Higher Education Administration Commons^™

Evaluation Of An Adult Education Technology Program, Iwasan D. Kejawa

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the adult education technology program at a chartered alternative adult education center in Florida. The adult education center had a low rate of students passing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). This study examined the impact of the use of computer technology in an effort to improve student learning in mathematics, reading, and science. Computers at the institution were used by all students for tutorials to prepare them for the FCAT and to obtain a high school diploma. The research questions for this study were as follows: 1. Is the education technology …

Balancing Low Growth With High Success, Robert Hogner

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The International Business Honors BBA Program at Florida International University is a four-year experiment in a degree program that partners a traditional College of Business Administration and an independent Honors College. To date, despite low enrollment and accompanying pressures to increase it, the program continues to provide a unique, challenging, and beneficial student leaning experience of great value to the CBA, the Honors College, and the university.
A combination of student and faculty entrepreneurial spirit, a strategic vision supporting the concept, and trust across institutional boundaries provided the nurturing environment for this program’s success. Where it has not succeeded, specifically …

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: Managing Loss In A Renascent Honors Program, Mike Davis

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Iwork at Cameron University, a regional institution in Oklahoma that will be celebrating its centennial in 2008. Our administrators see the revivification of the Cameron University Honors Program as an important component of their “Centennial Plan,” and they have appointed me to make that revivification happen.

I benefited greatly from reviewing Dean Sederberg’s observations concerning the South Carolina Honors College. Initially, I suspected that his insights would be primarily useful for those in charge of far more developed programs than the one I have been tasked with directing, but from the moment I encountered his warning against “‘biggering’ for the …

The (Un)Familiar Library: Managing The Transition For A Growing Number Of Honors College Students, Jean Mclaughlin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

One consequence of the substantial growth in honors programs and colleges that perhaps gets too little attention is the challenge of teaching library research skills to large numbers of students in a way that captures their interest and prepares them to do serious undergraduate work in a variety of fields. Yet these skills are the foundation for college success. This paper attempts to give some perspective on the exciting challenges of extending expertise in library research skills to a growing number of honors scholars.

Honors Growth And Honors Advising, Robert Spurrier

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article addresses the issue of providing quality honors advising when honors enrollment at Oklahoma State University has increased by 325% since 1988. Following a brief review of NCHC publications that address honors advising and an explanation of the institutional setting addressed by this article, a description of our approach to honors advising will be presented. Qualifications for honors advisors will then be outlined, followed by results of the honors advising evaluation process.

Robert Burns, Peter Sederberg, And Higher Education Administration, Ira Cohen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While Peter Sederberg starts his description of managing growth with a quotation from Kenneth Boulding, I prefer to start with lines from Robert Burns’ “To a Louse”: “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us!”

I think it is fair to say that, at the time Peter took over the program at the University of South Carolina, the national honors movement had, for the first time, reached some consensus about what honors and the National Collegiate Honors Council were vis-à-vis higher education. This was accomplished with the crafting of the “Basic Characteristics …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council -- Volume 8, No. 2 -- Complete Issue

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

CONTENTS

Call for Papers
Submission Guidelines
Dedication to Larry R. Andrews
Editor’s Introduction -- Ada Long

FORUM ON “MANAGING GROWTH IN HONORS”
Nothing Fails Like Success: Managing Growth in a Highly Developed Honors Program -- Peter C. Sederberg
Robert Burns, Peter Sederberg, and Higher Education Administration -- Ira Cohen
Important Issues for Growing an Honors Program -- Nick Flynn
Growth = Bucks(?)-- Gregory W. Lanier
The (Un)familiar Library: Managing the Transition for a Growing Number of Honors College Students -- Jean E. McLaughlin
Balancing Low Growth with High Success -- Robert H. Hogner
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: Managing Loss in …

Growth = Bucks(?), Gregory Lanier

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Many of us in honors education will readily agree that, if the equation above is ever true at all, it is a very sharp double-edged sword. I suspect that most of us who direct honors programs or colleges at public institutions have been sliced or diced more than once by an institution’s growth imperatives. Although upper-level administrators often point to their honors programs with pride and tout the accomplishments of their honors students to alumni and benefactors, only a few honors programs and colleges actually report a funding baseline that adequately addresses all the needs of the program and its …

Transformational Experience Through Liberation Pedagogy: A Critical Look At Honors Education, John Mihelich, Debbie Storrs, Patrick Pellett

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the context of the national debate over the advantages and disadvantages of honors education, we developed a two-semester honors curriculum designed to draw upon the benefits of integrating teaching and research through student participation in an ethnographic research project. This paper recounts the process of the pedagogy and curriculum and discusses some key findings and outcomes of the students’ ethnographic study. Liberation pedagogy framed the critical questions addressed in the ethnographic study exploring how students in honors programs make sense of their academic selves and their honors program. We emphasize student-researcher findings concerning status and elitism among honors participants …

Nothing Fails Like Success: Managing Growth In A Highly Developed Honors Program, Peter Sederberg

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

“Nothing fails like success,” economist Kenneth Boulding observed decades ago. He went on to explain that we only learn from failure; if a particular pattern of behavior or policy seems to be working we continue it until, of course, it fails. Then we might learn something. The law of diminishing marginal utility echoes Boulding’s aphorism. What starts out as a source of pleasure yields diminishing utility until it reaches zero or even sinks to a negative return. I recall that my introductory economics instructor used the example of how the pleasure yielded by the first in a series of cold …

Getting More For Less: When Downsizing In Honors Yields Growth, Janet Myers, Mary Jo Festle

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The outcomes described in these two student voices represent the best of what we hope for in an undergraduate education in an honors program: the pleasure in discovering one’s academic passions; the self-assurance that comes with identifying personal strengths and developing a sense of purpose; and the curiosity and confidence to seek out future opportunities to extend one’s learning whether in graduate school or elsewhere.

What Is An Honors Student? A Noel-Levitz Survey, Donald Kaczvinsky

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In an impressive article published in the 2005 summer issue of JNCHC, Cheryl Achterberg laments the lack of empirical data available to provide a workable definition for honors students. While she duly notes that there is an “ideology” that honors students are “superior” to other students in an institution or of “high ability” or “the best and brightest,” she laments that “[t]here are few characteristics of honors students that can be standardized, measured, or uniformly compared across institutions” (Achterberg 75). She concludes her article with these considerations: honors students are “not a homogeneous group with a set of absolute or …

The Irrelevance Of Sat In Honors?, Sriram Khe

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Honors Program at Western Oregon University is like most other programs when it comes to admission: we have established minimum requirements for SAT/ACT scores and high school GPAs. Over the last couple of years that I have been directing the program, I have consistently and incrementally raised these requirements. At the same time, I have been increasingly intrigued by one question: do these minimum requirements really matter? If high school GPAs and SAT scores are used as measures of students when they enter the university and the Honors Program, then how do these students measure up to comparable metrics …

Nefdc Exchange, Volume 18, Number 2, Fall 2007, New England Faculty Development Consortium

New England Faculty Development Consortium Exchange

Contents

Message from the President - Judy Miller, Clark University

From the editors - Tom Thibodeau, New England Institute of Technology, and Jeanne Albert, Castleton State College

NEFDC Fall Conference, Friday, November 9, 2007, Worcester, Massachusetts; theme: Engaged Learning: Fostering Student Success; keynote speaker: George Kuh, Indiana University

Engaged Learning: The Foundation for Student Success, Note from our Fall Conference Keynote Speaker - George Kuh, Indiana University

Fall Conference Agenda

Learning Through Community Engagement - Kevin R. Kearney, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Reciprocal Mentoring - Mathew L. Ouellett and Susan E. McKenna, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Helpful …

Prevention Over Cure: The Administrative Rationale For Education In The Responsible Conduct Of Research, Daniel R. Vasgird

Research Compliance Services: Staff Publications

The value of responsible conduct of research (RCR) education from an administrative perspective can be summed up in the oft-used adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The National Academy of Sciences has underscored the importance of RCR education in three major reports relating public trust in research to the perception and reality of integrity within the field. Compliance and integrity cannot simply be hoped for. Rising numbers of reported cases of research misconduct support this view. This scenario calls for institutions to provide an environment where research integrity is a fundamental prerequisite. Supporting this notion …

Nebraska Transcript (University Of Nebraska College Of Law), Volume 40, Number 1, Spring 2007

Nebraska Transcript

Transcript, 'Dean Grether's Child; Designed to Keep Alumni Informed

Nebraska TRANSCRIPT: Looking Back Over 40 Years of Chronicling Law College's Distinguished History

lL: David Clausing, Class of 2008, Traverses Peaks & Cliffs of Law School's First Year; It's Like 'Juggling Fire'

Justice Ginsburg: 'Independent Judiciary Essential to Rule of Law'

Judge Tacha Reflects on Changes, Challenges Impacting Federal Courts

Pound Lecturer, Waldron, Addresses Trade-Offs Between Liberty, Security

The Great Commoner: Symposium Contemplates Controversial Modern Legacy of Nebraska Lawyer William Jennings Bryan

Congratulations Class of 2006!

Family Tradition Ceremony: Seven Graduates, Family Members Honored

Law Student Mabrey Works in India To …

Grades, Marks, And Scores, Oh My!, Rosalie Otero

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

My granddaughter, Ema, a kindergartner, came to my house the other day to show me her homework. She proudly pointed to a colorful butterfly sticker that she had received. Naturally, I oohed and aahed at the paper with the requisite big hug. We also found an empty spot on my refrigerator to display her work.
From the very beginning students are constantly assessed and graded according to their performance and the particular standard of the teacher. Some schools use letter grades, others use numbers, and still others use E for excellent, S for satisfactory, and so on.
I read Larry …

Balancing On The Edge Of Honors: A Meditation, Jeffrey Portnoy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In thinking about Larry Andrews’ two recent offerings in JNCHC, his Forum piece featured in this issue and his “At Play on the Fields of Honor(s)” in the last issue, I am struck by a central motif connecting these essays. That motif is not particularly surprising as I reflect on my years of knowing Larry and working with him on the Publications Board. He is smart, witty, hardworking, and humane. His sense of language is sharp and graceful. That he runs the first-rate Honors College at Kent State University is well known throughout the honors universe. In many respects …

Grades, Scores, And Honors: A Numbers Game?, Larry Andrews

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In a national education system that seems bound by numbers more than ever before—witness proficiency testing in K–12 and the absolute reign of GPAs and standardized tests on the college level—we may still find creative ways to mitigate their deleterious effects on our honors students and programs. In this essay I have tried to explore the issues swirling around our decisions on how we use numbers. Now I would distill my personal views in the following list of principles:

• Unless you can emancipate your program, or part of it, from grades, scores, and credit hours, use the numbers, but …

Editorial Matter For Volume 8, Number 1, Ada Long, Dail Mullins

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Editorial Policy
Contents
Call for Papers
Submission Guidelines
Dedication to Jeffrey A. Portnoy
Editor's Introduction, Ada Long
About the Authors

Grades, Scores, And Honors Education, Ryan Brown

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Awhile ago, I had a conversation with a fellow who was, shall we say, “quantitatively disinclined.” He complained vehemently about the use of numbers and grades as a sorting mechanism in higher education, and, given my affiliation with honors, he decided to focus his attacks in that direction. “It’s all about SATs, ACTs, and GPAs,” he claimed, “but education is so much more than that!” After quickly agreeing with him, I asked him to describe honors without referencing any grade or scoring system at all. Within minutes, he had a beautiful description of honors as a learning environment where a …

Searching For Tatiyana, Sriram Khe

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Afemale student rushed into my office with a backpack swinging from her shoulder as I was enjoying freshly brewed coffee and a brownie from the batch I had made for my class. No introductions, but an abrupt “Dr. Khé, you don’t know me, but I heard that you have applied for the Director position, and I totally support your application.”
This was how my interaction with honors students started a couple of years ago after I had barely submitted my application for the Director position. I had no idea what to say other than “thanks, but who are you?” She …

The Effects On Outcomes Of Financing Undergraduate Thesis Research At Butler University, Anne Wilson, Robert Holm

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Financial support of undergraduate thesis work is assumed, both by the administrators who provide it and the faculty members who oversee it, to provide an incentive for undergraduates to complete their theses. At Butler University two different academic units supervise this process: the Honors Program for thesis oversight and the Butler Institute for Research and Scholarship for funding oversight. We have seen that the effect of financial support for undergraduate thesis work can become obscured when two separate programs are involved in the process. Thesis support at our University was examined by and from the perspective of both programs over …

I Love Numbers, Bruce Fox

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

I love numbers. Five and two thirds: the number of years it took for me to finish my bachelor of science degree. 05/05: my wedding anniversary. 15826: the address of the house where I grew up (well, perhaps “got older”— many folks believe that I have never grown up). Twenty-nine and 1290: the minimum ACT and SAT scores, respectively, needed for admittance to an honors program. Forty-two: for you Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans, the “…Ultimate Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” As a forester, I work with numbers on a regular and continuing …

To Speak Or Not To Speak: That Is The Question, Joyce Fields

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the best of all academic worlds, the phrase “grading in honors” is an oxymoron. According to many and various sources, the gifted college student is more of a perfectionist with higher educational aspirations than non-honors students. She tends to be more autonomous, self-aware, and willing to engage in discourse than non-honors students. We know that she comes to us with higher academic credentials than non-honors students and that she is, therefore, more poised for success. How, then, do we assess the creative, energetic, enthusiastic, impassioned work we expect from such students? Should we be required to do so?
In …

Using Characteristics Of K–12 Gifted Programs To Evaluate Honors Programs, Mary Tallent-Runnels, Shana Shaw, Julie A. Thomas

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The objective of this study was to conduct an exploratory evaluation of honors programs in institutions of higher education. Nine characteristics of exemplary K–12 gifted programs were used for this analysis of honors programs in the Big 12 schools. One school was eliminated from the process because it was the only one without an honors college. Instead, this school had departmental honors programs, and all programs there were somewhat different. Overall results showed that the eleven honors programs we examined complied with the same criteria recommended for K–12 programs. However, compliance with the characteristics varied. Most notably, only one program …

Honoring Virginia Tech: Letter From Charles (Jack) Dudley, Charles (Jack) Dudley

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Your cards, letters, emails, and phone calls helped sustain us in the most terrible moments of our lives and for that we are forever in your debt. For the period Monday through today (April 16–25th), we have lived through periods of uncertainty, grief, intense emotions, and a profound sense of loss. We lost thirty-three students, our sense of security, and sense of direction. Your concern, as evidenced by more than two hundred communications, provided islands of comfort in a sea of horror. For your thoughtfulness we say a humble thank you.

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council -- Volume 8, No. 1 -- Complete Issue

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

CONTENTS

Call for Papers
Submission Guidelines
Dedication to Jeffrey A. Portnoy
Editor’s Introduction -- Ada Long

HONORING VIRGINIA TECH
“To Honors People Everywhere” and “All Have Seen the Treasure of the University: Its People” -- Charles (Jack) Dudley, Virginia Tech University

FORUM ON “GRADES, SCORES, AND HONORS”
“Grades, Scores, and Honors: A Numbers Game?” -- Larry Andrews
Evaluation vs. Grading in Honors Composition, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Grades and Love Teaching -- Annmarie Guzy
To Speak or Not to Speak: That is the Question -- Joyce W. Fields
Grades, Scores, and Honors Education -- Ryan Brown …

The Virgin Mary: A Paradoxical Model For Roman Catholic Immigrant Women Of The Nineteenth Century, Darris Catherine Saylors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This paper identifies and discusses several examples of Marian paradoxes to better understand how constructions of Mary as the primary model of feminine religiosity affected Roman Catholic immigrant women. Such paradoxes include Mary’s perpetual virginity juxtaposed with earthly women’s commitment to family (and the sexual relationship implicit in marriage) and the classist elements inherent in the True Womanhood model related to Mary. The four cardinal virtues of the nineteenth-century American model of True Womanhood—piety, purity, submission, and domesticity—parallel nicely those emphasized in the figure of Mary. For this paper, I shall focus on the virtue of purity particularly as related …

Editorial Matter For Volume 8, Number 2, Ada Long, Dail Mullins

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Editorial Policy
Contents
Call for Papers
Submission Guidelines
Dedication to Larry R. Andrews
Editor's Introduction, Ada Long
About the Authors