Liberal Studies Commons^™

“We Advocate A Semi-Revolution”: An Honors Conference Undergoes Transformation, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison, Bruce Thompson

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Since the 1980s, the Maryland Collegiate Honors Council has offered an annual conference on a host campus in late February. In 2020, MCHC slipped in the conference just before the apocalyptic arrival of COVID-19 in March. Because this conference is hugely popular statewide, we decided to organize it virtually in 2021. Our topic—In Honors…Black Lives Matter—was too important for us to wait out the pandemic. We charged nothing, partly to encourage students and member institutions to participate and partly because it cost us nothing. Attendance tripled. Students who could not miss class or work were able to attend. Programs were …

Remembering Ada Long, May 20, 1945–February 4, 2024, Jeffrey A. Portnoy, Larry Andrews, Bernice Braid, James J. Clauss, Lisa L. Coleman, Kevin W. Dean, Joan Digby, Linda Frost, Galit Gertsenzon, Devon Graham, Raymond Green, Annmarie Guzy, Jerry Herron, Mimi Killinger, John A. Knox, George Mariz, Mitch Pruitt, La Tanya L. Reese Rogers, Rae Rosenthal, Rusty Rushton, Chris Simon, Michael E. Sloane, Michaela Ruppert Smith, Christopher J. Syrnyk, Maria V. Tarasova, Norm Weiner

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As part of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s collection of essays honoring the life and work of Dr. Ada Long (1945–2024), the authors reflect on the personal and professional impact she has made in the honors experience. See https://youtube.com/live/EwdleBW1Rf8?feature=share to view the entire Celebration of Life that was held June 8, 2024.

A Matter Of Definition, Criteria, And Standards In Honors: A History, From The Basic Characteristics To The “Nchc Shared Principles And Practices Of Honors Education”, Richard Badenhausen, James Buss

Honors in Practice Online Archive

For more than half a century, the honors community has debated the role of standards. This comprehensive overview of those discussions—the first ever—traces the evolution of how honors education has defined itself from its early years right up until the 2022 adoption of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s new “NCHC Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education.” While the latest document may seem to represent a stark change, the genealogy unfolded here demonstrates the “Shared Principles” as a return to the collegial and inclusive spirit of the earliest discussions about standards while reflecting more recent issues in contemporary higher education. …

Aristotle’S Poetics: A Biologist’S Approach To Tragedy, James J. Clauss

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The paper describes a class that introduces Aristotle’s Poetics from the perspective of his scientific, especially biological, treatises: a systematic analysis of what emotions a tragedy is supposed to elicit and how they are resolved by the audience (homoeopathy). Students read 11 ancient and modern plays and view one film, observing whether his theory of the Tragic explains our responses. The final project includes the writing of a tragic story (not a drama) evincing the students’ own understanding of the Tragic based on the readings.

Interdisciplinary Cohort Building: Creating A Feeling Of Belonging And Sense Of Community In Honors Transfer Students, Shannon Pittman, Vanessa Miller

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Athens State University Honors Program implements an honors mentoring model for transfer students that aims to support transfer student completion of an honors project and improve transfer students’ feelings of belonging in honors.

The Honors Research Project: Embracing Intellectual Discovery Through Storytelling, Malachi D. Crawford, Chelsee B. H. Young, Kimberly Michelle Gay, Quincy C. Moore

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The Honors Research Project (HRP) at Prairie View A&M University develops critical thinking and creative intellectual skills to analyze, understand, and comprehend the project’s topics.

Mindfulness In Honors: An Experiment In Collaborative Learning And Team Teaching, Pascale F. Engelmajer, Massimo A. Rondolino

Honors in Practice Online Archive

What do students hear when we talk of mindfulness? To reframe unexamined assumptions among students who conceptualize both mindfulness and honors education as “doing more” (more exercises to gain psychological benefits and more work to gain higher GPAs), the authors of this paper piloted a new course in philosophy and religious studies. In this essay, they discuss their collaborative experience designing, co-teaching, and assessing an honors course on mindfulness: its roots in Buddhist thought and practices, its contemporary secular developments, and its potential impact on students’ learning and lived experience. Integral to this experiment is also an approach to teaching …

Forming Civic Virtue Through An Honors Seminar Focused On Local Civil Rights History, Lynn Stallings, Aaron D. Cobb

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Citizenship and related values are common elements in the missions of honors programs. Our goal was to design a junior honors seminar with an intentional focus on developing citizenship, civic identity, and civic virtues through engagement with the challenging history of our city, Montgomery, Alabama. The course employed four evidence-based strategies for character formation in higher education: reflection on personal experience, engagement with virtuous exemplars, dialogue that increases virtue literacy, and awareness of situational variables. This paper describes our focus on learning about Civil Rights history to develop citizenship and civic virtues, the course’s impact on students, our reflections on …

If They Build It, They Will Come: The Power Of Student-Designed Honors Offerings In Small-Budget Programs, Claire H. Procopio

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This essay describes a student-designed framework implemented by an honors program because of budget constraints. The framework’s implementation, involving structured student leadership, feedback integration, and curricular adaptations, is detailed along with an exploration of the positive consequences of implementing a student-designed approach to co-curricular offerings. Benefits of the approach include better fulfillment of the honors mission, meaningful student leadership development, program growth, and eventually increased resources.

The Involvement Journal: A Signature First-Year Seminar Assignment, Matt Baran

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An involvement journal assignment encourages first-year students to attend a variety of events and engage in meaningful reflection and development.

Physics And Theatre: An Unexpected Pairing That Enhances Learning For Both Disciplines, Amber Karlins

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Taking an interdisciplinary approach to seemingly disparate subjects like theatre and physics allows students to more deeply engage with both disciplines.

Addressing The Climate Crisis Through Science And Art: The Value Of Interdisciplinary And Intergenerational Team Teaching, Megan Jacobs, Kineo Memmer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The climate crisis is a growing concern for many people, especially those who are of college age, making it an important and pressing issue to explore in honors courses. Eco-Art: Using Art to Reconcile with the Climate Crisis, a University of New Mexico (UNM) Honors College course, integrates the disciplines of art and environmental justice to examine climate change and address the social and emotional toll of climate grief. The class was co-created and team taught by Associate Professor Megan Jacobs and UNM undergraduate honors and environmental science student Kineo Memmer. This article unpacks the methodologies and lessons learned from …

Fostering Belonging Through Bread (And Other Foods), Maria Elliott, Steve Garrison

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Communal eating serves as an effective teaching tool for cultural awareness while providing a powerful vehicle to promote community between faculty and students.

An Involvement Journal Assignment Encourages First-Year Students To Attend A Variety Of Events And Engage In Meaningful Reflection And Development., Jean-Paul Benowitz

Honors in Practice Online Archive

After 24 years of trial and error, an honors leadership course evolves to become relevant to the needs of the students while reflecting the learning objectives of the curriculum and giving students something tangible for learning in the real world.

Toward Student Success: The Impact Of Honors Participation On Transfer Student Graduation Rates, Judy Albakry

Honors in Practice Online Archive

While numerous studies have shown evidence of higher completion frequencies for first-time freshmen who participate in four-year honors programs, research has yet to reveal how honors programs might impact outcomes for transfer students. Based on ex post facto data collected on transfer student graduation percentages at a large public university in Tennessee, the purpose of this non-experimental, quantitative, comparative study was to investigate if transfer student honors participation has an association with graduation frequency. Chi-square analyses were performed to investigate the association among graduation frequency, honors participation, and the number of honors credits earned. The findings indicate that the association …

Third-Year Medical College Rotations For Premedical Honors Program Undergraduates, Harvey G. Stenger Jr., William L. Ziegler

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Honors programs typically enroll many students interested in the healthcare field, and honors administrators and faculty do their best to ensure that those students’ dreams are fulfilled. With Medical Doctor (MD) program acceptance rates averaging just 6.1%, students need a standout application. Experience has shown that getting accepted into a medical school is more than earning a great GPA and excelling on the MCAT exam; it also requires convincing a committee of professionals that an applicant has the right personal qualities and work ethic to succeed in the field of medicine, and applicants need to highlight their clinical experience as …

Honors As Neighborhood: 1995 National Collegiate Honors Council Presidential Address, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

1995 National Collegiate Honors Council Presidential Address, published in the National Honors Report, Vol. XVI, No. 4 (winter 1996), 21–24; rpt. in NHR Vol. XX, No. 4 (winter 1999), 9–12. The typographical errors have been silently corrected.

In this address to members of the National Collegiate Honors Council, outgoing president Dr. Ada Long (1945–2024) reflects on the sensibility and characteristics of neighborhood and considers what this means to honors education and its community of learners. Identifying three values of neighborhood—conversation, personal affiliation and belonging, and caring—Long expounds on their relevance to educators and society at large on the cusp …

Honors As A Changing Neighborhood, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors programs were conceived for traditional-age suburban middle-class majority-culture students who live on campus or nearby and do not hold full-time jobs or have family responsibilities. While the college population of this century is much more diverse and just as academically capable, first-generation students from traditionally marginalized populations see honors communities as unfamiliar, scary, and unwelcoming neighborhoods. Honors programs seek diversity but practice assimilation with exclusionary admissions policies, curricular inflexibility, and an emphasis on place-dependent community building that invites students to come into honors space rather than taking their offerings out to meet them where they are. Lack of funds …

Honors, Equity, And The Difference Principle, K. Patrick Fazioli

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While honors programs have made notable advancements in diversity and inclusion, the issue of educational equity remains unresolved. Tensions between providing special opportunities for high-achieving students and adhering to principles of social justice continue to shape the “neighborhood of honors.” This essay seeks to address educational unfairness through Rawls’s “difference principle,” which asserts that inequalities are morally permissible only if they benefit the least advantaged in society. The author suggests that honors programs can adhere to this principle by focusing on service and support for marginalized groups within and beyond the campus community, providing opportunities for talented students from underserved …

From Individuals To Neighbors: Growth Through Embracing Positionality, Joy L. Hart, Andrea Radasanu, Rebecca C. Bott-Kutson, Jonathan D. Kotinek

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Drawing inspiration from Dr. Ada Long’s (1995) presidential address, the authors describe an experience that facilitates neighborhood-building among honors educators and students across the nation as well as a neighborhood approach to understanding social problems. Focusing on food justice in the first year of the Justice Challenge, honors students learn about community needs, develop leadership and partnership skills, and collaborate with community members through an array of opportunities. Throughout the academic year, individual positionality shifts through deeper engagement with multiple viewpoints and facilitates new approaches for collaboration toward effectively addressing thorny problems. Cultivation of such connections is central in revitalizing …