Liberal Studies Commons^™

“Movies, Tv Shows, And Memes . . . Oh My!”: An Honors Education Through Popular Culture And Critical Pedagogy, Evan W. Faidley

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Entertainment media and popular culture often overdramatize the college experience. An honors colloquium engages students in scholarly research and discourse involving thematic elements of academic life in popular culture. An interdisciplinary approach to race, class, the professoriate, Greek life, and foreign experience is espoused. Through a lens of critical social theory, students deconstruct misinformed “stories most often told” to reconstruct more cogent understandings of college life and student experience. With a curriculum designed to advance social justice through equitizing education and amending cultural perceptions, this colloquium helps develop self-motivated, self-regulated, and engaged learners.

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This journal of the plague year has attracted a record number of submissions, creating the thickest volume of Honors in Practice since its inception in 2005. The inclusion of essays in response to a Call for Papers about COVID- 19 is no doubt responsible for some of this torrent of submissions, but research essays have also come in at a greater rate than before, not to mention the “Brief Ideas about What Works in Honors.” As you will see, the essays on the pandemic’s effects on honors mostly make the best of a fraught and frustrating year for honors administrators, …

Meditations In An Emergency: Collaborating Online In Narratives Of Illness And Care, Jayda Coons

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This article describes a collaborative writing project involving narratives of health and caregiving. An interdisciplinary seminar titled “Narratives of Illness and Care” examines literary and medical narratives to better understand disease, therapeutic communication, empathy, and the social determinants of health. During the COVID-19 crisis, however, the instructor adapted course structure and curricular assignments to help students make meaningful connections with their immediate circumstance. The author reflects on the significance of the project during a time of global upheaval and suggests changes for future iterations.

Close Reading Responses: A Streamlined Approach To Teaching Critical-Thinking Writing In Honors, Katie Quirk

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study presents a scaffold approach to building critical academic writing skills among honors students. Faced with limited instructional time, a reading-intensive curriculum, and students in need of rigorous writing instruction, a scaffold model was developed to include a series of condensed writing assignments called “Close Reading Responses.” Coupled with rubrics and guided peer review, these assignments allow for repetitive critical practice at various stages along a trajectory toward the final paper. Results indicate that this incremental, explicit form of writing instruction allows students to hone critical-thinking skills in a condensed manner without demanding that they produce (and instructors read) …

“One Singular Sensation”: Integrating Personal Narratives Into The Honors Classroom, Marc Napolitano, Mimi Killinger

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Contemporary emphases on standardization, specialization, and selectivity in higher education alienate students and teachers from their own creativity, intellectual curiosity, and personal stories. This trend runs counter to the central focus of honors on fostering a diverse, scholarly learning environment. Authors suggest that integrating student personal narratives into honors curricula reinforces its values of multiplicity, inclusivity, and meaningful learning. Using metaphorical reference to the Broadway musical A Chorus Line as a unique lens into the pedagogical benefits of such integration, this essay provides ways of incorporating and sharing personal narratives in the classroom and offers strategies to ensure that all …

Tough Talks: Student-Led Programs To Facilitate Civil Discourse, Leah Horton, Doug Corbitt, Booker White

Honors in Practice Online Archive

These student-led, co-curricular programs are designed to give honors students the opportunity to learn and practice civil discourse through difficult conversations. Issues such as race, religion, politics, gender, and sexual orientation are carefully curated to help students practice and hone their dialogue skills outside the classroom where grades are not a factor. A brave spaces ideology provides the foundation for shared pools of meaning, encouraging students to move from certainty to curiosity with the shared understanding that discomfort is an opportunity for growth. By teaching students how to engage in controversy with civility, Tough Talks support an honors ethos of …

“To Seek A Newer World”: Honors In Virtual Reality, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Honors education was never intended to be a virtual offering; it takes intimate, three-dimensional, communal, and intellectual interaction among faculty and students to tackle wicked problems. The COVID-19 crisis forced honors educators into an extreme reboot, extracting courses from comfortable working spaces and relocating them to strange new platforms for remote, computer-mediated instruction. For many faculty, the 2020 pandemic introduced online instruction for the first time. Toward this end, many novices were able to brilliantly reimagine and re-engineer their courses while others struggled. In this essay, the author points out that higher education has always adapted new technologies, asserting that …

First-Generation College Student Network, Ashleen Williams, Ainsley Ash

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Authors describe the college’s First-Gen Student Network, a cohort of faculty, students, and practitioners committed to equity, access, and success of firstgeneration learners. Optional biweekly meetings address a range of topics, including financial aid and opportunities for employment.

The Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi often prides itself on being the edge of the knife in conversations about equity and access, yet such conversations only work in honors when we commit tangible actions and resources to generate positive outcomes. Over the last couple of years, we have recognized a group that was consistently forgotten in our …

Virtual Honors Forum, Bruce Thompson

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This article describes how one honors leadership team adapted a traditional in-person Forum to a digital platform during the coronavirus crisis. Integrating a variety of asynchronous and synchronous remote technologies created a positive virtual learning experience for honors practitioners and students.

One of the hallmark experiences of honors learning at Frederick Community College (FCC) in Frederick, MD, is participating in the Honors Forum each semester. The Forum is a mini-conference on campus in which students are required to participate whether enrolled in an honors class or attempting to complete an honors contract. There is a registration desk where presenters, faculty …

A View Of Health As A Human Right: A Snapshot From An Honors Program, Peter Longo, Satoshi Machida, John Falconer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study examines implications of a rights-based perspective among honors students through the lens of healthcare. Students (n = 71) surveyed in April 2019 were asked to consider issues relating to health entitlement and government responsibility. Perspectives on local, regional, national, and global access to health care; state and national government fiscal responsibility; and rights-based approaches to health entitlement were elicited. Data indicate a propensity for understanding health as a human right among honors students. Probit regressions show a more inclusive stance on healthcare policy and a general preference toward a universal healthcare system. Acknowledging that innovative curricula can help …

Racism In Education Remix, Kevin M. Donton

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Racism in Education has been a huge problem in the United States today, and it still is. The presence of racism in the education system is quite controversial and many people have strong opinions on it. Its roots date all the way back to slavery in the United States to the Brown vs. the Board of Education case to the Reagan Revolution to present day in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. This topic has been a problem for a long time now and should be brought up more. Along with this information and as a reinterpretation, or …

Science In Early Childhood Education, Olivia Kocina

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Science is often limited or absent in an early education classroom. It is important to give children an outlet to experience science in the classroom or through lesson plans. Having science at an early age can provide children the opportunities to build up their reasoning, to question things about the world, and later in life to feel more confident in other STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) activities or areas. To address this need, I created a 3-day program for 3 to 5 year-olds at Little Learners of Aptos School in Aptos, California.

Increasing Kindness Among Kindergartners, Jenique Ruiz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

In most elementary school curriculum, prosocial skills, such as the concept of kindness, are absent. When young children have underdeveloped prosocial skills, social relationships and academic achievement may suffer. Children need these skills to successfully interact with their peers and to achieve academic goals. To address the lack of prosocial skills in the curriculum, I have created a three-part lesson about kindness for Kindergarten students at George C. Marshall Elementary School in Seaside, California.

Enhancing Emotional Regulation In First Graders, Clarissa Miller

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Emotional regulation is the ability to have control over one’s emotions; and typically develops in early childhood. Once children reach school age, they tend to be able to manage their emotions. When children are not able to regulate their emotions, they may have poorer social skills, and have challenges when learning in school. To help children further their emotional regulation skills, I have created a three-day lesson for a first grader class at Robert H. Down Elementary School in Pacific Grove, California.

The Grizzly, November 19, 2020, Simra Mariam, Griffin Banks, Edward Martinez, Claude Wolfer, Morgan Grabowski, Layla Halterman, Daniel Cohen, Ava Compagnoni, Rosalia Murphy

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Election Results are In! • Ursinus Students on In-Person Voting vs. Mail-in Ballots • Radio Plays a Success • Emily Gurganus: A Case of Voter Suppression? • Comparison Steals Your Happiness • Opinion: COVID-19, Climate Change, and Sacrifice; The Literature Storm to Come Post-COVID • Post-Election: How's Your Stress? • Men's Soccer Hopes for More

Volume Cxxxix, Number 8, November 13, 2020, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

The Grizzly, November 12, 2020, Simra Mariam, Ava Compagnoni, Morgan Grabowski, Layla Halterman, Griffin Banks, Maggie Frymoyer, Shelsea Deravil

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Ursinus Enters New Pre-Engineering Partnership • Creating Art in a New Way: Ursinus College Dance Company • Notable Alum Profile: Kim Guadagno • A Bear in the Woods • Opinion: Residence Life - Big Brother is Watching You; Outside Morning Noises Near North Hall are Obnoxious • Intramural Cornhole Makes Impression at UC • Students' Fantasy Football

Looking At Environmental Consciousness Through The Lenses Of Morphic Fields And Systems Theory, Johara Bellali

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper is an exploration of a space in which questions of self-determination and planetary crises can co-exist. It swims in uncomfortable seas of accepting that environmental consciousness is as innate as our existence, and at the same time not aligned to healthy ecosystems. In this paper, I will first explore environmental consciousness from an ecosystem perspective and present some self-organizing principles of our systems; then I will look into our perceptions, awareness, and sensing of them and finally propose an understanding of how the morphic fields in ecosystems and the creative flow of the life force co-exist in our …

Centaur Mind: A Glimpse Into An Integrative Structure Of Consciousness, Azin Izadifar

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Jean Gebser’s theory of consciousness suggests that we are experiencing a new era in the history of consciousness. Human consciousness moves like a pendulum. The current Integral Structure of Consciousness is not unprecedented, yet we are experiencing it in a multi-layered, deeper, and vaster way. Centaurs are imaginal creatures that first appeared within the Mythical Structure of Consciousness, making a bridge between the unity of the Magical and the duality of Mental structures. In this paper, I view the centaurs through the lenses of mythology and archetypal depth psychology and discuss the critical role of this mythic figure in the …

The Journey Back To Wholeness That Already Is, Jenna Dishy Wes

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Sunrise’s father had had lost his own, rather impactfully at the tender age of seven, just as he was transitioning into what Piaget called the Concrete Operations Period. “With this change, he (began) to behave in many ways much like an adult and, indeed, in terms of lines for the self and moral reasoning, many adults never grow past this stage” (Combs, 2009). And so would be the case for Sunrise’s father. Having never been given the tools or guidance to heal from such trauma, he resorted to substances that subdued what it was he could not face. Sunrise …