and broader institutional contexts. Honors faculty and administrators hoping to succeed in their recruitment, retention, and graduation efforts need an accurate understanding of why students decide to enroll and persist as well as their satisfaction with honors experiences. Our research data provide particular insight into the student experience at South Dakota State University (SDSU) but may also be instructive to a broader audience of …

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Kimberly Aramburo is a Kellogg Honors College student at Cal Poly Pomona, where she is studying business administration. She hopes to attend law school and become a practicing criminal defense attorney in the future. She serves on the board of an undocumented support group on campus and hopes to make a difference for undocumented individuals.

Real-Life Solutions To Real-Life Problems: Collaborating With A Non-Profit Foundation To Engage Honors Students In Applied Research, Emily Stark

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Colleges and universities have long emphasized undergraduate research experiences as valuable activities for students. The National Science Foundation (NSF) echoed this focus in 2003, recommending that all students get involved in undergraduate research as early as possible in their college careers (NSF). Collegiate honors programs in particular have embraced the role of student research as an integral experience for high-ability students, leading the way in developing the thesis-based model of undergraduate research that is increasingly common in institutions of higher learning.

About The Authors 2

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Scott Carnicom is a professor of psychology and an associate dean of the honors college at Middle Tennessee State University. Since 2012, he has also served as a special assistant in the provost’s office helping with a variety of initiatives. In 2011–12, he served as an ACE Fellow at Kenyon College.

Nchc Monographs & Journals

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Assessing and Evaluating Honors Programs and Honors Colleges: A Practical Handbook by Rosalie Otero and Robert Spurrier (2005, 98pp). This monograph includes an overview of assessment and evaluation practices and strategies. It explores the process for conducting self-studies and discusses the differences between using consultants and external reviewers. It provides a guide to conducting external reviews along with information about how to become an NCHC-Recommended Site Visitor. A dozen appendices provide examples of “best practices.”

Contents

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

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

Submission Guidelines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Dedication to Hallie Ellis …

Nontraditional Honors Students

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The National Collegiate Honors Council is an association of faculty, students, and others interested in honors education. Executive Committee: Rick Scott, President, University of Central Arkansas; Jim Ruebel, President-Elect, Ball State University; Gregory Lanier, Immediate Past-President, University of West Florida; Barry Falk, Vice-President, James Madison University; Kyoko Amano, Secretary, University of Indianapolis; Gary Bell, Treasurer, Texas Tech University. Executive Director: Cynthia M. Hill, headquartered at University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Board of Directors: Suketu Bhavsar, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Lisa Coleman, Southeastern Oklahoma State University; Riley Cook, University of Iowa; Emily Jones, Oklahoma State University; Joe King, Radford University; Jon Kotinek, …

Dedication

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Recently selected as an NCHC Fellow, Hallie Savage has been a major player in honors for the past sixteen years. Having earned her PhD from Kent State University, she joined the faculty of Clarion University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and is Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders as well as, since 1997, Director of the Honors Program. During her years at Clarion, she has produced many pages’ worth of publications and presentations in honors as well as in her academic discipline while also receiving numerous awards for her teaching and service. Her service to the National Collegiate Honors Council began …

Nontraditional Honors, Janice Rye Kinghorn, Whitney Womack Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While honors programs and colleges often proclaim the importance of recruiting and retaining a diverse group of high-ability students, many are still exclusionary and predicated on assumptions about the student body that are no longer valid. In general, we assume that honors students matriculate straight from high school and, having no family obligations, are able to reside in honors living-learning communities, participate in co-curricular honors experiences, and take advantage of honors study abroad opportunities. The structure and programming of honors can thus prohibit the full participation of nontraditional students and compound the personal and psychological barriers that keep many talented, …

Signifying Difference: The Nontraditional Student And The Honors Program, Nancy Reichert

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In their essay “Nontraditional Honors,” Janice Rye Kinghorn and Whitney Womack Smith state that students who are “twenty-five-years of age and older are usually considered nontraditional.” However, they first acknowledge that “traditional” and “nontraditional” are “constructed and slippery terms.” One of the most important ways that we as faculty and staff can serve our students through an honors education is to deconstruct terms such as “traditional” and “nontraditional” in order to show the significant gaps between the signifiers and the signified and to expose the negative connotations of a construct that is defined as not being the other construct.

Undocumented In Honors, Kimberly Aramburo, Suketu Bhavsar

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the Kellogg Honors College at Cal Poly Pomona, I (SB) have encountered several high-achieving students who, after coming to trust me, have revealed themselves to me as undocumented. These students came to the United States as children through non-legal channels, generally brought by their families, who were searching for opportunities or for escape from dangerous, oppressive situations in their home countries. These students have recently become known as “Dreamers,” after the Dream Acts being debated in the highest levels of government in the United States. Often first-generation college students, they are usually economically disadvantaged.

John Boswell: Posting Historical Landmarks At The Leading Edge Of The Culture Wars, Jeffery Cisneros

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

One of the most enduring and controversial figures in the field of history is John E. Boswell. His work on homosexuality and the history of the Christian Church was published at a key time during the Stonewall Riots in the late 1960s and the removal of homosexuality from the list of diagnostic mental disorders in the mid 1970s. This social upheaval created a dynamic that not only influenced Boswell personally but contributed to the vehement reaction to his book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. …

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council begins with a Forum on “Nontraditional Honors Students.” We distributed the lead essay titled “Nontraditional Honors,” by Janice Rye Kinghorn of Miami University Middletown and Whitney Womack Smith of Miami University Hamilton, on the NCHC website, on the listserv, and in NCHC e-Newletters several months in advance, and we invited contributors to consider the following questions:

Assessing Rigor In Experiential Education: A Working Model From Partners In The Parks, John S. Maclean, Brian J. White

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Assessment has become a popular buzzword on academic campuses over the last few decades. Most assessment models are designed to evaluate traditional learning structures. If we were to state simply the process of assessment, it might read like this: a) what you want the students to learn; b) how you want to teach the material; c) how you know if the students learned the material. In a traditional pedagogical environment, for example, an instructor might want the students to learn how early geologists deduced the influence of glaciation in the Sierra Mountains from striations on polished granite surfaces. She would …