Liberal Studies Commons^™

Achieving Excellence Through Experiential Learning, Eli Pemberton

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As part of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (2022) collection of essays about the value of honors to its graduates (1967–2019), the author reflects on the personal and professional impacts of the honors experience.

Coming from the small island of Trinidad, I had never heard of nor participated in experiential learning until I became a member of the honors program. Being given the opportunities to engage in experiential learning helped me further my understanding of many subject areas outside of my hospitality management major. Of course, honors also allowed me to thrive in an academically rigorous environment, but the value …

Reflecting On Community: A Vision For The Future, Tambria Schroeder

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As part of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (2022) collection of essays about the value of honors to its graduates (1967–2019), the author reflects on the personal and professional impacts of the honors experience.

Being asked to reflect on the values I gained from my honors experience has been such a privilege, and I hope that my words can serve as a reminder to all who read them that we should never underestimate the power of reflecting on our practice—whatever that may be, inside of academia or otherwise. Having completed my undergraduate career five years ago and wanting to be …

Finding My Better Self And The Strength To Dream: The Impact Of The Honors Experience, Lia M. Shore

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As part of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (2022) collection of essays about the value of honors to its graduates (1967–2019), the author reflects on the personal and professional impacts of the honors experience.

H onor. It flows throughout the thread of life and shapes a path at every stage. It serves as an inner compass that navigates through growth and identity to find the destination of a better self. My experience as an honors student represents an important part of this journey and established a foundation of intrinsic values that continue to guide me through my professional and personal …

Interdisciplinary Education Equips People To Face Unique Challenges, Claire Guthrie Stasiewicz

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

As part of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (2022) collection of essays about the value of honors to its graduates (1967–2019), the author reflects on the personal and professional impacts of the honors experience.

Earning an undergraduate degree feels decidedly common today. 42% of Americans hold an undergraduate degree, and about 62% of all high school graduates attend some college (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021). What feels less common, however, is an education through an Honors College. As one of the first graduates to earn an Honors Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts degree from the University of New Mexico (something done by only …

The 2021 Nchc Founders Award: Samuel Schuman, Bernice Braid

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Samuel Schuman (Beginning in Honors) is the 2021 recipient of the National Collegiate Honors Council’s Founders Award, recognized for his outstanding contributions to both the NCHC and to the professional and scholarly practices of honors education.

A Sense Of Belonging, Suketu P. Bhavsar

Honors in Practice Online Archive

National Collegiate Honors Council President delivers his address at the NCHC’s 2021 conference, describing that, despite the privileges he has chosen and enjoyed, expressions of otherness have led to feelings of estrangement. Considering the question of how to face this challenge in honors, the author emphasizes the imperative of creating a sense of belonging for every student.

About The Authors, Etc., National Collegiate Honors Council

Honors in Practice Online Archive

About the authors

About the NCHC Monograph Series

NCHC Monographs & Journals

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In This Issue

Constitution Day: An Opportunity For Honors Colleges To Promote Civic Engagement, Richard J. Hardy, Paul A. Schlag, Keith Boeckelman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The United States Constitution is the bedrock upon which government and society rest, yet its precepts remain generally unfamiliar to contemporary college students. Considering the extent of its impact and the misinformation regarding its purpose, content, efficacy, and limits, the authors provide suggestions for civic learning based on this seminal document. While all American educational institutions receiving federal funding must celebrate the U.S. Constitution each year on or near September 17th, research suggests that comprehensive and integrative instruction is scarce. Citing a lack of formal Constitution Day programming among honors colleges, the authors present a multi-modal framework for honors students …

Counterstories Of Honors Students Of Color, Michael Carlos Gutiérrez

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study explores the experience of high-achieving students of color in an honors program at a large research university. Qualitative methods involve surveying students (n = 39) and interviewing a select group (n = 5) in attempts to measure both the frequency and severity of racial microaggression as well as subjective experience relating to diversity and representation in honors. Using critical race theory, a discourse analysis of four broad questions pertaining to pre-entry, entry, continuation, and exit of honors programs suggests that more is needed to foster an honors community that better understands and meets the needs of students’ racial, …

The Critically Reflective Practicum, Aaron Stoller

Honors in Practice Online Archive

A defining feature of honors education is meaningful engagement within and across disciplines, yet significant challenges for creating and sustaining meaningful transdisciplinary research remain. One such challenge involves a nuanced understanding of a discipline, or what educational researchers call “disciplinary literacy.” This article introduces critically reflective practicum (CRP) as a pedagogy for developing disciplinary literacy among honors students. CRP acknowledges forms of inquiry as design situations and seeks to simulate instructional scaffolding so that students both experience and reflect on their questioning. Through the practicum, students begin to understand, engage with, and critique the methods and sociocultural standards of one …

Inclusive And Effective Holistic Admission Frameworks For Honors Programs: A Case Study Continued, Andrea Radasanu, Gregory Barker

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study continues an earlier (2021) examination of a program’s move from an admissions framework that used standardized test score thresholds to a test-blind holistic review. While the initial study evinced holistic review as a more equitable gateway to honors education for students from underserved backgrounds (as compared to admission frameworks that rely heavily on SAT/ACT thresholds), the current study further substantiates this finding as the program fully transitions to its subsequent admission cycle. In addition to affirming holistic admissions practice as effective for diversifying honors populations, the study considers two additional results. First, the holistic review rubric is assessed …

All Scientists Should Write Poetry: Creative Writing As Essential Academic Practice, Mariya Deykute

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Creative writing in undergraduate academics has often been regarded as an elective practice that has benefits primarily for students who plan to pursue creative or literary majors. However, poetic inquiry specifically offers crucial benefits to STEM students, owing both to the transformative nature of poetic process and to the way poetic inquiry can stimulate innovative, ethical, multilingual and interdisciplinary growth. The author frames the issue through individual experience of teaching poetry to STEM undergraduates in the context of a rich multilingual environment, in which many students are fluent or proficient in several languages. The author argues that due to the …

Front Matter - Jaepl Volume 27, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Front Matter

Spring Break In Chernobyl: Urbex, Apocalypse, And Materiality In Writing Classrooms, K Shannon Howard

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The practice of urban exploration, or urbex—an activity in which we confront and document landscapes of ruin and make meaning from them—acts as a focal point through which students may investigate and write about the world surrounding them by gaining new perspectives of physical spaces and objects that often go ignored in daily living. More importantly, urbex inspires writing that responds to existing problems in our world (resource scarcity, lack of sustainability, and environmental trauma) while also helping students to conceptualize a better one.

Toward A Decolonial Creative Writing Workshop: Mbari As A Case Study In Examining Intercultural Models For Arts Education, James W. Ryan, Steve Westbrook

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The creative writing workshop has been the subject of sustained critique for its tendency to reproduce dominant cultural norms, especially in spaces where admissions to the workshop do not reflect local ethnic and cultural diversity. In an effort to aid the search for alternate models/foundations for creative writing instructions, the authors turn to the history of mbari, a cultural practice among the Owerri Igbo of Nigeria, which was briefly adapted into the pedagogical foundation for a visual arts workshop conducted between the time of Nigeria’s independence and the onset of its civil war. In its original form, mbari was a …

Jaepl Vol 27 Table Of Contents, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

TOC

A Meditation: Why Teach?, Joonna Smitherman Trapp

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

What makes teaching a vocation that continues to draw smart and talented people even though the pay can be less-than-great, the workload damaging, and the rewards from societal and political opinion currently nonexistent? Frederick Buechner, a presbyterian minister, talks about the notion of vocation in his well-known book, Wishful Thinking. Our English word “vocation” comes from vocare, a Latin word meaning “to call,” and Buechner further defines the word as signifying “the work” we are “called to do” (118). I’m always amazed at my university that teachers haven’t heard about this idea. To them, vocation smacks of career-mindedness and doesn’t …

Introduction: Finding Meaning On The Road To Hell, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

SPECIAL SECTION: CREATIVE WRITING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: WHERE ARE WE GOING? WHERE HAVE WE BEEN? Introduction: Finding Meaning on the Road to Hell

Grading, Naomi C. Gades

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Poem

Jaepl Volume 27, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Full Issue

Dear Search Applicant Committee, Naomi C. Gades

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Poem

Werk At Play: Exploring The Creative Play Of A Graduate Student Writer To Reimagine Graduate Writing In The Humanities, Michelle Lafrance, Jay Hardee

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This nontraditional essay poses the imaginative possibilities of fostering creative, intellectual play in graduate classes in the Humanities. Exploring the case study of a vlog produced by a student in a graduate seminar, the essay traces how the hybrid, multimodal writing—writing that meshes the digital conventions of creative and scholarly genres—in the course enabled this student to “reimagine” the purpose and stock moves of effective “scholarly” writing as the student blended voices, identities, and genres in his work. Creative play can be understood as an important pedagogical tool that allows graduate students to resist coercive and exclusionary processes of socialization, …

“Weaving All Of Them Together”: How Writing Majors Talk About Creative Writing, T J. Geiger

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The labels “creative” and “creative writing” serve several purposes in the discourses of undergraduate writing majors. In a study of students in two writing major programs, students often exerted significant effort to negotiate among diverse writing experiences and to integrate different understandings of writing. Their efforts mirror scholars’ conversations about negotiation and integration at the level of curricula and programs. Writing majors in this study raised issues relevant to the well-established curricular domains of theoretical knowledge, professional expertise, and civic action. They explained their insights using a mix of idiosyncratic, institutional, and disciplinary language that frequently relied on forms of …

The Pandemic Forces Us Back To Our Roots: Book Reviews Introduction, Irene Papoulis

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Book Reviews Introduction

Can We Flourish?, Christy Wenger

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Teachers and students alike can agree on one shared truth of this past academic year: it was tough. Even though many of us found our way back into classrooms, sometimes masked and sometimes not, Covid continued to present new hurdles to our tried-and-true active teaching methods. Students struggled to keep up with the social and emotional demands of the face-to-face classroom after so many pandemic interruptions over the past two years, and teachers struggled to foster engagement and make meaningful learning gains in their classes. I met weekly with the instructors in my writing program to talk through classroom engagement …

Back Matter, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Back Matter

An Encomium For Community College Students In Five Scenes, James Gallagher

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Books start arriving at my apartment by the boxful. As part of the committee judging the CCCC Outstanding Book Contest, I am inundated with books, and I am excited to get down to reading them. I feel like a graduate student all over again, reading things I would never read if I weren’t “made” to (New Materialisms, anyone?). Most of the books excite me and make me think about how I can move forward as a teacher of first year writing. Some of them hurt my brain. Some of them annoy me.

Review Of Pars In Practice: More Resources And Strategies For Online Writing Instructors, Jessie Borgman And Casey Mcardle, Editors, Madeline Crozier

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The charge that “we are all online writing instructors” should resonate with any composition instructor who has taught during the Covid-19 pandemic (Borgman and McArdle 3). This exigent universal truth gives rise to the compilation of this volume. The well-timed collection builds on Borgman and McArdle’s co-authored book Personal, Accessible, Responsive, Strategic: Resources and Strategies for Online Writing Instructors, which earned the 2020 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award and introduced the PARS approach to online writing instruction—Personal, Accessible, Responsive, Strategic.

Review Of Creativity And The Paris Review Interviews: A Discourse Analysis Of Famous Writers’ Composing Practices By Rhonda Leathers Dively, Heidi M. Williams

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Only by fate and fortune would an apprentice receive the opportunity to review the work of a master. Nearly 14 years after sitting as a doctoral student in her Creativity Theory course, I am pleased to review Dr. Ronda Leathers Dively’s text, Creativity and The Paris Review Interviews: A Discourse Analysis of Famous Writers’ Composing Practices. Dively has written and published on the topic of Creativity Theory since the late 90s and is notably one of the pioneers for applying Creativity Theory in the composition and expository writing classrooms.

Review Of Teaching The Way: Using The Principles Of The Art Of War To Teach Composition By Steven T. Nelson, Christian Smith

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

First, an admission, or perhaps a confession: my enthusiasm for teaching composition has been waning in the last year or two. I don’t know if it was the pandemic coupled with the resulting year on Zoom or the cumulative effect of teaching writing for the last decade and a half, but somewhere along the way it became a different experience. All too often after grading or having a lesson plan fall flat, I would repeat the first two lines from Geoffrey Sirc’s underappreciated review article, “Resisting Entropy,” when he says “Teaching writing is impossible. You have ten to fifteen weeks …