Higher Education Administration Commons^™

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

The 4 Connections: Moving From Intuitive To Intentional Relationship-Building To Improve Success And Reduce Equity Gaps, Suzanne Ames, Sally Heilstedt

Instructional Leadership Abstracts

Equitable student success can be achieved through connections and a sense of belonging created among faculty members and students. Lake Washington Institute of Technology, one of the 34 community and technical colleges in Washington State, implemented the 4 Connections framework based on best practices identified and systemically implemented at Odessa College. Through quantitative and qualitative research, Dr. Don Wood (now Odessa’s VP of Institutional Effectiveness), discovered that all faculty with high in-class retention rates shared “a common thread of connectivity with their students” (Kistner & Henderson, 2014). From this common thread emerged four key practices: 1. Learn and use students’ …

Draft Report Of The N2025 Strategy Team: “Every Person And Every Interaction Matters”, Angela K. Pannier, Susan M. Sheridan Dr., Rick A. Bevins, Shane M. Farritor

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Administration: Reports, Papers, Publications, and Presentations

In 2019, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln celebrated its 150th year. That celebration involved reflection on the past, as well as planning the University’s course into the future. As part of this planning, UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green appointed more than 150 stakeholders — faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members — to the Nebraska Commission of 150 to envision how the university can best serve the State of Nebraska and the world for the next 25 years.

The N150 Commission was divided into eight subcommittees, each charged with creating specific elements of the campus vision. The subcommittees were:

1. Campus Community …

What Ever Happened To Summer?, Kristin Mallory

Instructional Leadership Abstracts

Did you ever have a summer that felt like summer? For me, it was when I was a full-time faculty. I enjoyed the nine-month teaching contract and the three months of downtime, yet I was eager to return to campus and my students. As I transitioned from teaching to administration, my summer “downtime” became the summer crunch time. People ask, “How is your summer going?” knowing that I work for a college. My response is usually, “What summer?” I am sure those of you who work in administrative positions have had similar experiences, and often ask the question “What ever …

Employer Reports Of Skills Gaps In The Workforce, Samantha K. Mosier, Samantha Kristine Kaiser

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Skills gaps in the workforce are a common conversation in the current value proposition of higher education. Colleges are expected to help students prepare for a world-class workforce while maintaining the integrity of the academic mission. Employers have similar but different opinions on the preparation of college graduates. This exploratory study took an in-depth look at the perceptions of sixteen employers in a region of the Midwest on questions about the perception of hiring managers about the skills gap in the workforce. Questions focused on work readiness, common challenges, and opportunities that exist to combat these hiring challenges. The themes …

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 …

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 …

Latinidad In The College Union: Perspectives Of Latinx Staff Members, Naomi Rodriguez

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Latinx students represent a consistently growing and significant population of college going students, though rates for successful graduation vary greatly (Nichols, 2017). Theories of student persistence indicate that student who are actively involved in their college campuses and develop a sense of sense of belonging are likelier to persist to graduation (Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Tinto, 1975). While research seeks to understand how Latinx navigate and succeed in post-secondary environments, barriers continue to pervade in their cumulative environments (Franklin, 2016; Friesen, 2018; Gloria, Delgado-Guerrero, Salazar, Nieves, Mejia & Martinez, 2016). College unions, as a functional part of the college environment, …

Responding To The College Completion Crisis In New Mexico: A Case Study Of The University Of New Mexico, Kalith Smith

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

New Mexico’s funding of higher education has facilitated student access to college and helped the state rank fourth nationally in college attendance rates. However, the state ranks 47^th in the country in college completion rates. A majority of students who enter college in New Mexico do not complete their degrees, a situation which deprives the state of the highly skilled workforce that is necessary to attract and retain business and industry. While low-cost or free college has increased attendance rates, the low college completion rate has incited an economic crisis for the state. The state’s flagship institution, the University …

Experiences Of Women Department Chairs In Engineering: A Narrative Study, Kayla Person

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Within higher education, STEM based disciplines need strong and balanced leadership. Leadership which demonstrates equity and diversity because all perspectives are needed to solve complex issues that face our world today. In 2016, women earned 23.2% of engineering Ph.D.’s awarded, which contributes to the low number of women faculty in engineering (Yoder, 2016). Those women who enter the professoriate increasingly need to navigate the labyrinth within their faculty positions and leadership roles within higher education. A key leadership role, department chair, has numerous responsibilities as both a faculty member and an administrator. Little research has been conducted to showcase the …

Nebraska Transcript (University Of Nebraska College Of Law), Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 2019

Nebraska Transcript

1 Dean's Message

2 Faculty Notes

7 Law College-Political Science team awarded Inclusive Excellence Development Grant

8 Space Law Program takes students, staff on inaugural rural telecommunications tour

9 Community Legal Education Project teaches elementary students about law, Constitution

10 Law students organize Day of Civic Engagement

11 Gregory Moran, ’18, wins 2018 Employee Benefits Writing Competition

11 Nebraska Law's pro bono work earns national honors

12 Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Lohier visits as Cline Williams Jurist in Residence

13 Former US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli delivers Lane Lecture on the rule of law

14 Nebraska Law partners …

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

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 …

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 …

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 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.

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 …

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 …

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.

No Complaints, Please: Just Time To Rethink Honors, Linda Frost

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article responds to a lead essay by Richard Badenhausen posing current challenges to honors education and requesting solutions. Frost argues that the place of honors in our undergraduate curriculum needs to be rethought in part because general education core requirements are shrinking; accordingly, the NCHC Basic Characteristics noting honors viability by the number of honors credit hours a student takes need to be revised as well. As one of the few nimble academic units in the university, the honors program or college has been, is, and can continue to be a key site for innovation on our campuses.

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 …

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 …

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 …