Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

We The Students: Surveying Spaces And Envisioning The Future, Tatiana Cody, Rachael Poe

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

To apprehend the panoply of spaces that house honors on a national scale requires input from administrators and faculty. Nevertheless, one of the most important and often overlooked perspectives is that of honors students themselves. Admittedly, students are transient. After four or five years, most complete their undergraduate degrees, leaving their campuses, clubs, and honors programs behind after graduation. Despite their relatively brief time on campus, however, no one has more firsthand experience concerning housing honors students than honors students themselves, and some current honors students will certainly become honors administrators and faculty in the future. In the fall of …

What We Talk About When We Talk About Housing Honors, Linda Frost

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

When I went to college in the early 1980s at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, I entered as a freshman in the honors program. I have very specific memories of those first classes I took as an honors student—a section of honors sociology in which I wrote a case study of my German immigrant grandfather; an honors seminar in 1930s avant garde theatre in which the students wrote and performed plays based on the dreams they recorded nightly in their dream journals; an honors marine biology lab that ended at the professor’s house with a dinner where the group …

Building Honors Community Through Honors Housing, Barry Falk

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

A strong sense of honors community is a fundamentally important characteristic of a vibrant honors program or college. In fact, I am fond of saying that “community, community, community” are the three most important characteristics of a strong honors program. The idea of community does not appear, however, in the National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College” or the “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program.” Perhaps that absence is because this characteristic, regardless of how it is expressed, would be difficult to verify.

Living In Hogwarts: The Experience Of A Dean Of Honors And His Wife While Living In An Honors Residence Hall, Keith Garbutt, Christine Garbutt

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

On Friday, May 17, 2013, we watched the class of 2013 Honors Scholars at West Virginia University (WVU) enter the Honors Convocation to the sound of Non Nobis Domine. While certainly not our first Honors Scholars graduation since Keith had been running honors at WVU, it was nonetheless special. This cohort of graduates was the first freshman class to live in the specially built residence hall that houses the honors college administrative offices, each new freshman class of the honors college, and an apartment for faculty living in-residence.

The Genesis Of Barrett, The Honors College At Arizona State University, Mark Jacobs

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The honors college at Arizona State University (ASU) had its roots in the distributed honors programs in departments and schools that began in 1958 as ASU became a university by a statewide popular vote. It started as an honors college when it was created in 1988 by order of the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR), the only honors college in the state established in this way. The founding dean of what was at first called the ASU University Honors College was Ted Humphrey, who had earlier directed the university honors program. Professor Humphrey had very specific ideas about what the …

The Colliding Cultures Of Honors And Housing, Melissa L. Johnson, Elizabeth Mcneil, Cory Lee, Kathy Keeter

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The University of Florida’s honors residential college was completed in 2002. It remains the newest and most expensive residence hall on campus to this day, housing more than 600 honors students, a faculty-in-residence, a classroom, and a multiroom study lounge. On paper, the residential college is a beautiful partnership between Florida’s University Honors Program and the Department of Housing and Residential Education. In practice, however, two distinct cultures have emerged between the two offices.

Honors Students’ Perceptions Of The Value And Importance Of Honors Housing, Angela D. Mead, Samantha Rieger, Leslie Sargent Jones

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In 2011, we participated in a panel presentation, entitled “Where Honors Lives,” about the new honors college complex then under construction at Appalachian State University (ASU). This complex was to consist of two new buildings: a ten-story residence hall for the honors college students and a three-story building with honors offices and classrooms on the top two floors. Unfortunately, between initial planning in the mid-2000s and building five years later, University Housing changed its mind and decided freshmen would not be allowed to live there because suite-style housing was deemed inappropriate for that population. Current honors students could live there, …

It’S All In The Family: The (Honors) Ties That Bind Us, Jamaica Afiya Pouncy

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

For many years, the Texas A&M Honors Program functioned in an extremely fluid manner. Students were deemed “honors eligible” according to their grade point average; if that average dropped below the set requirement, they became “honors ineligible.” If the GPA rose, they were eligible again. Under this policy, students continuously floated in and out of the honors community. The recent shift to an application-based process has created an official cohort of honors students as well as the challenge of building a community in a program that has had little sense of continuity.

The Place To Be: Designing A City-Connected Honors Residence In Rotterdam, Remko Remijnse

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Traditionally, university students in the Netherlands, even honors students, find accommodations on their own; they will rent a room in a house and live together with other students who have independently rented a room in that same building. The typical Dutch student residence is an old, centrally located house that will accommodate five to eight students. While these students would be complete strangers when they begin their time living together, they quickly become a cohesive community, deciding for themselves how their life in the space will be organized by setting up cooking schedules and other agreed-upon formats for using the …

“In An Old Nave’S Grime”: The Spencer Honors House, Rusty Rushton

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The University Honors Program (UHP) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), its 200 or so students, and its four full-time staff members (Director, Associate Director, Program Coordinator, and Program Manager), all have the good fortune to call home a beautiful old church on the south side of UAB and Birmingham. The Spencer Honors House is where the UHP holds its classes and conducts its business and where the program’s students convene for the myriad reasons honors students convene: committee meetings, late-night study sessions, general recreation especially of the pool and ping pong sort, hanging out, or spending private …

Where Honors Lives: Old Central At Oklahoma State University, Robert Spurrier, Jessica Roark

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The story of where honors lives at Oklahoma State University is one of a series of twists and turns over the years and in many ways actually reenacts the proverbial rags to riches story.

Until 1988, honors space at Oklahoma State University (OSU) was limited to the office of the faculty member who had the title of Honors Director in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and received 0.25 FTE reassigned time for his honors duties. When one of the co-authors of this chapter was asked to become A&S Honors Director in 1988, he already had an administrative office …

Living-Learning Communities: As Natural As Cats And Dogs Living Together, John R. Purdie Ii

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Fully achieving all the potential benefits of a living-learning community requires effective collaboration between academic affairs and student affairs. Unfortunately, because of differences in organizational structures, priorities, cultural norms, and even the types of people drawn to work in academic affairs and student affairs, collaboration between faculty and staff is as unnatural as cats and dogs living together. Understanding these differences and recognizing the two subcultures that operate within most college housing departments can mitigate the challenges that honors faculty and staff can face when collaborating with staff in housing.

Winging It: Why Offering Honors Wings Works At Oral Roberts University, Ashley Sweeney, Hannah Covington, John Korstad

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Perhaps the first feature visitors notice about the campus of Oral Roberts University (ORU) is the drama and bravado of its futuristic architecture. With symbolic, gold-plated buildings and a Prayer Tower positioned at the campus’ center, ORU’s structural design certainly stands as a testament to the Jetsons-esque flavor of its 1960s and 1970s origin. ORU is a private Christian university located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For many parents, one of the main draws of the school remains its strict policy against co-ed housing. Unlike some of its peer institutions, ORU only offers unisex dorms, which are divided into floors or wings. …

Lessons Learned From Nevada’S Honors Residential Scholars Community, Tamara Valentine

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

For the past 30 years, intentionally structured living-learning communities (LLCs) have sprung up across residential college campuses in the United States. Recent research has suggested that LLC participation facilitates faculty and peer interaction (Blimling, 1993; Schoem, 2004), influences student learning and the development of critical-thinking skills (Terenzini, Springer, Pascarella, & Nora, 1995; Whitt, Edison, Pascarella, Nora, & Terenzini, 1999), improves retention (Campbell & Fuqua, 2008; Daffron & Holland, 2009), reflects a commitment to civic engagement, and promotes smooth academic and social transitions to college life (Inkelas, Daver, Vogt, & Leonard, 2007; Stassen 2003). In fall 2005, in response to growing …

About The Authors

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

No abstract provided.

Housing Honors, Linda Frost, Lisa W. Kay, Rachael Poe

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Introduction: What We Talk About When We Talk About Housing Honors. . . ix Linda Frost

Part I: Housing Honors Today

CHAPTER 1: Where Honors Lives: Results from a Survey of the Structures and Spaces of U.S. Honors Programs and Colleges . . . 3 Linda Frost and Lisa W. Kay

Part II: Profiles of Spaces and Places in Honors

CHAPTER 2: The Commonwealth Honors College Residential Community at the University of Massachusetts Amherst . . . 47 Melissa Woglom and Meredith Lind

CHAPTER 3: Do Your Homework First, and Then Go Play! . . . 57 Larry Andrews

CHAPTER …

Numeracy Infusion Course For Higher Education (Niche), 1: Teaching Faculty How To Improve Students' Quantitative Reasoning Skills Through Cognitive Illusions, Frank Wang, Esther I. Wilder

Publications and Research

We describe one of the eight units of a professional development program, the Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE), which introduces research on cognition, including dual-processing theories, to university faculty. Under the dual-processing framework, System 1 (intuition) quickly proposes intuitive answers to judgment problems as they arise, while System 2 (deliberation) monitors the quality of these proposals, which it may endorse, correct, or override. We present several classic questions that demonstrate the pitfalls of overreliance on intuition without analytical thinking, then describe faculty participants’ responses to these questions and their ideas on how to apply cognitive illusion research to …

School Leaders’ Engagement In Curriculum Planning And Decision Making, Riaz Hussain

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow

Honors Theses

How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.

Nurturing Environmental Literacy At Colby College: Higher Education And The Environmental Crisis, Molly Nash

Honors Theses

The environmental crisis will affect all people, career paths, and academic disciplines. Acknowledging this, does higher education have an obligation to educate all students for environmental literacy (EL)? This study reviews literature on how to effectively assess and implement EL initiatives and highlights how other colleges successfully nurture EL in all students. This study also uses quantitative and qualitative survey measures to understand student levels of EL at Colby College and to highlight specific programming or curriculum that leads to high EL levels in students. Findings include significantly different EL scores between environmental studies student respondents and respondents in all …