Educational Methods Commons^™

Ap: Not A Replacement For Challenging College Coursework, Margaret Walsh

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

College affordability is weighing heavily this year on the minds of students, parents, faculty, and the U.S. electorate. Intent on saving money on college tuition as well as impressing college admissions committees, high-achieving students frequently start college-level work early through Advanced Placement courses. However, these courses do not replace the learning that takes place in college-level honors courses. For honors students, making the transition between high school and college means finding opportunities to learn in new ways, taking risks, and diving deeper into ideas.

For more than fifteen years I have been a professor of sociology at a public liberal …

The Effect Of Honors Courses On Grade Point Averages, Art L. Spisak, Suzanne Carter Squires

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

High-ability entering college students give three main reasons for not choosing to become part of honors programs and colleges; they and/or their parents believe that honors classes at the university level require more work than non-honors courses, are more stressful, and will adversely affect their self-image and grade point average (GPA) (Hill; Lacey; Rinn). Some of them are likely basing their belief on the experience they had with Advanced Placement (AP) classes in their high schools. Although AP classes are not specifically designed to be more work or more difficult, at their worst they can be little more than that …

Demography Of Honors: Comparing Nchc Members And Non-Members, Patricia J. Smith, Richard I. Scott

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Recent research describing the landscape of honors education has demonstrated that honors programs and colleges have become an important and expanding component of American higher education. Since its inception nearly a century ago, collegiate honors education offering campus-wide curricula has spread to more than 1,500 non-profit colleges and universities (Scott and Smith, “Demography”). NCHC has served as the umbrella organization for the collegiate honors community during a fifty-year period in which the number of known programs delivering honors education has experienced a more than four-fold increase (Rinehart; Scott and Smith, “Demography”).

In 2012, NCHC undertook systematic research of its member …

Editor’S Introduction, Vol. 17, No. 2, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors students have long entered college with Advanced Placement credits already on their transcript, but in recent years the number of these credits has increased dramatically. At the same time, the more recent phenomenon of dual enrollment credits has ballooned. In a recent article called “As Dual Enrollments Swell, So Do Worries about Rigor,” Katherine Mangan writes, “Fueled by desires to cut college costs and improve access to underserved students, enrollment in dual-credit classes has been growing at a clip of about 7 percent a year nationally” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 Aug. 2016, A8). While the …

Reading Place, Reading Landscape: A Consideration Of City As TextTm And Geography, Ellen Hostetter

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The fundamental concepts employed by City as Text^TM (CAT)—the established experiential learning practice in honors education—and the discipline of geography, specifically the landscape tradition within human geography, share much in common. The overlaps offer CAT practitioners additional intellectual support from a source outside of honors while the differences suggest opportunities for incorporating new material into CAT programs. While CAT and the landscape tradition share the general concepts of professional orientations grounded in place, of close attention to place, and of place as a text to be read, the landscape tradition offers specific terminology to support and build on these …

Helping The Me Generation Decenter: Service Learning With Refugees, Louanne B. Hawkins, Leslie G. Kaplan

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Recent research has empirically demonstrated that young adults today are different from prior generations in their decreased empathy, increased narcissism, and decreased civic engagement. The formative years of young adulthood are a critical period for the development of civic values and civil ideologies, a time when college-age adults need to acquire the experiences and skills to decenter and develop into civic-minded stewards of their communities. Engagement in service learning with individuals unlike themselves, i.e., outgroup members, is the approach we have taken at the University of North Florida to encourage this decentering through service learning engagement with refugees embedded in …

Using Hybrid Courses To Enhance Honors Offerings In The Disciplines, Karen D. Youmans

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

How honors faculty and administrators might best respond to the challenge of AP/IP/dual enrollment credit mandates across the country will depend largely on the nature of their institutions and the size, structure, and mission of their individual programs. While the debate will continue about long-term consequences for the quality of higher education, the realities of the mandates have begun to force new and creative thinking about curriculum design in honors programs that could lead to positive developments for both students and faculty. In response to the demand to develop honors course offerings beyond the general education curriculum, the honors program …

Honors Thesis Preparation: Evidence Of The Benefits Of Structured Curricula, Steven Engel

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

A recent study of honors curricula across the nation indicates that 75.6% of honors programs and colleges at four-year institutions have thesis or capstone requirements (Savage and Cognard-Black). In addition to institutions with thesis requirements, many more also have the option for students to complete theses. For example, an earlier study found that 94.3% of honors colleges offered the opportunity to complete an honors thesis (Sederberg). As Anderson, Lyons, and Weiner indicate, the origins of the honors movement in the United States included an emphasis on the completion of an honors thesis. While discipline-based modes of research and creative scholarship …

A Digital Literacy Initiative In Honors: Perceptions Of Students And Instructors About Its Impact On Learning And Pedagogy, Jacob Alan English

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Researchers acknowledge the necessity of acquiring digital competencies to participate adequately in society (Ala-Mutka; Boyles; Cobo; Davies; Littlejohn, Beetham, & McGill; Teske & Etheridge; Tryon; Warf). Although the development of digital competencies has become increasingly important in higher education, integrating digital literacies in the college classroom has occurred at a slow pace. Honors programs and colleges represent one area of the academy that typically values a more traditional approach to skill development while resisting technology. My research study describes a digital literacy initiative in the Georgia State University Honors College, a large urban research university, and explores its perceived impact …

The Icss And The Development Of Black Collegiate Honors Education In The U.S., Traci L. M. Dula

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Precursor to the NCHC, the Inter-University Committee on the Superior Student (ICSS) was active from 1957 to 1965 under the leadership of Joseph Cohen at the University of Colorado. As NCHC culminates fifty years of supporting collegiate honors education, its historical context needs to include the contributions to honors from a unique group of institutions, the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). While scholars of collegiate honors education understand Frank Aydelotte, Swarthmore’s seventh president, to have started “a trend in honors among American colleges and universities” (Rinn 70), the honors literature does not provide evidence of Aydelotte’s engagement with …

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 …

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 …

Ap, Dual Enrollment, And The Survival Of Honors Education, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

At the NCHC annual conferences, in publications, and on the discussion list, honors educators frequently compare admissions criteria for individual programs and colleges, including minimum ACT and SAT scores, high school coursework and GPAs, and AP and IB credits and scores. In light of the seismic issues NCHC has faced over the past two decades—significant restructuring of governance, establishment of a central office, the accreditation debate—matters of admissions criteria and freshmen with incoming credits seem mundane, but a new admissions crisis has begun to emerge in the honors community. In an increasing number of states, legislatures are mandating uniform minimum …

Got Ap?, Joan Digby

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

One of the first questions I ask prospective students is whether they have taken any AP or college courses in high school. The question itself frequently generates lines of tension in a student’s face while parents erupt into proud smiles. The difference can generally tell me whose idea it was to take AP or college courses and to what degree they considered them a benefit in gaining college admission and scholarship funding.

Families, especially those considering sending their children to a private four-year university, need all the help they can get in funding college. At my institution, four years without …

“Where Words Fail, Music Speaks”: The Experience Of Adapting Literature To Music, Laney J. Fowle, Kyle Bishop, Matthew Nickerson

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Adaptation is a relatively new yet growing academic field consisting mainly of research on the modification of book into film. This study endeavors to expand the discourse on adaptation to the modal transformation of literary works to music. By using this specific adaptive type to examine the process and functionality of adapted works, I was able to address several key aspects of modern adaptation, including the hot-button issue of fidelity to an established source text, the role of adaptor as co-author, and the ability of solitary artistic modes to augment each other when combined. The resulting personal attempts at adaptation …

Godspeed, Noah Rucker

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

March 18th, 1944

The sea is more restless of late, here overlooking the Pacific. It bashes against the bluffs with some prodigious strength of nature, milling away at the ancient rock outcroppings that have stood sturdy for so long. One can’t help but be impressed by the ocean’s fury, yet I feel loathe to liken such enigmatic capabilities to that of nature. More seems at work here than that.

A rather morbid note with which to begin this letter, and at the end I fear you’ll wish your eyes never to have met its contents. I’ll let you judge whether …

Dollhouse, Samantha Richardson

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Dolls have been used to reinforce gender roles way before Barbie became a household name. In 1879, Henrik Isben published A Doll’s House, a play in which a Norwegian housewife has a groundbreaking epiphany about how marriage has reduced her life to child’s play. There has been controversy about the critique of the domesticated housewife as a concern for women’s rights. Many women enjoy their role as homemakers, wives, and mothers. However this series, Doll House, was made as a very personal response to how growing up in poverty and a small, isolated community can really distort gender identity by …

Of Love And Other Ills, Enrique Quezada

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

All went as it had for fifteen years in the Rivera González household until the day Matilde saw José Juan coming home from school with vomit on his lips, his skin so pale she thought he was a ghost. Matilde hesitated, but decided to open the door after concluding that, if that pallid personage who resembled her aunt Catalina—God bless her soul—was a messenger of death, she wouldn’t put up resistance. She was ready to bid farewell.

No one had seen her so determined since she yelled at her husband in the consulting room of Dr. Guardado demanding that they …

"So Dead And Bald" Destroys The World: A Psychological Critique Of Object Metamorphosis In Infinite Jest's Game Of Eschaton, R. Christian Phillips

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

"Do not underestimate objects! . . . It is impossible to overstress this: do not underestimate objects" (Wallace 394). Even the most cursory reading of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest reveals the importance of objects to this work. Objects affect and vigorously direct all the characters throughout, from the tennis balls being continuously squeezed by students at the elite Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA) to the veil Joelle van Dyne wears to the plethora of drugs being consumed and, most importantly, to the cartridge of James O. Incandenza's final film, which is given the ultimate power of life and death over …

Movements In Dialogue: Kaleidoscope And The Discourse Of Underground News, Jeb Ebben

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

From 1967 to 1971, Kaleidoscope shared new and revolutionary ideas, challenged its readers, and created an important venue for intramovement dialogue. Beginning as an outlet for Milwaukee’s burgeoning counterculture and evolving into an important part of the mass movement, Kaleidoscope’s willingness to honestly interrogate the issues facing the community it served meant that it was an arena for tensions to be resolved. That Kaleidoscope, unlike many of the underground papers of the era, never transformed into an unofficial party organ for the New Left allowed it to be uniquely critical of the politics of the mass movement while at the …

Palm Epiphyll Cover Shifts To Higher Elevations In Tropical Cloud Forest, Indicating Local Climate Change, Maya Spaur

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Intensifying patterns of weather and climate as caused by anthropogenic climate change have already caused extensive species extinctions, migrations, and range contractions in endemic species (Parmesan 2006), and pose the potential to induce substantial biodiversity loss on a global scale (IPCC 2014). Such trends have proven exceptionally apparent in tropical montane forests, where the disappearance of range-restricted species indicates a lifting cloud base as caused by rising sea surface temperature (SST) (Pounds et al.1999). Epiphylls serve as a bioindicator of local climate change due to their heightened sensitivity to water availability (Drake 2005). An altitudinal transect of percent epiphyll cover …

The Mechanics Of Scientific Belief, Michael Cook

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

In "Science: Conjectures and Refutations," Karl Popper establishes a criterion for the scientific character or status of a theory: its falsifiability. And in one move, he turns a host of common scientific postulates—like the Ideal Gas Law, the Law of Conservation of Mass, Newton's First Law, and the Theory of Evolution—into "metaphysical research programs" whose nature renders them impossible to disprove though observable experiment ("Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind"). According to Popper, the nature of such postulates transcend the physical world; making them just as unfalsifiable as a spiritual power, or a god. In this way, they concern …

Connexin-43 And Traumatic Brain Injury: A Potential Target For Therapeutic Intervention, Lauren R. Moore

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a widespread, degenerative affliction with no current therapeutic interventions. The long-term degradation caused by TBI results from secondary injury cascades that are initiated by primary injury. An early and important step in the damage process is reactive astrogliosis in astrocytes. Astrocytes communicate through gap junctions, which are composed of two connexon hemichannels from the two communicating cells and these connexons themselves are composed of six connexin protein subunits. Connexin 43 (Cx43) is a particularly important connexin to gap junctional communication and could act either to preserve the astrocytes from oxidative stress, or to propagate the …

"My Paintings Would Be No Different Than A Picture In A Biology Textbook", Andi Kur

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

I find that there are innate balances in life, universal dichotomies that permeate our understanding of the world. My paintings are about a duality such as this that exists between art and science. We are told from youth that these subjects are poles in constant strain, as miscible as oil in water. I spent thirteen years in school believing that I must choose between the two, that it is unnecessary to carry both with me. Drawn between a distinct love of each, I realized how vehemently I disagreed. Everything: every rock to every tree to every person is suspended between …

Symptoms Of The Virus, Emily Haase

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

SYMPTOMS OF THE VIRUS BY DR. HENRY ESQUIRE III MD CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER 1. Severe hunger, often voicing their distress. 2. Chronic moodiness, confusion, sullenness. 3. Irritability, otherwise emotionally unstable. Paranoia. 4. Homicidal tendencies – full takeover of the disease. Handle with caution.

“Making a list of symptoms of the zombification virus. Like, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 … except I don’t know what to say about how it’s spread, which is probably what’s most important. Through the air, d’you think?”

Educating The Outsiders: The Importance Of Social Support In The Success Of Latino Undocumented Students, Emily Adkins

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Immigrants of all types come to the United States hoping for some sort of a better life, but when they reach this country, they are faced with barriers. Language barriers, citizenship barriers, and financial barriers must all be overcome by the immigrant family. Undocumented students face particular challenges that seem insurmountable, but schools can offer these students success if they choose to do so. By going out of their way to involve the families of these students while making them feel comfortable in the safe place that the United States school system is and by encouraging teachers to reach out …

Moving Forward With Family Centered-Care: One Step At A Time, Adrianne Dunbar

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Family-centered care is an evolving process between patients, families, and health care providers. The family centered care model emphasizes the strength families bring to the healing process. The research project was a quasi-experimental pre-and post-test study with a communication intervention phase. The study was conducted in a Surgical-Trauma Intensive Care Unit (STICU) in a university affiliated hospital in the Southeast with restricted visitation hours. The purpose of this IRB-approved study was to measure the nurses’ perceptions of communication involvement with family members before and after the intervention phase. Approximately 50% of eligible participants responded. The communication intervention phase consisted of …

“Where Words Fail, Music Speaks”: The Experience Of Adapting Literature To Music, Laney J. Fowle

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Adaptation is a relatively new yet growing academic field consisting mainly of research on the modification of book into film. This study endeavors to expand the discourse on adaptation to the modal transformation of literary works to music. By using this specific adaptive type to examine the process and functionality of adapted works, I was able to address several key aspects of modern adaptation, including the hot-button issue of fidelity to an established source text, the role of adaptor as co-author, and the ability of solitary artistic modes to augment each other when combined. The resulting personal attempts at adaptation …

Evolutionary Explanation For Invasive Abilities Of Centaurea Stoebe (Spotted Knapweed) In Introduced Areas, Erin Koren

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Since every invasion and every exotic species presents a new challenge with novel invasion strategies, the invasion of Centaurea stoebe (synonymously referred to as C. maculosa) into North America will be used as a case study to deeply examine invasion strategies. Centaurea stoebe is a short-lived (approximately 3 years) perennial member of the aster family (Broz et al., 2007). It occurs in two different cytotypes, or with two different chromosomal factors. In its home range, it exists in both diploid and tetraploid cytotypes, but only the tetraploid version is present in introduced ranges in North America (See Figure 1; Treier …

Jargons And Pidgins And Creoles, Oh My!, Emily Gray

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Nowadays, creoles are often employed when a group wants to reach the minority audience with its message. Thanks to the presence of creoles on every continent, this strategy has the potential to be highly successful. Creole writings can be divided into two main subcategories: ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical. Writings related to Christianity can be found wherever English-based creoles are widely used and accepted. Creolized translations of missionary prayers have been dated back to the eighteenth century (Todd 71). Negerhollands, a Dutch-based creole of the Virgin Islands, even boasts a translation of the Bible. Translations of creoles have also been used in …