Higher Education Administration Commons^™

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

At regional honors conferences, which typically occur around the same time as the NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments, many of us have facetiously wondered aloud whether basketball teams and their coaches spend as much time talking about honors as we spend talking about basketball. Back on our home campuses, a more serious connection between honors and athletics programs often takes the form of mutual recruitment efforts, schedule coordination, arrangement of make-up tests, co-advising, and enthusiastic attendance at sports events when honors students are in the competition. Many honors programs and colleges also sponsor their own sports events, fielding intramural teams …

Honors Director As Coach: For The Love Of The Game, Larry Clark

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Conflict: if we are to believe some of the great probers of the human mind like Freud and Shakespeare, it goes to the very core of our existence. Look at our history books. The great conflicts form the timeline of our American past: the Revolutionary War, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the First World War (“the war to end all wars”), the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam (even if it was only a “police action”), Iraq, Afghanistan; and that’s skipping over some “minor conflicts” in Granada, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere. Where …

Listening Lessons, Margaret Walsh

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Whether they embrace the descriptor or not, many honors students seek out and spend time with students in their cohort, defining themselves as part of an affinity group. While some view their privileges as well earned and necessary for success, others, who may love the depth of study that honors offers, prefer to see themselves as individuals with multiple interests. They see their membership in an honors program not as their primary status but as one among many identities. An equally important reason that students may not wish to emphasize their honors status is that, when trouble arises, they find …

Honors Students In Crisis: Four Thoughts From The Field, Eric W. Owens, Michael Giazzoni

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As we considered the topic and lead essay of the JNCHC Forum “Helping Honors Students in Trouble,” we were struck by a number of assumptions that seem to be prevalent not only at our universities but among colleagues at other institutions. We have identified four assumptions we would like to address in this essay from perspectives that are informed by the scholarly literature and by our combined experience of twenty years working with honors students as professional counselors, advisors, and faculty members. These four observations lead us to recommendations for others working with honors students.

Is Mens Sana In Corpore Sano A Concept Relevant To Honors Students?, Kate Wintrol

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Belief in a “healthy mind, healthy body” is as relevant to twenty-first-century honors students as it was to their ancient counterparts. The ancient Greek athlete and the honors student-athlete both share the dedication and discipline needed to excel, and our culture still finds praiseworthy those who exhibit excellence in both mind and body. At the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the library is sponsoring a poster series promoting literacy by featuring student-athletes reading their favorite books. An honors college student athlete will be featured in the near future, a symbol of distinction somewhat akin to Myron’s Discobolos (Discus Thrower).

Yet …

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As the terrible news came across our screens on April 16, 2007, honors administrators across the country thought with sympathy and horror of Charles (Jack) Dudley and his students in the Virginia Tech University Honors Program. Eventually we learned that our worries were sadly justified and that three of Jack’s honors students had been killed, one had been wounded, and all had been traumatized. Our thoughts and messages flowed toward Jack on that day and the days following as we all felt sorrow for him and his students and at the same time felt the terrifying possibility that we might …

A Collaborative Recruitment Model Between Honors And Athletic Programs For Student Engagement And Retention, Rich Eckert, Ashley Grimm, Kevin J. Roth, Hallie E. Savage

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Acommon need in honors education is to recruit a student cohort that actively engages in educational experiences, demonstrates a motivation for academic challenge, and is likely to complete the honors program. Honors programs use varied quantitative (Green & Kimbrough) and qualitative admissions criteria to yield this desired student cohort. However, research is limited on the value of quantitative measures, i.e., SAT scores, grade point average, and/or class rank, in predicting qualities such as student engagement or outcomes such as program completion.

Attempting to recruit a more diversified student cohort and to increase student engagement, the Clarion University Honors Program initiated …

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Richard Badenhausen

Amy Beth Cyphert

Joan Digby

Charles (Jack) Dudley

Richard England

Keith Garbutt

Michael Giazzoni

Bonnie D. Irwin

Celia López-Chávez

Eric W. Owens

Angela M. Salas

Ursula L. Shepherd

Margaret Walsh

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

About the Authors

Student Athletics And Honors: Building Relationships, James J. Clauss, Ed Taylor

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Few university administrators today would argue against having more student athletes applying for and successfully completing honors curricula. Such students are great for PR. But, sad to say, coaches and faculty, at least at tier-1 universities like the University of Washington, are often suspicious of each other’s intentions. Some coaches see too much focus on education as a threat to their team’s success and ultimately their jobs; some faculty see athletes, especially in the revenue sports, as uncommitted to education, exploited by universities, and biding their time in school to enter the lucrative professional careers they believe await them. Yet, …

Bridging The Jock-Geek Culture War, Bradley J. Bates, Carolyn A. Haynes

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In his headline address at the Radio and Television Correspondents Annual Dinner last summer, comedian John Hodgman called the strife that exists between “jocks and geeks” the “culture war of our time.” His speech playfully argued that many tensions in American life stem not from differences in politics, culture, race or socioeconomic status but instead from differences in the ways athletic and scholarly types view the world. As directors of an honors and an athletic program at the same institution, we have discovered that each of our programs holds the capacity to freshen the outlook of the other precisely because …

“Help, I Need Somebody”: Rethinking How We Conceptualize Honors, Richard Badenhausen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The very morning I received the JNCHC announcement of an issue devoted to honors students in trouble, I met with the mother of a freshman honors student who had threatened that weekend to kill herself. The parent, who had flown over two thousand miles to our campus, was predictably upset and the student demoralized. After individual conversations with each party, during which we decided the best course of action for the student would be to leave honors, I listened to this young lady make the courageous admission that she had never wanted to join the honors program but did so …

About The Authors, Volume 28 (2010)

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

About the editors and authors of volume 28 (2010) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.

Preface, Volume 28 (2010), Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Preface to volume 28 (2010) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Linda B. Nilson of Clemson University.

Acknowledgments, Volume 28 (2010), Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Acknowledgments for volume 28 (2010) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Linda B. Nilson of Clemson University.

Ethical Guidelines For Educational Developers

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Ethical guidelines for educational developers, prepared by Mintz, Smith, and Warren, January 1999. Revised March 1999, September 1999, and March 2000.

Developing Competency Models Of Faculty Developers: Using World Café To Foster Dialogue, Debra Dawson, Judy Britnell, Alicia Hitchcock

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Recent research by Chism (2007); Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy, and Beach (2006); and Taylor (2005) speaks to the critical roles that faculty developers play in ensuring institutional success. Yet we have not as a profession identified the specific competencies necessary for success at different career stages. Our research generated these competencies for three faculty developer positions—entry-level, senior-level, and director—within a teaching and learning center. We used World Café, a collaborative discussion-based technique, to engage developers in building a matrix of competencies for each position and in determining how these competencies could be demonstrated.

A Conceptual Framework For Higher Education Faculty Mentoring, Pamela S. Lottero-Perdue, Steve Fifield

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

There is considerable variability in conceptions of faculty mentoring in higher education. Rather than view this diversity as a problem, we see it as a potential resource that can inform design, implementation, and evaluation of faculty mentoring. To learn from this diversity, we review the literature on facuity mentoring in higher education to create a conceptual framework of mentoring. The conceptual framework is a tool that program administrators, participants, and evaluators can use to adapt mentoring to the unique needs of particular faculty and institutions.

Strategic Committee Involvement: A Guide For Faculty Developers, Phyllis Blumberg

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty developers should seek purposeful involvement in committee service because committees are essential to the functioning of higher education institutions. The unique expertise and perspectives that faculty developers bring to the table help committees execute their tasks and benefit faculty development efforts. Given the number of possible institutional committees and limitations on time, developers should decide carefully about their service. Offered here is a framework for making strategic decisions about committee membership on five criteria: committee characteristics, individual’s impact on the committee, personal characteristics, conditions that should discourage service, and pitfalls to consider before deciding to serve.

A Model For Putting A Teaching Center In Context: An Informal Comparison Of Teaching Centers At Larger State Universities, Wesley H. Dotson, Daniel J. Bernstein

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

An informal comparative analysis of teaching centers at larger state universities around the United States was conducted as part of a self-initiated ten-year review of our center. We compared centers along several dimensions, among them programs, resources, and size. This chapter offers our methods, results, and general impressions of the process as an example for others who might decide to conduct a similar analysis.

The Value Of The Narrative Teaching Observation To Document Teaching Behaviors, Niki Young

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

A central mission of teaching and learning centers is to help faculty members improve their teaching. The teaching observation is an established tool to support this effort. Although educational developers have created general guides and forms for conducting teaching observations, the literature contains few examples of observation narratives. This chapter offers detailed examples of these narratives, deconstructing the process and demonstrating the value of narrative to document teaching behaviors. This chapter extends and develops the literature, showing how—and making explicit why—we do what we do, in the interest of making our work transparent and replicable.

Promoting Dialogue And Action On Meta–Professional Skills, Roles, And Responsibilities, Michael Theall, Bonnie B. Mullinix, Raoul A. Arreola

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Collecting and using information about faculty skills can serve as an organizational development activity to guide faculty evaluation and professional development policy and practice with the goal of leading to improved teaching and learning. This chapter presents findings from a study with international, local, quantitative, and qualitative components. Readers are encouraged to explore data patterns and consider courses of action that these imply, and to reflect on the potential usefulness of the Meta-Profession model for furthering reflection, dialogue, and action on development and evaluation processes on their own campus.

Macgyvers, Medeas, And Bionic Women: Patterns Of Instructor Response To Negative Feedback, Allison P. Boye, Suzanne Tapp

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Few studies have examined instructor responses to negative feedback and their interplay with gender, but faculty developers must be cognizant of and sensitive to the needs of the instructors with whom they work. This chapter identifies six general patterns of response among male and female instructors to negative feedback from students and consultants, based on survey results, interviews, and observations. A combination of empathy, resources, and time is the key to understanding and responding to those patterns and meeting the needs of individual instructors. Further, comparisons across gender reveal interesting differences related to language use, internalization versus externalization of feedback, …

Conversations About Assessment And Learning: Educational Development Scholarship That Makes A Difference, Sue Fostaty Young, Susan Wilcox

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

To facilitate deeper understanding of teachers’ assessment practices, we undertook an educational development inquiry with college and university faculty. Our conversations with instructors about their assessment practices highlighted the complex relationship between teachers’ beliefs about teaching, their institutional contexts, and their experiences of teaching. The project gave us valuable opportunities to examine our interactions with faculty and enabled us to identify approaches to educational development that help postsecondary faculty understand and improve their practice.

Dysfunctional Illusions Of Rigor: Lessons From The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning, Craig E. Nelson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

My initial teaching practices were based on nine “dysfunctional illusions of rigor.” Overcoming them required revision of my ideas on the value of “hard” courses, the effectiveness of traditional methods, grade inflation, what students should be able to do initially, the fairness of traditional approaches, the importance of fixed deadlines, the importance of content coverage, the accessibility of critical thinking, and the appropriate bases for revising courses and curricula. I present the initial illusions and some more realistic views. These more realistic views are framed in terms of key research findings and some readily accessible models for improved practices.

Class Size: Is Less More For Significant Learning?, John Zubizarreta

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Mixed as it might be, educational research suggests that engaged students are more effectively stimulated and fulfilled in the small class. Of course, students can thrive in large classes if discipline, course level, teacher characteristics, goals, methods, assessment strategies, and outcomes work together to inspire and produce significant learning. The small class environment does not by itself necessarily ensure higher level learning, but studies indicate that if faculty and institutions want to promote and support the active learning pedagogies, mentoring, reflection, feedback, and personal relationships that result in deep and lasting learning, then less is more.

Weaving Promising Practices For Inclusive Excellence Into The Higher Education Classroom, María Del Carmen Salazar, Amanda Stone Norton, Franklin A. Tuitt

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Higher education is faced with an increasingly diverse student body and historic opportunities to foster inclusive excellence, meaning a purposeful embodiment of inclusive practices toward multiple student identity groups. Although the benefits of inclusive excellence are well established, college faculty often cite barriers to promoting it in classrooms, and this creates an opening for faculty developers to support them in weaving promising practices for inclusive excellence into their teaching. This chapter highlights the practices of inclusive faculty and the methods faculty developers can use to promote inclusive excellence along five dimensions: (1) intrapersonal awareness, (2) interpersonal awareness, (3) curricular transformation, …

Communication Climate, Comfort, And Cold Calling: An Analysis Of Discussion-Based Courses At Multiple Universities, Tasha J. Souza, Elise J. Dallimore, Eric Aoki, Brian C. Pilling

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

One of the challenges in discussion facilitation is creating a climate that allows multiple voices to be heard. Although the practice of calling on students whose hands are not raised has been used to engage the entire class in discussions, many believe that cold calling sabotages the communication climate and makes students extremely uncomfortable. This study examines the impact of cold calling on student comfort and communication climate. The results suggest that when instructors choose to cold-call, they must create a supportive communication climate to ensure student comfort. This study challenges the assumption that cold calling makes students uncomfortable.

Theoretical Frameworks For Academic Dishonesty: A Comparative Review, Michele Dipietro

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Academic dishonesty has so far been understood using theoretical frameworks derived from criminology literature. These frameworks contribute pieces of the puzzle and even enjoy some empirical support, but conceptualizing students as delinquents is problematic and ultimately ineffective. This chapter reviews the current frameworks, including their theoretical underpinnings, empirical support, and strategies they suggest, and goes on to analyze their limitations and suggest alternative frameworks.

Engaging Faculty In Conversations About Teaching Through A Research Proposal Workshop, Susanna Calkins, Denise Drane

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty who consider themselves primarily researchers can be difficult to engage in faculty development activities. However, as agencies such as the National Science Foundation now require educational activities in research grants, proposal writing may represent a new avenue for engaging research faculty in their teaching. In this chapter, we outline an innovative workshop on writing the pedagogical component of a grant proposal that was developed for faculty at Northwestern University. During the workshop, while learning how to structure an education plan for their grant, faculty engaged in a lively discussion about formulating learning objectives and aligning them with pedagogical methods …