Gifted Education Commons^™

Nontraditional Honors And The Hopefulness Of Summer Reading, Angela M. Salas

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the summer of 2012, I had the good fortune to have my summer session course cancelled as a result of low enrollment. While unexpectedly losing a course and a salary was unpleasant, I undertook a reading program designed to help me improve our first-year honors classes. The sequence, Honors 103 and 104, is known as the Common Intellectual Experience (CIE), and it fulfills multiple general education requirements for all but our nursing students. In the course of the year, students read and respond to four texts (generally paired fiction and nonfiction works), prepare a guided, independent research project, give …

Undocumented In Honors, Kimberly Aramburo, Suketu Bhavsar

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the Kellogg Honors College at Cal Poly Pomona, I (SB) have encountered several high-achieving students who, after coming to trust me, have revealed themselves to me as undocumented. These students came to the United States as children through non-legal channels, generally brought by their families, who were searching for opportunities or for escape from dangerous, oppressive situations in their home countries. These students have recently become known as “Dreamers,” after the Dream Acts being debated in the highest levels of government in the United States. Often first-generation college students, they are usually economically disadvantaged.

Real-Life Solutions To Real-Life Problems: Collaborating With A Non-Profit Foundation To Engage Honors Students In Applied Research, Emily Stark

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Colleges and universities have long emphasized undergraduate research experiences as valuable activities for students. The National Science Foundation (NSF) echoed this focus in 2003, recommending that all students get involved in undergraduate research as early as possible in their college careers (NSF). Collegiate honors programs in particular have embraced the role of student research as an integral experience for high-ability students, leading the way in developing the thesis-based model of undergraduate research that is increasingly common in institutions of higher learning.

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Kimberly Aramburo is a Kellogg Honors College student at Cal Poly Pomona, where she is studying business administration. She hopes to attend law school and become a practicing criminal defense attorney in the future. She serves on the board of an undocumented support group on campus and hopes to make a difference for undocumented individuals.

The Confidence Game In Honors Admissions And Retention, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In “Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy,” Jerry Herron argues that “a well-conceived admissions policy tells us much more than whom to recruit; it becomes the basis for a quantitative defense of what we do with data and puts a convincing dollar value on the good evangel of excellence.” As a rhetorician who worked at an advertising agency in a previous life, I can certainly acknowledge the value of promoting a product, whether we are pitching our programs to prospective students or performing feats of statistical prestidigitation for upper administration. I am also, however, skeptical about administration’s increasing …

Mothers In Honors, Mimi Killinger, Rachel Binder-Hathaway, Paige Mitchell, Emily Patrick

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The University of Maine’s 2012 valedictorian, honors student Rachel Binder-Hathaway, gave her graduation speech via Skype last May as she had already begun a yearlong Fulbright Scholarship in Bangladesh. Rachel was putting to use her business and economics degrees, traveling to numerous villages in an effort to determine various best practices in microfinance while also isolating ineffective program elements. She intended to help Bangladeshi women grow their own successful small businesses and thus work their way out of relentless and abject poverty. Rachel is committed to assisting these women, who would otherwise have few opportunities outside the home, to create …

Nontraditional Honors, Janice Rye Kinghorn, Whitney Womack Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While honors programs and colleges often proclaim the importance of recruiting and retaining a diverse group of high-ability students, many are still exclusionary and predicated on assumptions about the student body that are no longer valid. In general, we assume that honors students matriculate straight from high school and, having no family obligations, are able to reside in honors living-learning communities, participate in co-curricular honors experiences, and take advantage of honors study abroad opportunities. The structure and programming of honors can thus prohibit the full participation of nontraditional students and compound the personal and psychological barriers that keep many talented, …

Dedication

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

With this issue we honor Deborah Sell Craig, longtime staff member at the Kent State University Honors College, who passed away in July surrounded by her family. Deborah received her BA in political science from Wittenberg and followed it with two master’s degrees (political science and education) and a PhD in educational evaluation and measurement from Kent State University. Her 1987 dissertation, “Predicting Success in an Honors Program: A Comparative Multiple and Ridge Regression,” was an early example of honors research. Her 1981 annotated bibliography of “The Honors Movement in the United States” in Forum for Honors and her subsequent …

Contents 2

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Call for Papers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Submission Guidelines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Dedication to Deborah Sell Craig. . . . . . …

Nontraditional Honors Students

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The National Collegiate Honors Council is an association of faculty, students, and others interested in honors education. Executive Committee: Rick Scott, President, University of Central Arkansas; Jim Ruebel, President-Elect, Ball State University; Gregory Lanier, Immediate Past-President, University of West Florida; Barry Falk, Vice-President, James Madison University; Kyoko Amano, Secretary, University of Indianapolis; Gary Bell, Treasurer, Texas Tech University. Executive Director: Cynthia M. Hill, headquartered at University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Board of Directors: Suketu Bhavsar, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Lisa Coleman, Southeastern Oklahoma State University; Riley Cook, University of Iowa; Emily Jones, Oklahoma State University; Joe King, Radford University; Jon Kotinek, …

An Honors Koan: Selling Water By The River, Jeffrey A. Portnoy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Since Jerry Herron begins his forum essay, “Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy,” with his anecdotal True Genealogical Confessions, I feel obligated to begin in a similar mode. One side of my family was in the real estate business in St. Louis, and the other operated on the production side of industry—garment manufacturing, in the schmatta business so to speak. Like Herron, I have benefitted from a familial confluence of disparate skill sets in my position as Director of the Georgia Perimeter College Honors Program, which during the recruiting and registration season I would liken to that of …

Preparing Tomorrow’S Global Leaders: Honors International Education, Mary Kay Mulvaney, Kim Klein

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs

contents

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Mary Kay Mulvaney and Kim Klein

Part I: Transformative Pedagogies

Chapter 1: Academic Tourist or Scholar Abroad:

Deep Approaches to Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …

If Honors Students Were People: Holistic Honors Education, Samuel Schuman

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs

Acknowledgments. . vii

Chapter 1: Introduction. . 3

A Classroom. 3

Preview. . 8

Honors, Physical Wellness, and Spiritual Cultivation: A Rationale . 11

Definition of Terms . . 18

Wholeness. . 24

Chapter 2: History. 27

Colonial Colleges: 1636–1776. . 27

From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War: 1776–1865 . 32

From the Civil War to World War II: 1865–1944. . 38

From World War II (1945) to the Present. . 45

Interview One: Dr. Richard Chess. . 59

Chapter 3: Mens Sana in Corpore Sano . 67

Autobiographical Note. . 67

Neuroscience and Exercise. . 71

Faculty …

Do Honors Programs Make A Difference During The First Year Of College? The Development Of Critical Thinking Skills And Exposure To Good Practices In Undergraduate Education, Amanda Kay Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This longitudinal study analyzed pretest-posttest data to 1) examine the influence of honors programs on first-year college students' critical thinking skills, 2) to determine whether students in honors programs receive more exposure to good practices in undergraduate education than their non-honors peers, and 3) to assess the effect of good practices on critical thinking. The quasi-experimental study also investigated whether the influence of honors programs on critical thinking skills varied in direction and magnitude for male versus female students and White versus students of color. To replicate an earlier study conducted by Seifert et al. (2007), the current study utilized …

Ua68/1/2 Student Awards Ceremony, Wku Potter College Of Arts & Letters

WKU Administration Documents

Program recognizing outstanding students and mentors of WKU Potter College of Arts & Letters.

The Tutorial Education Program: An Honors Program For Brazilian Undergraduate Students, Denise De Fleith, Aderson Luiz Costa Jr., Eunice M.L Soriano De Alencar

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Tutorial Education Program is an honors program for Brazilian undergraduates, sponsored by the Ministry of Education. Based on philosophical principles of tutorial education in which small groups of academic talented students are guided by a tutor, the program is designed to support groups of undergraduates who demonstrate outstanding performance in their academic activities. The Tutorial Education Program provides enrichment activities in order to broaden the academic development of students with exceptional potential and abilities. Our purpose in this paper is to describe this honors program for undergraduates from different states in Brazil, focusing on the underlying philosophy of the …

Setting Them Free: Students As Co-Producers Of Honors Education, Bouke Van Gorp, Marca V.C. Wolfensberger, Nelleke De Jong

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

One of the factors that differentiate honors from regular teaching at the Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, is the freedom that honors students enjoy, a freedom that evokes excellence because it is focused and targeted. This targeted freedom takes three different shapes in our honors program and comes with specific challenges for both students and teachers. While the attractions and advantages of such freedom are both theoretically and practically significant, our experience has also demonstrated drawbacks that need to be addressed and resolved in creating effective honors education.

Mission, Performance Indicators, And Assessment In U. S. Honors: A View From The Netherlands, Vladimir Bartelds, Lyndsay Drayer, Marca V.C. Wolfensberger

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Amission statement that identifies the goals and aims of an honors program is a key step in program development. The NCHC’s Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program states unequivocally that a successful honors program “has a clear mandate from the institution’s administration in the form of a mission statement or charter document that includes the objectives and responsibilities of honors and defines the place of honors in the administrative and academic structure of the institution.” According to Mrozinski, mission statements are public definitions of purpose published in a college‘s catalog, website, or other planning documents and are generally …

Self As Text: Adaptations Of Honors Practice In Switzerland, Michaela Ruppert Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

City as Text™, the experiential learning program developed by the NCHC Honors Semesters Committee, has been adopted and adapted by hundreds if not thousands of educational institutions throughout the United States and beyond. Having served on the Honors Semesters Committee, I exported this learning strategy to Switzerland while teaching in an International Baccalaureate Program in Geneva. I adapted City as Text™ for multi-disciplinary college preparatory students in Europe, and that adaptation might now serve in turn as a model for experiential learning in honors programs and colleges in the United States and internationally. The focus and link between the City …

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Eunice Soriano de Alencar, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Brasília, Brazil. For the last forty years, she has published numerous books and articles, especially on giftedness and creativity. She is on the editorial board of several journals in Brazil and abroad and is an honorary member of the Brazilian Council for Giftedness.

Honors Education And Global Citizenship, Marca V.C. Wolfensberger

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

An issue of JNCHC devoted to “Honors Around the Globe” is an important opportunity to consider the role of honors in creating international awareness and understanding. Honors faculty and administrators have become increasingly active in global cross-communication through, for instance, international involvement in the NCHC and the recent conference on “Evoking Excellence in Higher Education and Beyond” in the Netherlands that attracted participants from numerous countries. As we become more familiar with honors in all its manifestation across the globe, now is a good time to consider the value we provide in preparing students to contribute to our changing world.

Journal Of National Collegiate Honors Council Dedication

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Marca Wolfensberger has been active in honors education for the past two decades. She co-founded one of the first honors programs in the Netherlands in the early 1990s; ten years later she started connecting with individual members of the NCHC; and, after attending her first NCHC conference in Chicago in 2003, she has been a regular participant in annual honors conferences, bringing with her numerous colleagues—as many as thirty at just one conference—from the Netherlands. She has regularly published and presented on honors education both in the United States and in Europe, and this year she is an organizer of …

Honours In Australia: Globally Recognised Preparation For A Career In Research (Or Elsewhere), Deirdre Barron, Margaret Zeegers

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In this essay we consider the unique position of honours within undergraduate programs in Australian universities and the consequent implications for constructing pathways to research. A tension arises in academic disciplines that see honours as a fourth-year skilling program focused on the workplace when, at the institutional level, honours is positioned as the prerequisite for entry to a PhD. What emerges are competing pressures for advanced vocational training and preliminary research training for doctoral research. The tension is exacerbated by the need for universities to generate research cohorts in order to attract the funding that such cohorts bring to a …

The Reflective Professional Honours Programme Of The Dutch Saxion Universities, Trijntje Van Dijk

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Reflective Professional Honours Programme of the Saxion Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands centers on a profile of what graduates of the program should have accomplished in addition to their regular bachelor’s degree program. The development team for our programme first investigated what the profile should be, interviewing roughly three hundred business representatives to discover what they considered an excellent honours student profile. All the interview information was transformed into a concept profile. An Honours Council evaluated the concept, and the project team adapted it. Then the steering committee evaluated and approved it after further adaption. Finally the …

“Honours” In The United Kingdom: More Than A Difference Of Spelling In Honors Education, Margaret Lamb

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The first edition of Jane Walmsley’s book Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide came out in 1986. I noticed the book because she was a familiar name, a TV broadcaster, American by birth (like me), married to a Brit (like me), and had lived in England for two decades (I was well into my first decade in England). I recognized from my own experience many of the examples (often hilarious) cited by the author.

Honors In The Master’S: A New Perspective?, Stan Van Ginkel, Pierre Van Eijl, Albert Pilot, John Zubizarreta

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In Europe, there is a growing interest in honors education, not only in the bachelor’s but also in the master’s degree. The Dutch government, for instance, is actively promoting excellence in both bachelor’s and master’s degrees through honors programs (Siriusteam). Most Dutch universities have honors programs at the bachelor’s level or are developing them. Some universities have also recently introduced honors into their master’s programs, stimulated by recent publications (van Eijl, Wolfensberger & Pilot). Because honors master’s programs are a new phenomenon in higher education and are still exceptional in the United States of America, we have undertaken a research …

Team-Based Learning In Honors Science Education: The Benefit Of Complex Writing Assignments, Fred Wiegant, Johannas Boonstra, Anton Peeters, Karin Scager

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Cooperative learning and team-based learning have been widely recognized as beneficial strategies to improve all levels of education, including higher education. The benefits have been widely researched and are now well-established (Johnson et al.; Michaelsen, Bauman Knight, et al.; Michaelsen & Sweet; Slavin; Springer et al.). The studies have indicated a positive relationship between cooperative learning and student effort, achievement, persistence, and motivation. Just forming groups, however, does not automatically lead to better learning and motivation; cooperation flourishes only under appropriate conditions (Fink; Gillies; Parmelee et al.). This potential for cooperation and learning is maximal when groups are structured in …

An American Honors Program In The Arab Gulf, Byrad Yyelland

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The first Western honors program to be established in the Arab Gulf is offered in Doha, Qatar, on a small satellite campus of an American university. Doha is the capital city of Qatar, a sovereign Arab state physically located on a small peninsula bordering Saudi Arabia in the south and jutting into the Persian Gulf. With a population of only 1.7 million, roughly 11 % of whom are Qatar nationals (according to the 2010 Qatar Census), Qatar “ranks as the world’s richest country per capita,” due primarily to wise investment and control of “the third largest reserves of natural gas …

On Training Excellent Students In China And The United States, Ikuo Kitagaki, Donglin Li

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In many countries, the training of researchers who will be internationally competitive has become a primary objective, leading to extensive discussion of the curricula, educational content, and methods that may ensure a high level of student achievement. In this global climate, only the most excellent students have the potential to engage successfully in international competition and become leading-edge researchers in the world-wide marketplace of research. Thus, any country seeking to be internationally competitive must consider ways to further raise the level of excellent students.

Looping Up Professional Reflection In Honours Programmes, Trigntje Van Dijk

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Within the Saxion Universities in the Netherlands, a profile of the “Reflective Professional” comprises a number of competencies that the honours programmes are designed to develop and support. The process of developing these competencies involves three loops of learning, characterized by three sets of reflective questions so that, as a whole, they loop up professional reflection. The goal is to inspire students and their coaches to consider the phases of learning with conscious awareness and focus.