Educational Administration and Supervision Commons^™

“Help, I Need Somebody”: Rethinking How We Conceptualize Honors, Richard Badenhausen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The very morning I received the JNCHC announcement of an issue devoted to honors students in trouble, I met with the mother of a freshman honors student who had threatened that weekend to kill herself. The parent, who had flown over two thousand miles to our campus, was predictably upset and the student demoralized. After individual conversations with each party, during which we decided the best course of action for the student would be to leave honors, I listened to this young lady make the courageous admission that she had never wanted to join the honors program but did so …

Crisis In The Wilderness, Joan Digby

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

All experiential education programs involve the potential for students to experience a crisis far from the secure environment of campus and home. Students engaging in these programs are therefore required to carry medical and travel insurance and to complete the waiver of liability forms particular to their college or university. Even as they gather this documentation, honors directors sending students to or leading such programs hold their breath and hope that they will never need to use the emergency contact information.

This has been our collective hope during the past four years that we have offered Partners in the Parks …

Managing Trouble In Troubled Times: A Responsibility Of Honors, Charles Dudley

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The best approach to honors students is to acknowledge that they are fully operating adults. This approach is the only and best way to confront the troubles that interrupt academic progress. Trouble requires either capitulation or growth. In a society that treats college as preparation for a job, honors holds out the hope that we can accomplish the crucial task of helping young people become strong and moral leaders in all areas of life. How we assist them achieve such a status determines our success and integrity as a special component of a university. The willingness and courage of our …

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

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As the terrible news came across our screens on April 16, 2007, honors administrators across the country thought with sympathy and horror of Charles (Jack) Dudley and his students in the Virginia Tech University Honors Program. Eventually we learned that our worries were sadly justified and that three of Jack’s honors students had been killed, one had been wounded, and all had been traumatized. Our thoughts and messages flowed toward Jack on that day and the days following as we all felt sorrow for him and his students and at the same time felt the terrifying possibility that we might …

Honors Programs In Four-Year Institutions In The Northeast: Apreliminary Survey Toward A National Inventory Of Honors, Richard England

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors education, as we know, is a curious phenomenon, particularly from the perspective of those interested in institutional research. It is not a discipline per se, and so it is not given a “Classification of Instructional Programs” (CIP) code by the National Center for Education Statistics. Accordingly, the federal Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (IPEDS) does not include any information on honors. Honors is part of the Common Data Set (part E.1 “Common Data Set,” 2009) overseen by the College Board and an assembly of national post-secondary-education organizations. That instrument lets colleges state whether they have an honors program …

Hitting The Wall, Bonnie D. Irwin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Much has been written over the last several years about the increase in the number of students who come to our campuses with behavioral disorders and under medication. While honors students are certainly not immune to these conditions, the more frequent emotional trauma we see them suffer is their first encounter with failure. Luckily, we can address this trauma successfully if we are prepared to do so. As honors faculty, we encourage intellectual risk, knowing from our own experience that failure may very well result but confident in the fact that learning also happens despite other outcomes, good or bad. …

What Is Expected Of Twenty-First-Century Honors Students: An Analysis Of An Integrative Learning Experience, Celia Lòpez-Chávez, Ursula L. Shepherd

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Integrative learning has been identified as a primary goal for university graduates in the twenty-first century. The word “integrative” has been part of higher education scholarship for at least the past ten years and increasingly since the 2007 Report by the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise, a document that includes integrative learning as one of the main objectives of higher education for the new century. Honors programs and colleges offer excellent opportunities to accomplish this objective along with an interdisciplinary and international perspective. In this article, we present current scholarship on integrative learning in the context …

Nchc Order Form

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

NATIONAL COLLEGIATE HONORS COUNCIL MONOGRAPHS & JOURNALS

Helping Honors Students In Trouble, Angela M. Salas

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Although I am no expert in effectively helping troubled students, I hope that the Indiana University Southeast Honors Program serves as a place of refuge and support for all its students, most particularly those who are in any sort of trouble. Because my students, whether in the honors program or in my English classes, are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of any difficulties, I have found the Noel-Levitz College Student Inventory (CSI) and Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) helpful in bringing to light impediments to their success and happiness of which I might otherwise be unaware.

Since 2007, when the honors …

Dedication: Charles (Jack) Dudley

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As this issue of JNCHC goes to press, Jack Dudley is beginning the fifty-third fall semester of his academic career (from freshman through honors director to retired part-time instructor) and is at least a contender for the NCHC record. Having earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia and Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, Jack started his teaching career back at his alma mater before joining the faculty of Virginia Tech University in the Department of Sociology. He was appointed Director of the Virginia Tech Honors Program in 1990, a position he retained until his recent retirement—but not …

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

About the Authors

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council, Vol. 11, No. 2, Fall/Winter 2010

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

CONTENTS

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

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

Dedication to Charles (Jack) Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

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

FORUM ON “HELPING HONORS STUDENTS IN TROUBLE”

Managing Trouble in Troubled Times: A Responsibility of Honors (Charles (Jack) Dudley) . . . . . . . . . . . …

Honors Students In Crisis: Four Thoughts From The Field, Eric W. Owens, Michael Giazzoni

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As we considered the topic and lead essay of the JNCHC Forum “Helping Honors Students in Trouble,” we were struck by a number of assumptions that seem to be prevalent not only at our universities but among colleagues at other institutions. We have identified four assumptions we would like to address in this essay from perspectives that are informed by the scholarly literature and by our combined experience of twenty years working with honors students as professional counselors, advisors, and faculty members. These four observations lead us to recommendations for others working with honors students.

Honors And Intercollegiate Athletics, Gary Bell

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Can there be anything more graceful and more athletically inspiring than a downhill slalom racer carving between the gates and proceeding at stunning speeds to vie for a medal? As a passionate skier, my personal favorites are downhill races and ski jumps, but whether it be ice dancing, figure skating competitions, triathlons, or even snowboarding, the recent Vancouver Olympics, in all of their international pomp and circumstance, reminds us of the place of athletic competitions in defining our humanness. It is exactly as the lead author, Sam Schuman, would have it in his well-written essay: the limits but also the …

Learning Outcomes Assessment In Honors: An Appropriate Practice?, Scott Carnicom, Christopher A. Snyder

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In its ideal form, systematic assessment is a legitimate way for honors programs and colleges to gauge strengths and weaknesses, measure the effect of various learning environments, and evoke positive institutional change based on objective, empirical data. Such assessment can take two main forms. Programmatic assessment (also known as program evaluation) is an extremely useful tool for gathering evidence and evaluating whether an honors program embodies the NCHC’s basic characteristics (Sederberg 159) and/or meets its own institutional goals, e.g., higher rates of retention, graduation, graduate/professional school acceptance, and successful competition for national fellowships. Furthermore, as Otero and Spurrier argue (5), …

Honors Director As Coach: For The Love Of The Game, Larry Clark

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Conflict: if we are to believe some of the great probers of the human mind like Freud and Shakespeare, it goes to the very core of our existence. Look at our history books. The great conflicts form the timeline of our American past: the Revolutionary War, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the First World War (“the war to end all wars”), the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam (even if it was only a “police action”), Iraq, Afghanistan; and that’s skipping over some “minor conflicts” in Granada, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere. Where …

Student Athletics And Honors: Building Relationships, James J. Clauss, Ed Taylor

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Few university administrators today would argue against having more student athletes applying for and successfully completing honors curricula. Such students are great for PR. But, sad to say, coaches and faculty, at least at tier-1 universities like the University of Washington, are often suspicious of each other’s intentions. Some coaches see too much focus on education as a threat to their team’s success and ultimately their jobs; some faculty see athletes, especially in the revenue sports, as uncommitted to education, exploited by universities, and biding their time in school to enter the lucrative professional careers they believe await them. Yet, …

Dedication: Norm Weiner

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Norm Weiner has been a visible and vocal presence in the NCHC for almost two decades, adding zest to the effectiveness and passion of the organization. Having received his Ph.D. at Syracuse University, he has been a faculty member at the State University of New York, College of Oswego since 1971 and SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology since 1998. Norm has thus weathered more than forty winters in upstate New York, which may explain part of his stamina and grit. His extensive administrative background may be another part of the explanation: in addition to his position as Director of …

Go Honors!, Joan Digby

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

It comes to me as quite a surprise—and really a great shame—that honors and athletics are, as Sam Schuman describes, “often seen as, if not hostile, certainly wholly disconnected collegiate endeavors.” For more than thirty years I have had quite a different experience, which includes congratulating four long-distance runners and one Olympic speed-walker as honors valedictorians. I have always cultivated honors athletes, and coaches have always come to me directly to package athletes with honors scholarships. I may have reaped my rewarding experiences with athletes in part because I teach at a Division II NCAA campus where the coaches encourage …