Education Commons^™

Jnchc Front & Back Matter, Vol. 20, No 2, Fall/Winter 2019

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Cover

Masthead

Contents

Call for Papers, Editorial Policy, & Submission Guidelines

Dedication -- Art L. Spisak

About the Authors

About the NCHC Monograph Series

Order form

Back cover

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council 20:2 (Fall/Winter 2019): Complete Issue. Forum On Risk-Taking In Honors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Contents:

Call for Papers

Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines

Dedication to Art L. Spisak

Editor’s Introduction — Ada Long

Forum essays on “Risk-Taking in Honors”

Risky Honors — Andrew J. Cognard-Black

An Honors Student Walks into a Classroom: Inviting the Whole Student into our Classes — Brian Davenport

Risk that Lasts: Prioritizing Propositional Risk in Honors Education — Eric Lee Welch

Risky Triggers — Larry R. Andrews

Embodied Risk-Taking: Embracing Discomfort through Image Theatre — Leah White

Academic Risk and Intellectual Adventure: Evidence from U.S. Honors Students at the University of Oxford — Elizabeth Baigent

Disorienting Experiences: Guiding Faculty …

Disorienting Experiences: Guiding Faculty And Students Toward Cultural Responsiveness, Rebekah Dement, Angela Salas

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay examines the challenges of integrating culturally responsive teaching into an honors curriculum at a predominantly white institution. Through self-reflection resulting from three specific incidents, one author examines the trajectory of risk-taking as it pertains to assigning difficult or challenging texts. The second author provides a vital complement to self-reflection: the mentorship of a senior colleague.

Practicing What We Preach: Risk-Taking And Failure As A Joint Endeavor, Alicia Cunningham-Bryant

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Faculty and administrators often present risk-taking as something honors students must do, but rarely do they take risks themselves. In an ideal situation, communal risk-taking would subvert institutional power dynamics, free students from grade-associated anxiety, and enable them to build dynamic partnerships with faculty. This paper discusses how one honors college piloted self-grading in the second semester of its first-year seminar as a mechanism of liberatory learning for both faculty and students. While self-grading was originally intended to provide increased freedom for risk-taking, in truth it led to increased anxiety in students and high levels of frustration for faculty. This …

Risky Honors, Andrew J. Cognard-Black

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Most educators today are likely to proclaim a commitment to teaching critical thinking. Willingness to take intellectual risks such as questioning orthodox teachings or proposing unconventional solutions is an important component of critical thinking and the larger project of liberal education, yet the reward structures of educational institutions may actually function to discourage such risk-taking. In light of the extra importance placed on grades and high-stakes entrance exams in an increasingly competitive educational marketplace, this problem might presumably be magnified among honors students. This essay concludes by calling on honors educators and other interested parties to contribute their voices, their …

Academic Risk And Intellectual Adventure: Evidence From U.S. Honors Students At The University Of Oxford, Elizabeth Baigent

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Many study abroad programs promise students self-knowledge through adventure. Those that involve intense study seem at first sight not to offer adventure nor to entail risky dislocation nor to offer new insights into self. However, evidence from study abroad students at the University of Oxford reveals that they describe intellectual endeavor as adventure, finding that their academic experiences pose risks, demand courage, and are the means through which they and their new surroundings accommodate one another. Oxford faculty encourage academic risk-taking by posing hard intellectual challenges, helping students find their own voice rather than summarizing the views of others, and …

Risky Triggers, Larry R. Andrews

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Risk-taking in honors education entails not only anxiety about grades and intellectually disturbing ideas but also painful emotional responses to course materials. Rather than censoring such “dangerous” materials, faculty should compassionately encourage vulnerable students to acknowledge their pain safely in an open and accepting classroom atmosphere.

Selection Criteria For The Honors Program In Azerbaijan, Azar Abizada, Fizza Mirzaliyeva

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Designing effective selection procedures for honors programs is always a challenging task. In Azerbaijan, selection is based on three main criteria: (i) student performance in the centralized university admission test; (ii) student performance in the first year of studies; and (iii) student performance in the honors program selection test. This research identifies criteria most crucial in predicting student success in honors programs. An analysis was first conducted for all honors students. Results indicate that all three criteria used in the selection process are highly significant predictors of student success in the program. This same analysis was then applied separately for …

Embodied Risk-Taking: Embracing Discomfort Through Image Theatre, Leah White

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Taking risks does not come easily to many honors students. Often their success is based on carefully following directions and working hard to meet established expectations. Although the Minnesota State University, Mankato Honors Program’s competency-based model encourages students to focus on personal growth rather than course completion, our students still struggle with the openended nature of reflection-based learning. This essay explains how incorporating Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre techniques in an honors seminar, Performance for Social Change, helped encourage students to become more comfortable with taking academic and ideological risks. Boal’s methods depend heavily on embodied experience as a companion to …

An Honors Student Walks Into A Classroom: Inviting The Whole Student Into Our Classes, Brian Davenport

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This paper explores the risky proposition of encouraging students to question deeply held values and beliefs. After connecting honors pedagogy with transformative learning theory, the author encourages faculty who are willing to take this risk to consider involving the whole student and not simply their cognitive aspects. The author then explores whole student pedagogy and transformative learning, positing how these can be present in the honors classroom. Finally, the use of critical reflection as a tool that facilitates interaction with the whole student is discussed, with suggestions as to how it might most effectively be incorporated into the honors classroom.

Purpose, Meaning, And Exploring Vocation In Honors Education, Erin Vanlaningham, Robert J. Pampel, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Dustin J. Kemp, Aron Reppmann, Anna Stewart

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This paper examines the importance of cultivating a sense of vocation in honors education. Through examples of coursework, program initiatives, and advising strategies, authors from across five institutions align the scholarship of vocation with best practices and principles in contemporary honors discourse, defining vocation in the context of higher education and describing how this concept works within honors curricula to enrich student experience and cultivate individual understandings of purpose. By focusing on critical reflection processes, Ignatian pedagogy, and theories of moral development and reasoning, the authors offer different models to advance the thesis that honors educators can and should address …

Risk That Lasts: Prioritizing Propositional Risk In Honors Education, Eric Lee Welch

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The fear of missing the mark often shapes how honors students approach risk in the classroom and, consequently, how instructors build risk-taking exercises into their curriculums. This paper explores the concept of propositional risk in the context of honors pedagogy, wherein students are challenged to interrogate deeply held beliefs and tasked with exercises designed to call forth the full complexity of attendant issues surrounding any individual viewpoint. As distinct from strategic risk, which can be characterized as performative and externally motivated, propositional risk requires students to critically evaluate a spectrum of thought, value, and ideology in the context of singular, …

The Game As An Instrument Of Honors Students’ Personal Development In The Sibfu Honors College, Maria V. Tarasova

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors colleges often serve as laboratories for pedagogical innovation, where new learning strategies and technologies are created both in the sphere of honors education and in the broader context of universities. This study describes a method of “organizational activity games” (OAG) introduced in the honors college of Siberian Federal University (SibFU) in Russia. The author explores the advantages of the game method for reaching the goal of honors students’ personal development. The theory and history of the game, invented in the Russian school of methodology by G. P. Shchedrovitskii, is explored in its relation to the theoretical principles of honors …

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The last issue of JNCHC (spring/summer 2019) included a Forum on “Current Challenges to Honors Education.” The essays focused on challenges to honors while this issue’s Forum addresses challenges within honors, especially the challenges we present to our students in courses that are designed to complicate, interrogate, and often defy accepted practices and beliefs. The introduction of risk-taking takes this topic beyond the unthreatening and inviting terrain of challenge into a different territory. Virtually all honors programs and colleges advertise themselves as presenting challenges to their students, but few if any boast that they are risky. Jumping hurdles is a …

Shunning Complaint: A Call For Solutions From The Honors Community, Richard Badenhausen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While members of the academy are particularly adept at complaining and poking holes in most proposals that cross their paths, we are less comfortable with offering solutions. This essay asks members of the honors community to consider some of the major challenges facing honors education today and propose solutions that might be adapted on a variety of campuses. Rather than asking respondents to take up rather straightforward issues that commonly face honors program and colleges, this piece urges readers to dig into more intractable problems like access, mental health, innovation, and the position of honors on campus.

Editor’S Introduction (Vol. 20, No. 1), Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Academics are proficient in the art of complaining. Behind closed doors or in faculty senate meetings, the well-honed quibble can be a portal into instant respect and in-group status. From freshman composition through the dissertation defense, critical thinking has nurtured in us the rhetoric of grievance, sharpening its edges until it gleams with a fine luster, enchanting the listener almost as much as the practitioner. Nevertheless, Richard Badenhausen, despite his impeccable academic credentials, brazenly invited us to abandon the enchantments of grousing and to pursue practical fixes for our problems in honors. His invitation was issued in this Call for …

Dedication—Linda Frost

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

A Professor of English, Linda Frost has been active in honors since 2004, first as Associate Director at the University of Alabama Birmingham, then as Director at Eastern Kentucky University, and now as Dean of the Honors College at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Linda is a member of the NCHC Board of Directors, co-chair of the Publications Board, and a member of the Conference Planning Committee. For six years, she ran the NCHC Newsletter Contest, and she has served in the gamut of offices, including president, of the Southern Regional Honors Council.

In honors, Linda has published four …

Editorial Matter: Jnchc 20:1 (Spring/Summer 2019)

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Frontmatter: Front cover, TP, CP, Contents, Call for Papers, Editorial Policy, Deadlines, Submission Guidelines

Backmatter: About the Authors, About the NCHC Monograph Series, NCHC Monographs & Journals, NCHC Publications Order Form, back cover

The Case For Heterodoxy, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite being originally designed to educate men, honors programs are not very attractive to male students in general and to male students of color in particular. Because access to honors programs is limited by a credentialing process that favors white men, many members of minority groups find them inhospitable and are significantly underrepresented. This essay suggests three concepts to be used to reimagine honors programs to be more welcoming of minority students: radical hospitality, asset-based thinking, and heterodoxy.

Taking On The Challenges Of Diversity And Visibility: Thoughts From A Small Honors Program, Kathryn M. Macdonald

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Monroe College Honors Program, located in New York, enjoys an extremely diverse student body, which can be attributed to its location within and proximity to New York City. Data about the Monroe College Honors Program are presented. More importantly, this essay presents the strategies that the honors program uses to meet the needs of a diverse student body. Our students face many challenges, including difficult family situations and economic hardship, and so the honors program has created a rigorous but flexible curriculum and co-curriculum to meet their needs. The approaches used to serve this population focus on getting to …

Congregational Honors: A Model For Inclusive Excellence, Naomi Yavneh Klos

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay proposes a conception of honors programs and colleges as sacred communities that acknowledge and embrace the unique human dignity of each of their members. Drawing on Ron Wolfson’s congregational model articulated in Relational Judaism, McMillan and Chavis’s definition of “sense of community,” and the pedagogy of educators such as Paolo Freire and bell hooks, I argue that to create a true culture of inclusive excellence, an honors program or college should not be constructed as a checklist of “exceptional experiences for exceptional students” but rather as a “community of relationships.” Leading with a student-centered, holistic focus that …

The Power Of Creation: Critical Imagination In The Honors Classroom, Jennie Woodard

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The article examines how to incorporate issues of social justice and diversity in the honors classroom through critical imagination. Inclusion and diversity are among the five strategic pillars of honors education, but the challenge is to create space for social justice as an academic inquiry. This article describes an honors project where students were tasked to come up with their own concept for a television show, using their imagination to bridge gaps in representations on television. Critical imagination allowed the students to move beyond analyzing television in its current state and conceptualize what more inclusive television could look like in …

Faculty As Honors Problem Solvers, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Postsecondary honors educators are adept at identifying problems and proposing solutions in honors education, but they may not disseminate their solutions effectively. This essay argues that honors administrators should familiarize themselves with the professional and scholarly resources that NCHC institutional membership affords, and then they should share what they have learned with honors teaching faculty. Rather than simply serving as advisors on administrative and programmatic issues, honors faculty also need the tools and opportunities to be effective honors problem solvers for day-to-day pedagogical issues.

Honors And The Curiouser University, Kristine A. Miller

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

With roots in the Latin cūriōus, meaning “full of care or pains, careful, assiduous, inquisitive,” the word “curiosity,” like this forum on “Current Challenges to Honors Education,” grows out of both the pain and promise of critical inquiry. This essay takes up the challenge of moving honors from the periphery to the heart of higher education by daring to redefine the college or university itself. Honors fosters—and even demands—the curiosity to look beyond the comforting confines of one’s own mind. Facilitating the conversation, collaboration, and innovation that shape a curious university, honors offers students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community …

Resisting Commodification In Honors Education, Jodi J. Meadows

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The commodification of education is an increasing threat to university honors programs. In honors, we seek to unpack this transactional model of education and uncover the inherent joy of learning. Honors professionals can challenge the commodification of education by helping students contextualize their educational experiences and by facilitating joyful, self-directed learning. Framed by research of both gifted K–12 students and college honors students, this article explores specific conversations and course designs that may combat a commodification culture and foster self-reflection and self-direction in honors students.

Creating A Profile Of An Honors Student: A Comparison Of Honors And Non-Honors Students At Public Research Universities In The United States, Andrew J. Cognard-Black, Art L. Spisak

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This study uses data from the 2018 Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Survey of undergraduate degree-seeking students to develop a profile of an honors student. Nineteen research universities participated in the 2018 SERU Survey, with a resulting sample size of almost 119,000 undergraduate students, of whom 15,280 reported participation in or completion of an honors program. No other study has surveyed honors students on such a scale and across so many institutions. This study could be useful for recruiting since it would give recruiters a better idea of what to look for that would make prospects successful in …

Understanding The Development Of Honors Students’ Connections With Faculty, Shannon R. Dean

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Nearly 40% of full-time students enrolled at four-year institutions depart within the first year. Previous research has shown college students are more likely to graduate if they have meaningful interactions with faculty. Honors students provide unique perspectives because of their high levels of interaction with faculty, yet not much is known about how these connections develop. The purpose of this study was to understand how honors students develop connections with faculty. Six upper-division students were interviewed, and participants reflected on meaningful connections made with faculty during their first year. Two themes were identified as influential in developing connections: approachability of …

Being Honors Worthy: Lessons In Supporting Transfer Students, Carolyn Thomas, Eddy A. Ruiz, Heidi Van Beek, J. David Furlow, Jennifer Sedell

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the ever-growing discussion of how to build and support honors programs that reflect the diverse communities our institutions serve, the recruitment of transfer students has only recently been identified as a key avenue to enacting more equitable programs. Reflecting on four years of recruiting, enrolling, and graduating transfer students in the University Honors Program at the University of California, Davis, we push the conversation beyond how to welcome transfer students in honors to how to meaningfully support them. We present the initial findings of our ongoing self-assessment to stimulate discussion about the unique challenges and opportunities transfer students experience …

Disciplinary Affiliation And Administrators’ Reported Perception And Use Of Assessment, Patricia J. Smith, Andrew J. Cognard-Black

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Using survey data collected from 269 participants in the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2017, this study examines whether any changes might have occurred within the last 20 years regarding the disciplinary affiliation of honors administrators. Additionally, we explored current assessment practices of honors administrators and possible associations between these practices and the administrators’ disciplinary affiliation. Our study investigates disciplinary variation among honors directors in their attitudes toward and perceived effectiveness with outcomes assessment. While we mostly found similarities among directors/deans in their use of assessment, some significant differences occurred in attitudes toward and confidence with using assessment …

With Great Privilege Comes Great Responsibility, Anne Dotter

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay contends that honors education should seize the opportunity to expose our students to the horrors of our society such as “the violence against those among us with the least amount of power.” We can affirm our curricular foundation (writing, reflection, and critical thinking) by supplementing it with histories of oppression in order to better equip our students with the tools necessary to become change agents. Such a shift in curricular content and pedagogies could engender changes in our institutional practices that model successful collaboration across races, cultures, and disciplines for our students, ultimately leading the way to a …