Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Drawing On Gifts Of International Students To Develop International Partnerships, Kevin W. Dean

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

It was Tuesday of the first week of classes for the fall 2012 term. At two o’clock in the afternoon, swamped with student petitions to register for classes and balancing myriad administrative issues, I found a young man with an unfamiliar accent standing on my office threshold. “I don’t have an appointment, but might you have a moment? My name is Carl. This is my second day in the states from Norway, and I heard about the honors program and would like to join.” A few days exist in an educator’s life that one can consider change moments, and that …

Assessing Honors Internationalization: A Case Study Of Lloyd International Honors College At Unc Greensboro, Chris J. Kirkman, Omar H. Ali

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Lloyd International Honors College (LIHC) of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC Greensboro) is a useful example of the reimagining of a traditional honors program into an honors college with an international focus.1 The process of becoming an internationally focused honors college, which began in 2006, was part of the university’s strategic goal of internationalizing its curriculum, student body, faculty, and culture. It has involved an extended process of program development; campus-wide partnership building, specifically in conjunction with the university’s International Programs Center (IPC) and Global Engagement Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP); and iterative assessment. This chapter outlines the …

Introduction To Internationalizing Honors (2020), Mary Kay Mulvaney, Kim Klein

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The world of higher education in the twenty-first century recognizes the necessity, not merely the desirability, of educating our students as global citizens. According to the American Council on Education’s Center for Internationalization and Globalization Engagement (CIGE), campus efforts toward internationalization are increasing: approximately half of all institutions now include a global studies component in their general education requirements, roughly half specify internationalization as one of their top five institutional strategic priorities, and nearly two-thirds have identified an international or global outcome as one of the student learning outcomes applicable to the entire student body (Mapping Internationalization). While including an …

The Campus Improvement Project: A High-Impact Practice To Stimulate Honors Community And Empower Student Leadership On Campus, Steve Garrison, Cody Parish

Honors in Practice Online Archive

First-year students are challenged to complete a Campus Improvement Project to first identify a problem on campus and then propose a solution. Students develop basic research skills and a sense of belonging to their university and honors community while simultaneously maturing as leaders.

What Works In Honors: Discovering “London As A Detective Story”, Kelsey L. Bennett, Nicole Becwar

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An honors program director and university archivist/librarian team up to offer a two-week study abroad course that blends itinerant offerings of City as Text™ with fixed support for first-time student encounters with archival collections at the British Library and the National Archives.

Intellectual Risk, Ashleen Williams

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Intellectual risk works, but it requires creating the space to fail in honors.

Using The Online Forum For Honors Learning, John Zubizarreta

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An online forum in which students share not only what content they have learned but more importantly how, when, and why they have learned provides a safe, open, generative space for learning beyond the limitations of the classroom. Suggestions for its effective use and integration are provided.

Best Practices In Honors Pedagogy: Teaching Innovation And Community Engagement Through Design Thinking, Beth H. Chaney, Tim W. Christensen, Alleah Crawford, Katherine Ford, W. Wayne Godwin, Gerald Weckesser, Todd Fraley, Phoenix Little

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Honors colleges aim to provide unique first-year experiences that promote life skills and emphasize process over product in an interdisciplinary setting that builds community. A two-semester, five-semester-hour course sequence with colloquia tackles these challenges by introducing an entrepreneurial mindset that pushes students toward innovative understanding and building of community. The first iteration includes an introduction to design thinking; identification of wicked problems; collection of data using immersion experiences, interviews, and literature review; and experiments (n = 35) in project-based entrepreneurial methodologies using Lean LaunchPad. The second iteration involves assessment, applied qualitative analysis, out-of-class learning, and peer mentoring. Results provide a …

2019 Presidential Address: Radical Honors: Pedagogical Troublemaking As A Model For Institutional Change, Richard Badenhausen

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This presidential speech to attendees of the 2019 NCHC annual conference in New Orleans resituates honors education as a site of deeply radical practices and provides a call to action to honors educators both to own the transgressiveness of our pedagogical approaches and to extend that troublemaking project to processes beyond the classroom, processes like honors recruitment and admissions, faculty appointments, co-curricular programming, and assessment, among others. Given the academy’s traditional resistance to change, an opportunity exists for those in the honors community to step forward and radically alter the structures and practices of higher education, all in the service …

A Dialogical Exercise For Honors Students, J. Robert Baker

Honors in Practice Online Archive

To expand students’ abilities to think critically, honors instructors ask them to step aside from their objections to a passage in The Handbook of Epictetus to consider how that passage makes sense to Epictetus.

A Potential For Improving Honors Retention With Degree Planning, Teddi S. Deka

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Students who begin in honors do not always complete program requirements. As an investigation into student retention, the author introduces a degree-planning workshop into a freshman seminar. The study involves two groups of students from different incoming classes: one (2018) participating in their degree-planning through the workshop and the other (2015) not. Students (n = 150) were compared against three retention criteria based on successive enrollment and withdrawal. Chi-square analyses reveal significant differences only for program withdrawal, indicating that those completing the workshop were less likely to be removed from the program due to lack of progress. The workshop group …

Humanities-Driven Stem— Using History As A Foundation For Stem Education In Honors, John Carrell, Hannah Keaty, Aliza Wong

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Humanities have traditionally played a limited role in STEM education, yet their natural connections may be used to enrich academic understanding and student experience. Authors explore their mutuality by presenting an interdisciplinary curriculum, Humanities-Driven STEM (HDSTEM). Unlike other iterations of blended disciplines, HDSTEM provides students with abilities and knowledge to go beyond the acquisition of soft skills toward humanistic, often artistic, creative problem-solving and innovative thinking. A pilot HDSTEM course offered through the first-year experience program is described. Authors outline its development, implementation, outcomes, and evaluation, positing humanities at the forefront as the impetus and lens for contextualizing STEM research …

Honors In Practice, Volume 16, Editorial Matter

Honors in Practice Online Archive

indexing statement

editorial board

contents

Editorial Policy, Deadline, and Submission Guidelines

Dedication to Steven T. Engel

Editor’s Introduction -- Ada Long

About the Authors

NCHC Publication Descriptions and Order Form

Contracts For Honors Credit: Balancing Access, Equity, And Opportunities For Authentic Learning, Patrick Bahls

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Research indicates that a majority of honors students across the country are able to earn honors credit through the fulfillment of honors contracts. These learning contracts grant honors credit to students who perform additional work in non-honors-designated sections of other courses. Despite their popularity, little has been written on the design and delivery of honors contracts. An inaugural annual honors contract system is presented, involving student reflections on contract fulfillment and programmatic assessment of learning outcomes. Students (n = 38) demonstrate an understanding of interdisciplinarity, alternative ways of knowing and being, and intellectual humility while faculty (n = 28) indicate …

Engendering Empathy For Immigrants In Middle Grade Readers Through Culturally Relevant Young Adult Literature, Amy J. Cattapan

Dissertations

This dissertation uncovered the ways through which culturally relevant young adult literature (YAL) engenders empathy for immigrants in middle grade readers. Empathy was displayed through both affective and cognitive responses and resulted in mirror and window moments (Bishop, 1990) as well as crystallizing experiences. Their empathetic responses led students to apply critical literacy skills to issues related to stereotypes, racism, discrimination, and immigration policies.

I conducted a qualitative case study to examine the ways in which reading and discussing YAL about immigrants created empathy in eighth graders in a culturally and linguistically diverse middle school and in what ways it …

Honoring The Whole Person: Indigenous Wisdom And University Honors Programs, Joseph Gazing Wolf

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.

Growing up in “Garbage City” on the outskirts of Cairo left little hope for a better life. Members of indigenous communities of Upper Egypt had been forcibly relocated to this landfill by the Egyptian government decades before my birth. These tribal communities were known in Egyptian culture as “the black savages” and “the trashy ones.” My parents were compassionate people of little means, and although rummaging …

Claiming Debate’S Value For Honors Student Learning, Megan Snider Bailey

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

One reason that honors faculty often engage students in seminar discussions is to keep debate’s features of competition, argument, and discord at bay. Intentionally structured academic debate represents a transdisciplinary pedagogy capable of cultivating ethical and empathetic citizenship through critical and creative thinking. The author uses such debate in a seminar curriculum to engage multiple sides of a single, complex sociopolitical issue with students of different disciplinary backgrounds, thereby fostering new understandings of beliefs: what is believed, why it is believed, and how one might live in accord with one’s beliefs as an ethical citizen. Through research, writing, and oral …

Jnchc: Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council Vol. 21, No. 2 | Fall/Winter 2020

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Contents

Call for Papers

Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines

Dedication to William “Rusty” Rushton

Editor’s Introduction • Ada Long

Forum essays on “big hearts, big minds”

Teaching from the Heart • Suketu P. Bhavsar

Teaching as a Whole • Mollie Hartup

On the Value of Being in the Moment in Honors Education • Lisa L. Coleman and Anne Dotter

Putting the “Human” into the Humanities • Annmarie Guzy

Infusing Critically Reflexive Service Learning into Honors • Lauren Collins and Michaela Niva

Into the Storm • Robert Gill

The Danger Room • Laura Dickinson

Research essays

Claiming Debate’s Value for …

Infusing Critically Reflexive Service Learning Into Honors, Lauren Collins, Michaela Niva

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay describes a service-learning course designed with heart-centered pedagogy. Authors examine the relationship between individual and society in service learning and discuss the rationale and processes involved in curricular design to suggest an alternative approach to community engagement. Understanding service learning as going beyond merely the attainment of hours requisite for course completion, students are asked to develop critical reflexivity by first considering the focus, identity, and needs of community partners. Authors suggest that this curriculum provides practical opportunities for engaging students intellectually and emotionally in order to strengthen self-concept and cultural awareness of a vulnerable population.

Dedication: A Love Song For W. Rusty Rushton

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

On the model of T.S. Eliot's "Prufrock"

The Danger Room, Laura Dickinson

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

is essay describes how an honors classroom introduces public speaking and active listening to encourage heroism and social justice among students. Asserting that people often look for a hero in times of crises, the author suggests that honors programs can become safe places where students learn the skills necessary to advocate for those in need and demonstrably help their communities. By cultivating essential skills in rhetoric and oral presentation, honors students identify with heroic, altruistic aspects of themselves and others.

About The Authors; About The Nchc Monograph Series; Nchc Monographs & Journals; Nchc Publications Order Form

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

No abstract provided.

Into The Storm, Robert Gill

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Many colleges profess a deep commitment to teaching the values of social justice by simply following laws and then using compliance as evidence of building inclusive community. This essay considers practical outcomes for the authentic and compassionate teaching of social justice issues by presenting two (2018 and 2019) seven-week honors offerings that examine minimally stipulated laws and the ways they are enacted by encouraging students to engage in contemporary and historical discourses on the subject. Challenging honors educators to reexamine legal philosophies, historical precedence, and their role in the academy, the author argues for the moral obligation of honors to …

Teaching From The Heart, Suketu P. Bhavsar

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay is an invitation to consider a paradigm shift in the academy, one that allows and encourages us to bring our whole selves into our teaching and professional lives. I describe a set of values that permits and encourages the expression of a rigorously examined inner self in harmony with the traditional expression of our scholarly selves in our curricula and classrooms. Drawing from lessons that have defined my aspirations as a teacher, I challenge honors educators to lead the way in courageously examining our pedagogical approaches and to teach from our hearts.

Putting The “Human” Into The Humanities, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

A recent (2020) report by the Modern Language Association addresses the ethical treatment of graduate students in the humanities, and the author considers this in the context of honors students and faculty. Lamenting missed opportunities for in-person group presentations, student-led Socratic circles, and final individual presentations during the coronavirus pandemic, the author reflects on ways of experiencing joy and practicing compassion in teaching. Students and faculty mutually benefit from exploring and honoring each other’s humanity.

On The Value Of Being In The Moment In Honors Education, Lisa L. Coleman, Anne Dotter

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Recent scholarship demonstrates a direct correlation between the body and brain in academic performance and general wellbeing. This essay considers mindfulness practice as an integrative discipline in honors education. While exercise offers many benefits to college students, the authors maintain that the mindfulness practices of yoga, qi gong, and meditation are uniquely suited to mediate stresses on mental health and improve focus, presence, and cognitive ability. Honors practitioners are encouraged to incorporate mindfulness practice into curricula and classrooms. A review of literature in mindful awareness and meditation practice is presented.

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In 2019, plans were well underway for the 2020 NCHC conference with the theme “Big Hearts, Big Minds.” Then came January of 2020 and the Corona virus with its vocabulary of social distancing, remote learning, the dangers of personal contact, and the importance of isolation. In addition to upending and redirecting all the conference plans that had been so carefully developed under the leadership of Suketu P. Bhavsar, the new language of COVID-19 was an assault on the very intimacy, connectedness, and close personal relationships in honors that were the theme of the conference. The virus has been an obstruction …

Student Perception And Affinity: Establishment Of An Institutional Framework For The Examination Of Underrepresented Programs Such As Agriculture In Honors, Kayla L. Kutzke, Rosemarie A. Nold, Michael G. Gonda, Alecia M. Hansen, Rebecca C. Bott

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This (2019) study assesses student perceptions of an honors college relative to other colleges in an institutional framework. Disproportionately low enrollments in honors from specific majors (particularly those in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences) prompt researchers to investigate the culture of honors, perceived curricular demands, and the relationship of honors to other colleges and the students they serve. Researchers survey honors and non-honors students (n = 259) across disciplines (n = 59) representing all academic colleges across campus. Data suggest that while a majority of students affirm their abilities to complete the honors curriculum and perceive honors …

Using Possible Selves And Intersectionality Theory To Understand Why Students Of Color Opt Out Of Honors, Cindy S. Ticknor, Andrea Dawn Frazier, Johniqua Williams, Maryah Thompson

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors education values diversity, not simply to enrich our classrooms but for equity and social justice. At Columbus State University, students of color were underrepresented in honors education, and we sought to determine if institutional structures hindered them from being able to access educational programming that was commensurate with their ability. We used focus group interviews with students of color who were academically eligible to enroll in honors education yet never participated. We combined focus group interviews with an analysis of our recruiting practices. Using a theoretical framework based on intersectionality and possible selves theory, we found that our participants …

Teaching As A Whole, Mollie Hartup

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Deeply ingrained in honors culture and curricula is the value of connecting with and supporting students as whole persons. This essay offers personal experiences from the perspective of a compassionate educator who invests in the whole student, exploring how authentic teaching leads to rapport and belonging in the honors community and beyond. The author suggests that honors can serve the academy as an example of how investing in the complete person is mutually beneficial.