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Honors in Practice Online Archive

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Ad Tracking, Brand Equity Research, And . . . Your Honors Program?, William A. Ashton, Barbara Ashton, Renny Eapen, Erzulie Mars

Honors in Practice Online Archive

All honors programs face the problem of making their institution’s student body aware of the program’s existence, its eligibility requirements, curriculum, and benefits. Directors who are already comfortable with the number of the program’s members and applicants do not need to think much about awareness, publicity, and advertising. For example, the college’s admissions department assists many honors programs in their recruitment. However, some directors must think hard and carefully about campus-wide awareness. These directors will naturally consider some type of advertising method. However, both before and after turning to advertising, directors need to address two important questions. Before embarking on …

Student-Guided Thesis Support Groups, Jennifer Beard, Ryan D. Shelton, Amanda Stevens, George H. Swindell Iv, Raymond J. Green

Honors in Practice Online Archive

According to the Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College, an honors thesis should be required of honors college students. The benefits of completing an honors thesis are numerous and include the opportunity to work one on one with a faculty mentor, to move one’s discipline forward, and to add an entry to one’s résumé. For the vast majority of students, the thesis will be the first occasion they have to work on an academic project that requires a large amount of independent thought and motivation. One role of faculty mentors is to help students through the process, but …

When It Comes Time Not To “Jump The Shark”: Stepping Down As Director, Nick Flynn

Honors in Practice Online Archive

I was the founding director of the honors program at Angelo State University. Our program started off in a small room in our library back in 2001 with seventeen students. Since then, the program has grown to approximately 150 students with a 2,000-square-foot lounge. Additionally, we received a $250,000 donation for programming and scholarships. After seven years as Director, in 2007 I began to contemplate the possibility of stepping down, and at the start of the fall 2008 semester I made the difficult decision so that I could devote more time to my scholarly endeavors. In retrospect, I wish that …

More Than A Coin Flip: Improving Honors Education With Real Time Simulations Based On Contemporary Events, Kurt Hackemer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

On October 7, 2001, in response to ongoing support for Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terror network responsible for the September 11 attacks in New York City, the United States and Great Britain attacked Taliban targets in Afghanistan with cruise missiles and airstrikes. Shortly thereafter, American ground forces were committed and played an important role in the ouster of the Taliban and the creation of a new Afghan government. America’s preoccupation with Iraq beginning in the spring of 2003 arguably allowed the Taliban enough time and space to rebuild and rearm, and by the summer of 2008 the Afghan …

Is Originality An Appropriate Requirement For Undergraduate Publication?, Nathan Hilberg

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As the faculty advisor for the Pittsburgh Undergraduate Review (PUR), a professionally refereed undergraduate journal devoted to publishing scholarly papers across the disciplines, I found the following passages from Ellen Buckner noteworthy: “It is assumed that the honors work is an original piece of scholarship and prepared according to accepted standards for a written paper . . . ” (149); and “the project’s scholarly accomplishment . . . ” should be conveyed in a summary or abstract (150). I agree that demonstrating scholarly accomplishment is a worthy goal of publishing academic work; I would also emphasize that scholarly accomplishment is …

Celebrating Twenty Years Of Honors Through Oral History: Making An Honors Program Video Documentary, Catherine Irwin

Honors in Practice Online Archive

On April 4, 2008, the University of La Verne Honors Program celebrated its twentieth anniversary with a benefit dinner. The main entertainment for the night was a twenty-minute video documentary based on excerpts from oral histories I had completed with former students and faculty of the program. As students and faculty sat side by side and watched the documentary, I could see people in the audience smiling or nodding their heads in agreement with the person speaking on screen. An occasional “Hey, that’s me!” was followed by laughter from the crowd. After the documentary, a discussion followed that added to …

From The White House To Our House: The Story Of An Honors College Vegetable Garden, Michael Lund, Geoffrey Orth

Honors in Practice Online Archive

When Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine announced in December 2008 his “Renew Virginia” initiative for the Commonwealth, state agencies responded with their own programs “promoting renewable energy, creating green jobs, and encouraging preservation of the environment.” At Longwood University in Farmville, a state-assisted co-educational comprehensive institution, the Cormier Honors College for Citizen Scholars proposed a rooftop vegetable garden on its newly renovated honors residence hall to address these issues. The university’s signature “Citizen Leader” program would be enhanced by a working garden that demonstrates to those on campus and in the larger community the advantages of organic farming, composting, rain …

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The lead essay in this issue of Honors in Practice is one that most readers will want to keep close at hand. At the behest of the NCHC Publications Board, Emily C. Walshe of Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus, has contributed “Conducting Research in Honors,” a set of clear, detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to do research in honors. While some readers will be familiar with this material already and others will struggle to keep up, the majority will find in this essay an invaluable tool and resource for doing research in general and honors research in particular. …

Fertile Ground: Reflections On Collaborative Student-Faculty Research In The Arts, Mimi Killinger, Aya Mares

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This project grew out of mutual interests. In January of 2008, I briefly introduced myself to the students in my Honors 112 seminar, describing my most recent research on a women’s art collective that painted together in Houston, Texas, during the 1970s. That afternoon, I received an e-mail from Honors 112 student Aya Mares that was charged with enthusiasm for art as “fertile ground for change.”

Mimi had told our class that she was researching the Houston art collective, the Garden Artists, because her mother had been a member. She hoped to learn more about the workings of an art …

French À La Carte: Maintaining A Language Program On A Shoestring, Sheilagh Margaret Riordan

Honors in Practice Online Archive

While the size of our honors college environment is almost always a positive, its smallness has decided disadvantages when it comes to the study of less popular foreign languages. Fewer students, fewer subject offerings, and the absence of multiple sections all have a negative impact on language programs. Shrinking budgets have not helped matters. Despite these disadvantages, the French program at Florida Atlantic University’s Harriet Wilkes Honors College has steadily grown from a total number of sixteen students in fall 2005 to forty students (more than 10% of the student population) in the fall semester of 2009. To achieve this …

Honors In Practice, Volume 6 (Complete Issue)

Honors in Practice Online Archive

CONTENTS

Editorial Policy

Submission Guidelines

Dedication to Donzell Lee

Editor’s Introduction • Ada Long

RESEARCH MATTERS

Conducting Research in Honors • Emily C Walshe

Is Originality an Appropriate Requirement for Undergraduate Publication? • Nathan Hilberg

Individual Achievement in an Honors Research Community: Teaching Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development • Kaitlin A Briggs

Student-Guided Thesis Support Groups • Jennifer Beard, Ryan D Shelton, Amanda Stevens, George H Swindell IV, and Raymond J Green

CURRICULUM MATTERS

More than a COIN Flip: Improving Honors Education with Real Time Simulations Based on Contemporary Events • Kurt Hackemer

To Discuss or …

Beyond The Great Books: Increasing The Flexibility, Scope, And Appeal Of An Honors Curriculum, Matthew C. Altman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Two traditional models for honors programs are a chronological Great Books structure and a theme-based approach. Recently, the comparative virtues of these two models have been the subject of practical and theoretical analyses at Central Washington University (CWU), which is in the process of implementing a new honors curriculum to replace its longstanding Great Books program. The new curriculum consists of variable topics courses that satisfy general education requirements and contribute to an honors minor, as well as an upperdivision scholarship experience in which students complete advanced research with faculty mentors.

As our experience demonstrates, a Great Books-based curriculum has …

Students Engaging Students In The Honors Experience, Sara Brady, Hesham Elnagar, Shane Miller

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Student members of the NCHC Board of Directors often share information about successful student programs at their home institutions in order to promote student engagement in honors. We have found that a key component for student engagement is some type of “Honors Ambassadors” program to benefit not only honors students but also their programs and colleges. When the authors discussed honors ambassadors programs during the Students in Honors™ session at the 2008 and 2009 NCHC national conferences, numerous students expressed interest in learning more about such programs (NCHC Student Board). During these two conferences, students from Hillsborough Community College had …

Individual Achievement In An Honors Research Community: Teaching Vygotsky’S Zone Of Proximal Development, Kaitlin A. Briggs

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The years leading up to the 1917 Russian October Revolution must have been a dynamic environment for an emerging young intellectual living in Moscow. Eclipsed by such popular Western cultural representations as David Lean’s 1965 Academy Award winning film, Dr. Zhivago (based on Pasternak’s novel), this milieu included the writers Babel, Gorky, and Nabokov; the poets Mandel’shtam and Tsvetaeva; the composers Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky; the theater director and acting teacher Stanislavsky; and the artists Chagall and Kandinsky (Van Der Veer, 23–4). There we find situated a law student, also studying philosophy, literature, and aesthetics, who went on to become …

Service Learning And Skunkworks In A Senior Honors Colloquium, Michael Cundall

Honors in Practice Online Archive

In this essay I will describe a course and a service learning project related to a course that I had the good fortune to teach when I was new at a university and in an honors college. My point in describing how this course developed, including its structure and year-long project, is to demonstrate that pedagogical environments relatively free from constraints give rise to innovations and worthwhile educational experiences.

In the summer of 2008, I took up a new post as Assistant Director of the Louisiana Scholars’ College at Northwestern State University. The Louisiana Scholars’ College is a “fully-developed” college …

Dedication: Donzell Lee

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An outstanding musician, teacher, and leader, Donzell Lee has been an important asset to honors for over twenty-five years. Having received his B.Mus. from Xavier University of Louisiana, his M.A. from Stanford University, and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, Donzell joined the faculty of Alcorn State University in 1981 and remains there as Professor of Music. His career in honors began in 1984, when he assumed the position of Director of the Honors Curriculum Program at Alcorn State. Since that time he has been active in the National Association of African-American Honors Programs, the Southern Regional Honors Council, and …

The Value Of Extending The Honors Contract Beyond One Semester: A Case Study With Smithsonian Dinosaurs, Alyce Dilauro, Teron Meyers, Laura Guertin

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Most honors programs offer multiple options for scholars to complete their honors credits each semester. Students may, for instance, take honors courses on campus or abroad, participate in honors independent study, or take upper-division courses as freshmen or sophomores. In some cases, especially if a scholar has a scheduling conflict between courses required for the major and honors courses, he or she may select to develop an honors contract, allowing the student to take a non-honors course and work with the faculty instructor to develop an honors experience in the course.

At our institution, honors students must complete a minimum …

Becoming Part Of A Story, Ted L. Estess

Honors in Practice Online Archive

What follows is a slightly revised version of a story that Ted Estess read at the ceremony honoring his retirement after thirty-one years from the position of Dean of the Honors College at the University of Houston. The story, as he explained to those assembled, was written some years ago in Colorado, where he spent time most summers with his wife, Sybil, and his son, Barrett

Studies In Cyberspace: Honors, Professional Teacher Development, Curricular Development, And Systemic Change In Louisiana, Brian C. Etheridge, Galen Turner, Heath Tims, Christian A. Duncan

Honors in Practice Online Archive

For years, honors programs and colleges have experienced well-documented difficulties in justifying and defending their budgets (and in some cases their existence). These challenges—some of which are discussed in the 2006 JNCHC “Forum on Honors Administration” and the 2009 JNCHC “Forum on Social Class and Honors”—have ranged from the philosophical (“honors programs are elitist”) to the pragmatic (“we have to take care of our own students first, so we can’t spare any faculty for an honors class”). Honors administrators have therefore developed an extensive and effective litany of benefits that emphasize how honors programs enhance the student experience, the health …

Table Of Contents

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Editorial Policy . . . . . . . . . . 5

Submission Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . 5

Dedication to Donzell Lee . . . . . . . . . . 7

Editor’s Introduction (Ada Long) . . . . . . . . . . 9

Research Matters

Conducting Research in Honors (Emily C. Walshe) . . . . . . . . . . 17

Is Originality an Appropriate Requirement for Undergraduate Publication? (Nathan Hilberg) . . . . . . . . . . 57

Individual Achievement in …

To Discuss Or Not To Discuss: Integrating Pedagogies For Honors And Mathematics, William Griffiths, Nancy Reichert, L. R. Ritter

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Classroom discussion has long been an important pedagogical tool in fields such as the social sciences and the humanities because it allows students to critically examine ideas about what it means to be a human living within communities of other humans. It allows students to formulate ideas and judgments and to reconsider these formulations as time passes and new information is revealed. Within the field of mathematics, however, professors typically rely on lectures to ensure coverage. While students are asked to think critically, they are likely asked to do so within the context of homework problems. The primary question we …

Teamwork For Nchc, Lydia Lyons

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Having had the opportunity to listen to NCHC presidential addresses since 1995, I find today’s opportunity a humbling one. Some of our presidents have used the conference themes as points of reference, but our first four conferences starting in 1966 had no themes. Ada Long and I share the experience of having chaired our NCHC conferences in San Antonio: she in 1994 with the theme “Crossing Borders” and I in 2008 with “Crossing Frontiers.” Theme or no theme, some presidents have grappled with defining honors or, even more challenging, the NCHC.

Intuitively, we know what honors is, yet we have …

Conducting Research In Honors, Emily C. Walshe

Honors in Practice Online Archive

There’s an old library story about oranges and peaches that goes like this: a guy bellies up to the reference desk looking for the book, The Oranges and Peaches. He’s in a hurry. The librarian searches the catalog—fruitlessly—for the title. The man is incredulous. “I have to read it by Monday! It’s a classic!” The librarian asks if he knows the author. He’s indignant. “Charles-something-orother!” With that, she goes to the shelves and plucks off Darwin’s On the Origins of Species. “Yep, that’s it,” he says, “now, do you have the movie?”

It is the happy job …