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2015-2016 - Undergraduate Curriculum Council Annual Report, Undergraduate Curriculum Council, East Tennessee State University

Undergraduate Curriculum Council Minutes

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Adult Students' Perceptions Of Transfer Services At An Historically Black University, Kimberly Anne Crews

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics have indicated a steady growth of students attending 3 or more institutions while pursuing a baccalaureate degree. When students transfer institutions, they may have specific needs for their new institution. Informed by the transfer receptive culture framework, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the perceptions of students who had attended 3 or more postsecondary institutions on the services they received, before and after their transfer. Purposeful sampling yielded 9 adult students with multiple-institution attendance histories. Data were collected through semistructured instant messaging interviews. A series of messages included …

The Relationships Among Job Satisfaction, Length Of Employment, And Mentoring Of Nursing Faculty, Zelda Suzan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The shortage of faculty in nursing education programs has been well documented by the National League for Nursing. Job satisfaction is important in retaining nurse educators, and one New York nursing program was interested in examining the potential impact of mentoring on satisfaction. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine job satisfaction, measured by the Job Descriptive Index/Job in General scale (JDI/JIG), between nurse faculty participants in formal mentoring programs compared to participants receiving an informal type of mentoring. In addition, the length of employment was examined as a possible factor in predicting job satisfaction. The theoretical framework …

Community College Basic Skills Math Instructors" Experiences With Universal Design For Learning, Sunny Greene

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Multiple approaches have been used in U.S. community colleges to address the learning needs of postsecondary students who are underprepared in basic skills math. The purpose of this exploratory interview study was to gain a deeper understanding of community college basic skills math learning through instructors' lived experiences using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach and its technology tool, a computerized pen. The conceptual framework for this study used Knowles's adult learning and Kolb's experiential learning theories with UDL principles. The central research questions investigated the professional development and teaching experiences of community college basic skills math instructors in …

Strategies For Organizational Sustainability In Higher Education, Angela D. Reese

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The defunding of higher education at the state and national level following the 2008 recession created the need for administrators of public higher education institutions to develop and implement funding strategies to maintain organizational sustainability. State government administrators reduced spending approximately 26% per student across the nation, leaving higher education administrators challenged with adjusting organizational budgets to compensate for the reduction in state monetary support. A multiple case study design was used to explore funding strategies that community college business leaders used to support budget decisions that maintain organizational sustainability. Four leaders from 3 community colleges in Central Texas participated …

The Role Of The Faculty In Retaining Students, Alisha Lizette Edmonds

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Decreasing retention rates have become a serious issue at several universities in the United States. At a university in middle Georgia, retention rates have been steadily declining for the last several years. The purpose of this study was to explore how the faculty at this university might implement more educational services on campus to increase retention. Bandura's theoretical framework of self-efficacy was used in this qualitative case study. Key questions for the study asked faculty about what programs or instructional strategies they believe currently offer support to retaining students at this university, how faculty at the university perceive that they …

Exploring Maintenance And Facility Operations Strategies For California Community Colleges, Virginia Parras Grande

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

California community college leaders are looking for strategies to sustain facilities and maintenance operations because the governor only approved the allocation of $87.5 million in the 2014-2015 Budget Act for facilities maintenance operations. Guided by the change and strategy theories, the purpose of this multicase study was to explore the strategies that a select group of college leaders have used to sustain or improve their facilities maintenance operations. The data collection process included a review of college planning documents and semistructured interviews with 10 senior administrators from 3 large California community colleges who have used strategies to address sustaining or …

The Impact Of Self-Efficacy On Retention In Technical Colleges, Percy W. Reed

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Vocational and career training institutes focus their energy and resources on student support services, increasing student retention as it relates to minority populations. Despite these efforts, a specific vocational and career institute in the southeast United States reports a 50% retention rate of students who are enrolled. This case study explored students' descriptions of how self-efficacy supported their perseverance while attending the vocational and career training institute. The conceptual framework included Bandura's notions of self-efficacy and Tinto's integration model. Purposeful sampling strategies were used to interview 10 successfully-retained students enrolled in their 4th term or beyond at the vocational and …

Persistence, Major, Vocational Technical Preparation, And Provisional Acceptance At A Private For-Profit Hospitality College, Joshua Luke Seery

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

At a private for-profit hospitality college in Philadelphia, there are rising percentages of students not persisting to the sophomore year. The study was grounded by the theoretical framework of Tinto's model of student retention. The purpose of this causal comparative study was to examine the relationship between student persistence and the academic variables of major, vocational technical preparation, and provisional acceptance. The relationship was analyzed using a chi-square test of independence. The data collected for the study came from archival data based upon the sample of 162 full-time students enrolled during the August 2014 class start in the majors of …

Case Study Of Stakeholders' Views On Retention And Self-Efficacy In Texas Nursing Programs, Durcilla Kay Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Retention of students through the completion of the nursing degree is a problem that exists at local Texas nursing programs, adding to the nursing shortage at local Texas hospitals. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to identify the best practices used by a local Texas college with graduation rates above the benchmark of 85% set by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The study framework was based on Bandura's theory of self-efficacy and Tinto's theory of student retention. The research questions for the study focused on reasons the college maintained a high retention rate, best practices currently used, …

Ms225: 2016 Faculty Meeting Minutes, Thomas R. Cole

Thomas R. Cole, PhD Papers

Original Filename: Faculty Meeting Minutes 010616.docx. Format Details: fmt/412; Microsoft Word for Windows; 2007 onwards. See more at Thomas R. Cole, PhD Papers and its finding aid.

A Tradition Unlike Any Other: Research On The Value Of An Honors Senior Thesis, H. Kay Banks

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

If you are a fan of golf and, more specifically, the Masters Golf Tournament, then the title of this article should sound familiar. As an avid sports fan and an occasional golf player, when I hear those words I immediately think of green grass, Tiger Woods’s first green jacket, and the soft-spoken Dr. Condeleeza Rice as the newest member of the Augusta National Golf Club (home of the Masters for non-golf fans). The Masters is the first of four major U.S. golf tournaments played each year, a tradition going back to 1934. What makes this tournament quintessential to the sport …

Honors And Non-Honors Student Engagement: A Model Of Student, Curricular, And Institutional Characteristics, Ellen Buckner, Melanie Shores, Michael Sloane, John Dantzler, Catherine Shields, Karen Shader, Bradley Newcomer

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors administrators may ask whether honors experiences facilitate student growth and whether honors students are inherently smarter than non-honors students and hence more able to seize these opportunities for growth. Although these questions will never fully be answered, we designed the current study to address the underlying topics of student characteristics and engagement in honors within the larger university.

Students’ motivation, their willingness to extend beyond the minimal level, significantly influences engagement. Honors students are engaged in experiences, curricular and extracurricular, that promote development, and the types of additional opportunities available to honors students and the feedback they receive affect …

“Flee From The Worship Of Idols”: Becoming Christian In Roman Corinth, Dorvan Byler

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The religious contexts in which early Christian communities grew were important factors in the first-century development of Christianity, affecting what it meant to become a Christian either as a convert from a background in Judaism or as a convert from a background in Greek, Roman, or Egyptian cults. Surrounding religions and cultural norms strongly influenced the first Christian communities in urban environments throughout the Roman Empire because the first generation of Christian converts came directly from other religious constructs. As the early Christians distinguished themselves from the Diaspora Jewish communities in which they originated and actively pursued Gentile converts, the …

Writing Instruction And Assignments In An Honors Curriculum: Perceptions Of Effectiveness, Edward J. Caropreso, Mark Haggerty, Melissa Ladenheim

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Learning to write well is a significant outcome of higher education, as confirmed and illustrated in the Written Communication VALUE Rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Bennett notes that writing well is a singularly important capability, indicating that virtually all higher education programs intend for students to write better when they graduate than when they enrolled. Moskovitz refers to an AAC&U survey of member institutions in which writing topped the list of learning outcomes for all students.

Scholars agree that writing and thinking are linked. Oatley and Djikic discuss how writing externalizes thinking by using various …

Variability And Similarity In Honors Curricula Across Institution Size And Type, Andrew J. Cognard-Black, Hallie Savage

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As Samuel Schuman argues in his seminal introduction to honors administration, “The single most important feature of any honors program is its people: the students who learn there and the faculty who teach them” (33). Next, argues Schuman, comes the curriculum; the context of the learning that takes place when honors faculty and honors students come together is framed by the curriculum. Honors curricula provide opportunities for honors students to endeavor challenges beyond what traditional undergraduate curricula provide. For faculty, honors is a unique opportunity to blend research and teaching and to provide a curricular laboratory for experimenting with varied …

Honors Teachers And Academic Identity: What To Look For When Recruiting Honors Faculty, Rocky Dailey

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The word “honors” naturally carries distinction. To be a collegiate honors student implies a higher level of academic achievement than other students as well as the more challenging academic experience that comes with smaller class sizes. Collegiate honors teachers have a distinction of their own. Being an honors teacher implies a high level of teaching achievement, and it requires special traits that honors directors need to look for in recruiting faculty. Guidance in determining what traits best characterize excellence in honors teaching is a useful tool for honors administrators who are trying to create an identity for their honors faculty.

How Gender Differences Shape Student Success In Honors, Susan E. Dinan

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In 2014, Jonathan Zimmerman published an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor in which he wrote, “The last time I checked, [men] held most of the important positions of power and influence in American society. And yet, college admissions offices lower the standard for young men—effectively raising it for women—simply to make sure that the men keep coming.” This comment was not surprising as, seven years earlier, the U.S. News & World Report had published “Many Colleges Reject Women at Higher Rates Than For Men,” in which Alex Kingsbury memorably asserted:

Using undergraduate admissions rate data collected from more than …

Research On Honors Composition, 2004–2015, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The spring/summer 2004 issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (JNCHC) was devoted exclusively to research in honors education. The issue was divided into three sections: the introductory Forum on Research in Honors, which revisited three essays published in Forum for Honors in 1984 and included two 2004 responses; Research in Honors; and Research about Honors. After I had revised my dissertation for the 2003 NCHC monograph Honors Composition: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Practices, I incorporated some of my unused dissertation material for two pieces in the issue, one being a response essay in the Forum, …

Blogging To Develop Honors Students’ Writing, Sarah Harlan-Haughey, Taylor Cunningham, Katherine Lees, Andrew Estrup

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

After an exciting class discussion, you might want students to write conventional papers directed at you and focused ultimately on a grade, or you might prefer that they bring their further insights to their classmates, continuing and enriching the ongoing class collaboration. Blogging is an excellent way to implement the second option, continuing an exchange of ideas and providing students with another tool to improve their writing skills. Student class blogging offers many benefits—for student and instructor alike—compared to assigning conventional papers directed only at the instructor. The collaborative writing and peer editing inherent in blogging offer challenges as well …

Toward A Science Of Honors Education, Beata M. Jones

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As Sam Schuman wrote in 2004 and as George Mariz points out in his lead essay for this issue of JNCHC, the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) and academics alike have long recognized the importance of research in honors. Cambridge Dictionary Online defines “research” as “a detailed study of a subject in order to discover information or achieve a new understanding of it.” Given the roots of U.S. honors in the liberal arts, U.S. practitioners who have written for JNCHC have often been driven by the research models of their home disciplines. With fifteen years’ worth of publications, JNCHC contains …

An Examination Of Student Engagement And Retention In An Honors Program, Jessica A. Kampfe, Christine L. Chasek, John Falconer

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors programs at colleges and universities provide academic and developmental opportunities for high-ability students. Learning communities, defined as a group of students who live together, are connected through membership in a common organization, and take classes together, are often a component of honors programs. Learning communities provide an academic and social community that complements curricular requirements. At the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK), a higher education institution in the Midwest, ninety percent of the freshman honor students live together and ninety-five percent take an honors class in their first semester on campus. The honors program at UNK is classified …

Editor’S Introduction, Vol. 17, No. 1, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

During the sixteen years since JNCHC came into being, research in honors has steadily shifted its focus and approach. In the early days, essays represented a wide variety of disciplines and, in order to qualify as research, needed only to root themselves in previous literature on a topic. As honors, along with the culture in which it is practiced, moved into the era of accountability and assessment, “research in honors” has increasingly come to mean quantitative studies rooted in the formats, methods, and terminology of the social sciences. The purpose of research in honors has also shifted, more subtly, from …

An Agenda For The Future Of Research In Honors, George Mariz

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Research in honors has become a priority for the National Collegiate Honors Council, and the phrase presents the honors community with an interesting ambiguity about the appropriate focus for future studies. Potential topics might include the progress of honors students in comparison to their non-honors cohorts; the criteria for selecting honors faculty; and the relationship between honors and its institutional context. The best methodologies might include statistical studies, qualitative analyses, or both. Future research in honors might reflect past practices or set a new trend in both topics and methodologies. As the NCHC launches its next fifty years, the time …

Demography Of Honors: The National Landscape Of Honors Education, Richard Ira Scott, Patricia J. Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) celebrates its fiftieth year, the organization has an excellent opportunity to reflect on how honors education has spread during its history. Tracking growth in the number of institutions delivering honors education outside of its membership has not been a priority for NCHC or for researchers in honors education. Most information has been anecdotal, and when researchers have mounted surveys, the results are frequently non-comprehensive, based on convenience sampling. We propose a demography of honors to fill the lacuna with systemic, reliable information.

Demographic studies describe the size, structure, and distribution of human populations, …

From Orientation Needs To Developmental Realities: The Honors First-Year Seminar In A National Context, Anton Vander Zee, Trisha Folds-Bennett, Elizabeth Meyer-Bernstein, Brendan Reardon

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The transition into college remains one of the most formative and complex phases in an individual’s life. Institutions of higher learning have responded to the challenges facing first-year students in myriad ways, most often by offering summer orientation programs, dynamic living-learning environments, tailored academic and psychological support services, and dedicated first-year seminars (FYSs) that seek to engage students in a range of curricular and co-curricular experiences. FYSs—courses intended to enhance the academic skills and/or social development of first-year college students—have become the curricular anchors grounding this broad array of programming. While addressing the developmental needs of first-year students is the …

Research In, On, Or About Honors, Marygold Walsh-Dilley

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In his thought provoking essay in this issue, George Mariz makes a call for “devoting some serious attention to setting an agenda for honors research.” He tells us that research in honors is a lot less common than it would appear to a casual observer, writing that “Both narrative and statistical accounts of honors are so far inadequate to yield useful conclusions.” Honors administrators, he contends, need this sort of analysis in order to “be able to argue with hard evidence for the . . . demonstrable advantages of honors.” As a result of these concerns, he writes, “Research in …

Assessing Growth Of Student Reasoning Skills In Honors, Jeanneane Wood-Nartker, Shelly Hinck, Ren Hullender

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Assessment and evaluation practices within honors programs have attracted considerable attention within the honors academic community, e.g., the spring/summer 2006 volume of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council. Calls for carefully created and constructed assessment activities within honors programs have met with mixed responses by directors who identify the difficulty in assessing decentralized, complex learning environments, noting that standard measures such as tests, surveys, or essays are not always applicable or appropriate in addressing honors assessment needs, especially in areas of social justice, service learning, and community engagement (Corley & Zubizarreta; Lanier). Acknowledging the hesitancy of honors directors …

A Dual Perspective On Ap, Dual Enrollment, And Honors, Heather C. Camp, Giovanna E. Walters

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As co-authors of this response to Annmarie Guzy’s essay, we provide different vantage points on prior-credit programs that arise from our distinct roles on campus, and together we suggest the appropriate way forward for honors. To represent our unique perspectives and to mimic the ongoing back-and-forth on this topic on our campus and elsewhere, we have chosen to format our response as a dialogue, thus suggesting some of the multiple voices and angles on AP, dual enrollment, and honors.

Both of us have felt the impact of AP and dual enrollment programs and have worried about its implications for both …

Rethinking Honors Curriculum In Light Of The Ap/Ib/Dual Enrollment Challenge: Innovation And Curricular Flexibility, David Coleman, Katie Patton

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Annmarie Guzy’s lead article for this volume speaks of a familiar challenge in the Eastern Kentucky University Honors Program. The nearly universal and dramatic increase in the number of AP, IB, and/or Dual Enrollment credit hours among our incoming first-year honors students over the past two decades served as the primary impetus for a major curricular overhaul within our program in 2013. The result—what we call our new (post-2013) “Honors Flex” curriculum—was initially a source of considerable anxiety among many of our faculty as well as some of our students and alumni. In retrospect, however, we are able to see …