Education Commons^™

Resisting Disciplinarity: Curriculum Mapping And Transdisciplinarity, Megan Snider Bailey

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

American higher education relies on a taxonomy of knowledge stemming from Puritan ways of thinking and knowing—a disciplinary classification system that sorts “questions asked” and “answers possible” into epistemic categories. This paper interrogates the notion of disciplinarity to better understand the arbitrariness of epistemic divisions and the harm that these decisions cause. The author explores transdisciplinarity as an emerging concept in honors education, one which rejects boundaries and explores problems through multiple, competing perspectives. Transdisciplinary pedagogical approaches offer honors educators a mechanism for pivoting teaching and learning away from outdated assumptions of honors as elitist, giving honors students a liberating …

Diversity In Honors: Understanding Systemic Biases Through Student Narratives, Aman Singla, Minerva Melendrez, Mable T. Thai, Sukhdev S. Mann, Denise Zhong, Kim T. Hoang, Isabella H. Lee, Andrea V. Aponte

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Centered on superiority over a certain group or individual, discrimination becomes predominant in prestigious institutions that pride themselves on exclusivity. Collegiate honors programs tend to deepen this practice by creating highly elite spaces accessible only to a select few. This rigidity can lead to an underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups, students who often lack the necessary resources for achieving academic excellence. This case study examines the ways honors programs inadvertently perpetuate discrimination among different social identities. Using inductive interviewing of honors students (n = 12) to gauge individual perceptions of program diversity, researchers rely on content analysis to generate …

Honors Flourishing In The Midst Of Change, Hao Hong, Robert Glover, Mimi Killinger, Jordan Labouff

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the wake of formidable institutional change, and in response to administrative concerns about honors’ place within the university, authors describe the development of a pilot course that led to a program’s critical self-study and course transformations that were long overdue. Citizen Scholarship and Human Flourishing incorporates specific practices such as peer instruction and “ungrading” to align with new institutional learning objectives and broadly defined undergraduate research experiences across disciplines. The experimental course presents honors as a model for progressive curricular change in the midst of shifting administrative landscapes.

Meet The New Boss: An Honors Faculty Member Weathers Administrative Change, Annamarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author reflects on the role of honors faculty in effectively responding to short- and long-term administrative change, discussing the value of resistance to deleterious administrative decisions and offering advice for successfully navigating cyclical administrative shifts in honors.

Regime Change As Opportunity: A Case For A Radically Inclusive Response, Massimo Rondolino

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author proposes a radically inclusive approach to reimagining and rebuilding honors education at a time of institutional change, suggesting that when directives do not include a clear vision for academic curricula in practice and orientation (and instead focus on budgetary bottom lines and cost-maximization), honors practitioners benefit from an invaluable opportunity to exert self-determination and agency. This essay describes the effective rebuilding of an honors program by leveraging faculty experience to establish a collaborative community framed within a model of student self-governance and grounded in principles of mindful leadership, anti-cruelty mentality, and maternal thinking.

Ready For Business: Developing An Online Business Honors Course For Quality, Engagement, And Inclusivity, Kayla N. Sapkota

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay presents the creation process for an online honors course in the field of business. Highlighting engagement, critical thinking, and inclusivity as central themes, the author describes the course’s inception, structure, outcomes, and post-teaching reflection. The pedagogical framework includes integrative current event assignments and team activities. Noting student responses as generally positive, the author suggests how future versions might expand on remote teamwork opportunities.

Leveraging Regime Change As An Opportunity To Reimagine, Reset, And Demonstrate Results In Honors, Irina V. Ellison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Regime changes in higher education can be a source of disruption and lead to a potential derailment of honors programs. This paper describes one honors program’s agility and effective negotiation through a rapid succession of upper administrative change, suggesting that when seen as opportunities these changes invite honors practitioners to re-envision, reset, and reevaluate programmatic set points for admissions, student learning, and curricular innovation.

A Relational Model For Honors Education: From Contagion To Permeability, Andrea Radasanu, Rebecca C. Bott, Leigh Fine, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Joy L. Hart, Timothy J. Nichols, Hedi Appel, Daniel M. Roberts, Paul Knox, William L. Ziegler

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article considers the value of honors education beyond its marked contributions to enrollment management goals. Suggesting that quantitative assessments toward understanding the value of honors fail to capture its breadth, interdisciplinary focus, and engagement, authors posit a new way of measuring impacts from “contagion model” (spillover to campus and beyond) to “permeability model” (interface across campus). Pointing to the benefits of permeability for both honors and the broader campus communities, authors encourage practitioners to foster exchange in curricular offerings, spatial inputs, scholarly outputs, extramural funding, and institutional support. The meaning and history of organizational permeability is explored, and examples …

Facilitating Change: Examining Honors Students’ Perceptions Of Learning Facilitation Techniques, Conner W. Suddick, Lindi Dice

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite advancements in global communication and interpersonal networks, in-person discussions and scholarly discourses often falter in the classroom—stifling innovation and preventing opportunities to foster deeper human connection. This study explores the remedy of facilitation: the art and science of enabling a group to unleash its creativity, address conflict, and unlock collective wisdom. Authors present a variety of facilitation techniques used in teaching honors students (n = 13) and closely examine how students articulate their personal learning outcomes after practicing effective facilitations. Liberating structures, which engage everyone in problem-solving, practicing self-discovery, and envisioning potential solutions, are used. Reflective assessments indicate …

Building An Honors Community That Values And Celebrates Faculty, Kristine A. Miller

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education” (2022) outlines the level of commitment, pedagogical innovation and inclusivity, mentoring, and intellectual leadership that honors programs and colleges expect from their faculty. These high expectations require institutional support structures that compensate faculty fairly, foster ongoing professional development, and build a sense of belonging and community in honors. Emphasizing the importance of faculty who teach, mentor, and guide honors students on their educational journeys, the author draws on firsthand experience to offer specific ideas about how to engage and reward honors faculty. The essay suggests that building a …

Developing Honors Faculty Through Faculty Development Programs, Aaron Hanlin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite its crucial role in student success, there is scant research on how honors faculty develop teaching expertise and pedagogical authority. This essay considers the ways in which faculty development programs assist instructors by enhancing the critical skills necessary for positive student outcomes and successful honors programs. While honors scholars continue to advocate for institutional support toward faculty development, this essay provides further rationale and a specific example.

The Elective System, Honors Degrees, And Academic Advising, Erin E. Edgington

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Introduction to Advising for Today's Honors Students, Erin E. Edgington, editor. Published by the National Collegiate Honors Council, Lincoln, Nebraska, United States, 2023.

How Honors Advising Is Different, Philip L. Frana

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

How honors advising is different

Institutional motivations

Philosophical approaches

Actual practices

How honors students are different

How honors goals and outcomes are different

Last paragraph:

We must guide students into experiences that enable them to develop their potentialities. The emphasis must be on the new and changing nature of life as lived in the twenty-first century. Advisors are fellow travelers with students in the pursuit of lifelong learning and communities of interest, practice, and commitment. Together we struggle to find meaningful, relevant work; to achieve autonomy and intellectual independence; and to develop empathy, humility, and gratitude. Advising as …

Motivation In Honors Advising, Matthew T. Best, Kenneth E. Barron, Jared Diener, Philip L. Frana

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Honors advising and student motivation

Scenarios

Implications for Honors Advising

Conclusion

Equipping advisors with a motivation toolbox to be used in regular interactions with prospective and current students, including formal office visits, open houses, and sidewalk conversations, makes our advising interactions more purposeful and relevant. Introducing honors motivation in advising encounters and first-year experience courses will help students gain a better sense of who they are both individually and as a group. This approach also helps students to be curious about finding their purpose, vocation, ideas, and curricula. The EVC model allows honors advisors to understand and help …

Advising To Support Meaning Making And Purpose: Helping Honors Students Focus On Priorities And Evaluate Opportunities Through Intention Setting, Kristy Spear, Ron Cahlon, Katherine Mccall

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

What is an intention?

The value of setting an intention

Setting an intention with honors students

Ron’s intention

Katherine’s intention

Final thoughts

The experiences provided are just two examples of how, with the guidance of an advisor, honors students might formulate and incorporate an intention into their lives. This simple yet profound technique is a useful addition to the advisor’s toolbox; it presents the opportunity to help students examine their values, who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to live their lives. This critical reflection can result in a clear focus and systematic …

Advising With Purpose: Utilizing The Motivation For College Success Model, Stephanie Veltman Santarosa

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Conclusion

Whether or not advisors choose to use the formal MSLQ instrument as a tool in advising, they can contribute to their advisees’ academic success by listening for the presence or absence of the motivational constructs it measures in advisee comments and conversation and by responding in ways that develop positive motivations and encourage management of those constructs that may present barriers to success. Because intrinsic goal orientation, task value, control of learning beliefs, and self-efficacy can be learned, and extrinsic goal orientation and test anxiety can be lessened and managed, advisors equipped with the knowledge and tools to evaluate …

Honors Advising For Large Programs, Art L. Spisak, Holly B. Yoder

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This study was conducted within the Honors Program at the University of Iowa, which is the flagship public research university of the State of Iowa. Its Carnegie classification is Doctoral University with Highest Research Activity (R1), and it is a member of the Association of American Universities. Its current student population is about 21,600 undergraduates and about 9,600 graduate and professional students.

This study was conducted within the Honors Program at the University of Iowa, which is the flagship public research university of the State of Iowa. Its Carnegie classification is Doctoral University with Highest Research Activity (R1), and it …

Advising Honors Students: Motivational Interviewing As A Tool For Identity Building And Development, Chelsea Mckeirnan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Advising needs of the honors population

Motivational interviewing

The spirit of motivational interviewing

The four processes of motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing within an honors advising model

Honors advising and the spirit of motivational interviewing

Honors advising and the four processes of motivational interviewing

Honors advising and the skills of motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing resources

Conclusion

Arthur W. Chickering and Linda Reisser (1993) noted that “to be effective in educating the whole student, colleges must hire and reinforce staff members who understand what student development looks like and how to foster it” (p. 44). Advising an honors student requires …

Intellectual Humility, Honors, And Appreciative Advising: Exploring With Students That Changing Their Mind Does Not End The World, Alan Sells

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Honors and the foreclosure student

Major changing and intellectual humility

Intellectual humility and appreciative advising

Conclusion and final thoughts

Honors students who change majors often find themselves faced with an identity crisis. Our job as advisors is to support these students by guiding them through this difficult transition. It is easy to look at these students and to regard them as having all of their plans in order and to believe they do not need extra attention (Robinson, 1997). Nothing could be further from the truth. Honors students are, in many ways, like any other student, and they …

Mentoring In The Mix: Building Mentoring Capacity Intentionally In A New Honors College, Kathryn Butler-Valdez, Hailey Silver Rodis, Audrey Cerfoglio

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The University of Nevada, Reno Honors College’s approach to mentorship capitalizes on guiding students through a variety of directed activities and experiential discussions to promote critical thinking and the adoption of new, transferable knowledge. Enhancing traditional advising activities such as course selection and discovery of co-curricular opportunities, programming around mentorship additionally provides another avenue for keeping students engaged, encouraging full participation in the honors college, and improving student retention and persistence rates. Because oversight of these common metrics for success in higher education very often falls to advising staff, and because formal academic advising is a kind of mentorship, it …

Advising First-Generation And Socioeconomically Diverse Honors Students, Angela D. Mead

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors programs and colleges increasingly consider socioeconomic status as a form of diversity by actively recruiting first-generation and low-income college students. Supporting this movement, the National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Shared Principals and Practices of Honors Education” (2022) highlights the need for inclusive excellence from across all communities. First-generation and low-income students are often high-potential students, and their inclusion into honors communities enhances the whole. The challenge, though, is retaining and graduating these students at rates similar to their more advantaged peers. Academic advising can be an effective tool in these efforts.

First-generation and socioeconomically diverse college students are a large …

Exploring The Relationship Between Mindset, Mental Health, And Academic Performance Among College Students, Eileen Makak, Douglas A. Medina, Harmony D. Osei

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In recent years students’ mental health has been one of the most discussed topics at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Brad Wolverton (2019) notes in The New York Times that students are facing anxiety and depression at alarming rates. More than 60% are suffering from “overwhelming anxiety” and over 40% feel “so depressed they [have] difficulty functioning” (Wolverton, 2019). In this chapter, we explore how mental health impacts one’s academic performance and mindset, and vice versa. It is important to acknowledge that the first drafts of this chapter were written prior to 2020, and therefore it does not …

Oxbridge And Core Curricula: Continuing Conversations With The Past In Honors Colleges, Christopher A. Snyder

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The American honors college, as it exists in the twenty-first century, is idiosyncratic and an amalgam of centuries old European traditions in higher education with pedagogies and practices that have emerged only since about the 1980s and are particular to America. These disparate influences coexist—sometimes uneasily—in American universities, and yet American honors colleges have continued to have conversations with the past in order to seek wisdom for dealing with contemporary issues such as the democratization of higher education, social justice and diversity, the use of instructional technology, and the controversy between vocational training and liberal learning. Because, unlike departments, an …

Characteristics Of The 21st-Century Honors College, Andrew J. Cognard-Black, Patricia Joanne Smith

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Today, honors education can be found in almost every corner of U.S. higher education. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there also has been significant growth in the number of honors colleges in the United States, but there have been limited data to describe with any precision how fast that growth has been. Sederberg (2005, 2008) was among the first to document the emergence and growth of a distinct honors college organizational form and to identify unique characteristics that distinguish honors colleges from honors programs, but further growth within the organizational field of higher education necessitates an updated profile …

Should We Start An Honors College? An Administrative Playbook For Working Through The Decision, Richard Badenhausen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The last two decades have seen significant growth in honors colleges, though the transition to that model takes many forms. This essay lays out crucial questions for stakeholders considering such a move. While highlighting material advantages that may accrue from the transition, the chapter also notes reasons for not starting an honors college; and it explores some of the new challenges that recently founded honors colleges will face. Above all, the essay frowns upon the so-called “switch out the sign over the door” approach to institutional change in favor of deliberate, thoughtful, and strategic processes that involve many stakeholders and …

Beyond The Letterhead: A Tactical Toolbox For Transitioning From Program To College, Sarah Hottinger, Megan Mcilreavy, Clay Motley, Louis E. Keiner

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As institutions of higher education evolve to better meet the needs of highly motivated students, conversations have focused on the role of an honors education in the undergraduate collegiate experience. Specifically, administrators have been evaluating the value and merits of maintaining an honors program or deciding to make a transition to a new honors college. This chapter clarifies the essential differences between these two approaches to honors education. Additionally, it provides some guiding principles that can generate widespread support and facilitate the development of impactful student experiences that are generally applicable to a broad range of institutions. Overall, honors colleges …

“It Is What You Make It”: Opportunities Arising From The Unique Roles Of Honors College Deans, Jeff Chamberlain, Thomas M. Spencer, Jefford Vahlbusch

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Grounded in the shared experiences of three current honors college deans and in comprehensive interviews with another two dozen honors deans at diverse institutions of higher education across the U.S., this chapter argues that the uniqueness of honors college dean roles and work can—and indeed should—lead to innovative and transformative change and improved student experiences, outcomes, and success, not only in honors colleges and within the scope of honors education, but across entire institutions. Ultimately the chapter contends that, while there can be manifold frustrations in running an honors college, the position of honors dean is one of the best …

From The Top Down: Implications Of Honors College Deans’ Race And Gender, Malin Pereira, Jacqueline Smith-Mason, Karoline Summerville, Scott Linneman

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Most honors college deans are White males, yet most students enrolled in honors colleges are women; more often than not, there is glaring underrepresentation of diverse races and ethnicities among student populations in honors colleges. Considering these data, the authors ask whether honors colleges perpetuate the “Oxford College Don” model of White male privilege and power. Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and other students of color often look at the leaders of honors colleges and rarely see themselves, and White honors students lack the opportunity to see diverse leadership models. This chapter explains how and why faculty of color and women face …

The Role Of The Honors College Dean In The Future Of Honors Education, Peter Parolin, Timothy J. Nichols, Donal C. Skinner, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In this chapter, four honors deans reflect on the unique aspects of the honors dean's role. The authors argue that by being responsive to the challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities they face daily, honors deans can enable honors to deliver on its promises to students and to serve the whole university community. Attentive to changing dynamics in honors education nationwide, the authors address how deans must confront myths about honors that bear the legacy of past realities while actively tending to justice in the admissions process, to recruiting and serving diverse populations, and to supporting an honors environment that addresses the …

Something Borrowed, Something New: Honors College Faculty And The Staffing Of Honors Courses, Erin E. Edgington, Linda Frost

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This chapter offers an overview of the most current and common methods of staffing honors college courses as well as the problems and possibilities of these methods. The chapter’s literature review notes the typical characteristics of the most successful honors faculty members as well as how those characteristics tend to mirror those of successful honors students. As honors colleges themselves have proliferated, so has the number of tenure-track faculty lines contained in them; the details of how several universities have evaluated those faculty are included. The authors make three final recommendations regarding honors college faculty and note that as honors …