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Finding My Better Self And The Strength To Dream: The Impact Of The Honors Experience, Lia M. Shore

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As part of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (2022) collection of essays about the value of honors to its graduates (1967–2019), the author reflects on the personal and professional impacts of the honors experience.

H onor. It flows throughout the thread of life and shapes a path at every stage. It serves as an inner compass that navigates through growth and identity to find the destination of a better self. My experience as an honors student represents an important part of this journey and established a foundation of intrinsic values that continue to guide me through my professional and personal …

Finding My Place, Daphne Watson

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As part of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (2022) collection of essays about the value of honors to its graduates (1967–2019), the author reflects on the personal and professional impacts of the honors experience.

Each of us enters higher education with our own life experiences and beliefs. As a Black woman over forty, I was not your typical college sophomore. Returning to college full-time filled me with uncertainty, so unlike when I first began undergrad more than twenty years prior. A lifetime of highs and lows, failures and successes cultivated a certain fearlessness, yet I was unsure of where I …

Who Owns Honors? Whoever Defines It—And Maybe, Who Pays For It, Linda Frost

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author examines an evolving landscape for professional honors programs at her institution to consider the inherent relationship between the ownership of honors and its varying definitions as new programs are proposed and launched. Deciding what counts as honors is an exercise not just in classification but also in economics, given the financial benefits that often accompany what is called “honors.”

Editor's Introduction (To Jnchc 23:2), Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (JNCHC) includes a Forum on “Honors Beyond the Liberal Arts.” The focus of the Forum, as established in the title as well as in its lead essay by K. Patrick Fazioli, is the desirability of outreach to professional schools by the NCHC and by honors educators generally. Although the essays reveal a shared and unambiguous consensus about what is meant by “professional schools,” they display considerable differences in what people mean by “the liberal arts.” While the standard dictionary definition of the liberal arts includes the sciences and social …

Who Owns Honors?, K. Patrick Fazioli

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The long-term shift in undergraduate enrollment away from traditional humanities disciplines toward vocationally oriented majors poses a unique set of challenges for honors. While some have responded by emphasizing humanities’ centrality to honors education, this essay argues the imperative that honors practitioners and administrators improve outreach efforts to preprofessional honors programs. After considering why fields outside the liberal arts and sciences are underrepresented in the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), the author outlines a number of strategies for soliciting greater participation from academic leaders and faculty in these disciplines as well as improving the experience of careerfocused majors in liberal …

Cross-Cultural Connections: How Traditional And Preprofessional Honors Programs Can Survive And Thrive Together, Lynne C. Elkes

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Traditional and preprofessional honors programs have historically been at odds with each other due to the prevailing wisdom that the latter do not reflect the values espoused by the liberal arts. The truth is that both kinds of programs serve engaged scholars of various types in different ways. The values of care, mentorship, and concentrated studies are at the heart of honors programs and the people who administer them, and the national honors organization (NCHC) should be inclusive in developing outlets for both traditional and professional curricula in order to strengthen what is offered and optimally serve the most promising …

Disordered Eating, Perfectionism, Stress, And Satisfaction In Honors: A Research Collaborative Investigating A Community Concern, Jeffrey E. Hecker, Jainie Giguere, Ethan Lowell, Mimi Killinger, Bailey Lewis, Ailin Liebler-Bendix

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Moved by the lived experience of an honors student, authors describe a three-year Honors and Eating Concerns Research Collaborative (2019–2022), which examines the relationship between perfectionism and eating concerns among honors students. Under faculty advisement, first- and second-year honors psychology majors (n = 5) participated in the collective, carrying out three empirical studies (producing two honors theses) and gathering data from 413 high-achieving students across the curriculum (54 identifying as honors). In survey research, the instruments used were questionnaires and interviews; measures involved four scales—Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APSR), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ), and Eating Disorder Examination …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council Vol. 23, No. 2. Fall/Winter 2022

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Inside this Issue:

Frontmatter: Masthead • Call for Papers • Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines • Dedication to Patricia J. Smith

Editor’s Introduction. • Ada Long

Forum Essays on “Honors Beyond the Liberal Arts”

Who Owns Honors? • K. Patrick Fazioli

Bringing Professional Honors Communities into NCHC • Beata Jones

Honors Education Is Discipline-Neutral • Mike Sloane

Honors Is Pedagogy • John Zubizarreta

The Messages Are Everywhere: An Intersectional City as Text™ Approach to Enhance Honors Preprofessional Student Learning • Carla Janell Pattin

Modifying Practices to Serve Underrepresented Preprofessional Students with Help from Gifted Education • Bailey …

Frontmatter 23.2: Cover • Masthead • Call For Papers • Editorial Policy, Deadlines, And Submission Guidelines • Dedication To Patricia J. Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

No abstract provided.

Honors Is Pedagogy, John Zubizarreta

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In response to the issue of why and how the humanities—and more broadly the liberal arts and sciences—have historically dominated honors education and disregarded preprofessional fields, the author finds that the crux of the problem is not the nature or worth of the disciplines involved or why this or that subject area is de facto included or excluded from honors. Instead, the author argues that honors is not about privileging specific content in any academic domain but about the approaches to teaching and learning that distinguish the honors enterprise. Grounded in creative, participatory, experiential strategies of what we know as …

Jnchc Vol. 23, No. 1 (2022): Backmatter, National Collegiate Honors Council

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

No abstract provided.

The Messages Are Everywhere: An Intersectional City As Text™ Approach To Enhance Honors Preprofessional Student Learning, Carla Janell Pattin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay recounts efforts to teach liberal arts to engineering, nursing, pharmacy, and pre-medicine majors. Showing how various forms of public media reinforce harmful ideologies about social identities in the United States serves as a convergence between preprofessional disciplines and the liberal arts. At the same time, City as Text™ offers exploratory learning beyond the traditional classroom. This educational approach fosters students’ transformation in thinking about power and privilege, enabling a dialogue about the miseducation of various economic, racial, ethnic, gender, and (dis)abled communities.

Modifying Practices To Serve Underrepresented Preprofessional Students With Help From Gifted Education, Bailey J. Nafziger

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Gifted education and honors education often parallel one another. By using a theoretical construct from gifted education as guidance, honors colleges could adjust their programs to spark interest and expedite talent development of minorities in STEM and health preprofessional tracks. Small improvements include adjusting advising models, using phenomena-based teaching practices to frame science content in a more feminine context, and making room for indigenous epistemologies in coursework. Adjustments to honors programs may bridge the gap between honors and preprofessional tracks while helping to increase diversity in STEM professional fields.

Honors Education Is Discipline-Neutral, Mike Sloane

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Neither the historical antecedents of honors education in the Oxford tutorial model nor Aydelotte’s implementation of honors at Swarthmore College in 1922 involves a privileging of the humanities within honors education. The signature characteristics of honors education and pedagogies are discipline-neutral. Though the historical and institutional implementation of honors education in the U.S. has resulted in a privileging of the humanities, there are no intrinsic constraints on expanding honors to science-focused and preprofessional curricula. Such an expansion would enhance the future viability of honors programs within institutions as well as the future of professional organizations and publications.

Bringing Professional Honors Communities Into Nchc, Beata M. Jones

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In response to the issue’s lead essay (Fazioli, 2022), the author warns that if honors programs and professional organizations fail to engage with preprofessional students and programs, the opportunities for building impactful relationships with stakeholders, realizing growth potential, and developing quality educational offerings in honors will be missed. Offering tangible ways to bring professional school colleagues and their students into honors and the global honors community, the author urges NCHC to meet this imperative if it is to articulate its commitment to solving the problems facing our world today and realize its collective mission.

A Sense Of Belonging, Suketu P. Bhavsar

Honors in Practice Online Archive

National Collegiate Honors Council President delivers his address at the NCHC’s 2021 conference, describing that, despite the privileges he has chosen and enjoyed, expressions of otherness have led to feelings of estrangement. Considering the question of how to face this challenge in honors, the author emphasizes the imperative of creating a sense of belonging for every student.

About The Authors, Etc., National Collegiate Honors Council

Honors in Practice Online Archive

About the authors

About the NCHC Monograph Series

NCHC Monographs & Journals

NCHC Publications Order Form

In This Issue

Serving Through Transcribing: Preserving History While Building Community, Julie Centofanti, Mollie Hartup

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Community is a foundational element in honors education. During the global pandemic, students reimagined ways to connect in order to build community and serve one another. Authors describe a virtual collaboration in transcription, where honors students gathered to participate in digital transcribe-a-thons. These informal groupings evolved into a transcribing club that met three times a week (collectively logging more than 1,600 hours) and transcribed over 16,000 historical documents. A study of participating transcribers reveals enhanced historical knowledge, skill building, and opportunities for relationships with students of varying interests and backgrounds despite edicts for social distancing. While a common feature of …

Using Issues In Honors Education To Teach Argumentation, Annmarie Guzy

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Topics and resources from honors education are used to teach argumentation in writing composition. The author discusses efficacies for increasing student awareness of, and reflection on, issues in honors education while engaging first-year students in honors issues that directly affect their lives.

In my first-year honors composition course, I frequently use materials and topics from honors education, ranging from National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) publications to local campus honors issues, to demonstrate rhetorical analysis and argumentative genres. Rather than using a composition reader, I pair textbook chapters with relevant websites and selected essays from Journal of the National Collegiate Honors …

Building Community During Covid-19 And Beyond: How A Community Garden Strengthened An Honors Community, Steve Garrison

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Amid social distancing restrictions, community gardening becomes a focal point of one honors program. While providing fresh produce to the campus food pantry, this student-run initiative generates a new setting for experiential and service learning.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, honors programs across the U.S. struggled to maintain community as higher education moved largely to a virtual setting. Although this shift produced numerous innovations in creative programming, real social interaction greatly diminished. For young adults, social interaction is especially crucial to intellectual and social development, and with community as a key pillar of honors education, compensating for this …

Using Algorithmic Imaginaries And Uncanny Pedagogy To Facilitate Interdisciplinary Research And Digital Scholarship, Philip L. Frana

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An interdisciplinary honors course titled “Minds, Machines, and Meaning” incorporates the notion of the algorithmic imaginary, which explains how people make use of algorithms to create new information infrastructures and communities and how these algorithms shape us in turn. Describing a culminating writing assignment in speculative research, the author explains how this course facilitates interdisciplinary research while fostering student and faculty growth, and he reflects on the possibility of its future variation, the uncanny valley of algorithmic anti-humanism.

Constitution Day: An Opportunity For Honors Colleges To Promote Civic Engagement, Richard J. Hardy, Paul A. Schlag, Keith Boeckelman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The United States Constitution is the bedrock upon which government and society rest, yet its precepts remain generally unfamiliar to contemporary college students. Considering the extent of its impact and the misinformation regarding its purpose, content, efficacy, and limits, the authors provide suggestions for civic learning based on this seminal document. While all American educational institutions receiving federal funding must celebrate the U.S. Constitution each year on or near September 17th, research suggests that comprehensive and integrative instruction is scarce. Citing a lack of formal Constitution Day programming among honors colleges, the authors present a multi-modal framework for honors students …

Inclusive And Effective Holistic Admission Frameworks For Honors Programs: A Case Study Continued, Andrea Radasanu, Gregory Barker

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study continues an earlier (2021) examination of a program’s move from an admissions framework that used standardized test score thresholds to a test-blind holistic review. While the initial study evinced holistic review as a more equitable gateway to honors education for students from underserved backgrounds (as compared to admission frameworks that rely heavily on SAT/ACT thresholds), the current study further substantiates this finding as the program fully transitions to its subsequent admission cycle. In addition to affirming holistic admissions practice as effective for diversifying honors populations, the study considers two additional results. First, the holistic review rubric is assessed …

Mapping The Hero’S Journey Into Thinking: Assigning A Geo-Literacies Multimodal Assignment In A First-Year Honors Seminar, Amy Lee M. Locklear

Honors in Practice Online Archive

By incorporating visual mapping into students’ thinking and writing processes, a narrative assignment in geo-literacy creates a reflective and agency-based learning experience for student writers in a first-year honors seminar.

At Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM), I ask my first-year honors students to reflectively examine and practice habits of thinking and knowledge-building in a series of interrelated writing projects and readings. Each reading and writing task is designed to give students the opportunity to build their synthesis-level critical and creative thinking habits. The course theme of “Hero’s Journey” challenges students to consider the idea of the heroic, especially as it …

(Re)Turning To Freirean Philosophy In Preparing Content Teachers To Work With Multilingual Students, Kara Viesca, Peiwen Wang, Brandon Heinz, Alexa Yunes-Koch

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In 2019, Bettina Love published a call for abolitionist teaching, an effort for educational freedom and racial justice. In her work, she centered the role of theory in teaching calling it a "North Star." She suggested that theory provides teachers a "steadfast tool" that explains the experiences of people minoritized due to racism, sexism, ableism, linguicism, etc., as well as provides language for and knowledge about intersectional issues of injustice. Love literally calls theory a "practical guide" as well as a "location for healing" (Love, 2019, p. 132).

The work of Paulo Freire has long served as the kind of …

Spiritual And Religious Meaning Making In Language And Literacy Studies: Global Perspectives On Teaching, Learning, Curriculum And Policy, Mary M. Juzwik, Robert Jean Leblanc, Denise Dávila, Eric D. Rackley, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Purpose—In an editorial introduction essay for the special issue on Religion, Literacies, and English Education in Global Dialogue, the editors frame papers in the special issue in dialogue with previous scholarly literature around three central lines of inquiry: How do children, youth and families navigate relationships among religion, spirituality, language and literacy? What challenges are faced by language and literacy teachers and teacher educators around the globe who seek to respond to diverse religious and spiritual perspectives in their work? And what opportunities do teachers seize or create toward this end? How are developments of language and literacy theory, …

Novice General Education Teachers’ Perceptions Of Preparedness In U.S. Public Schools: The Impact Of Learning About And Working With Multilingual Students, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba, Qizhen Deng Ph.D., Kara Viesca

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study examined perceptions of preparedness among novice general education teachers using 2015/ 16 National Teacher and Principal Survey data. Results show that teachers with training in teaching multilingual learners reported higher perceived preparedness than those without across all five general aspects of teaching (i.e., instructional methods, teaching subject matters, assessing students, differentiating instruction, and using assessment data to inform instruction). Further, teacher preparedness in differentiating instruction was positively associated with the percentage of multilingual learners in a teacher's classroom. Findings suggest that learning to teach multilingual learners supports novice general content teachers to feel more prepared as teachers overall.

“At School, It’S A Completely Different World”: African Immigrant Youth Agency And Negotiation Of Their Adaptation Processes In Us Urban Schools, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba, Hanihani Moundiba Traore, Guy Trainin

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

African immigrant youth adaptation processes in US schools remain underresearched. Using qualitative case study, this article examines West African immigrant middle- and high-school youth adaptation experiences in US urban schools. Findings show that racialized experiences, English proficiency levels, and multilingualism affected social relationships (both supportive and conflicted) with families, communities, peers, and school contexts. These experiences crucially influenced African immigrant youths’ adaptation processes. Participants drew from community resources and developed resilience skills to negotiate acculturative stressors when seeking friendship, belonging, and an integrated sense of identity in their new home. Recommendations for further supporting positive adaptive strategies are discussed.

The 2021 Nchc Founders Award: Samuel Schuman, Bernice Braid

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Samuel Schuman (Beginning in Honors) is the 2021 recipient of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s Founders Award, recognized for his outstanding contributions to both the NCHC and to the professional and scholarly practices of honors education.

Professional Transitions In Honors: Challenges, Opportunities, And Tips, Suketu P. Bhavsar, Jill Granger, Marlee Marsh, Matthew Means, John Zubizarreta

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Authors reflect on ways that honors practitioners have experienced various professional transitions and provide insights to help others successfully manage such changes.

Honors transitions are inevitable. Many of us in honors, for example, have relocated from other disciplines, moving from the prescribed boundaries of our academic areas to the diverse and challenging demands of honors, quickly learning new leadership skills and approaches to navigating challenges and prospects within and outside our institutions. Some of us have relocated to different institutions; some have negotiated growth from programs to colleges; some have advanced to positions in higher administration; some have witnessed changes …