Liberal Studies Commons^™

A Different Kind Of Agitation, Jayda Coons

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Responding to Patricia J . Smith’s essay on the appropriateness of professionalizing honors education, the author argues that discussions of specialization and standardization across honors programs should be suspended until academia has sufficiently dealt with the endemic problem of undercompensated contingent labor. The author further suggests that, rather than invite increased administrative procedures, faculty and staff exercise the characteristics most often ascribed to honors education—flexibility, creativity, community-based problem-solving, interdisciplinarity, and collaboration—to reimagine current professional practices in honors and advocate more forcefully for fair, dignified labor.

Swan Song, Joan Digby

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Patricia J . Smith’s argument for professionalism based on Caplow’s outdated model is inappropriate for honors administration. The steps outlined are misleading, and the use of the perennially controversial Basic Characteristics as a prescription for professionalizing honors is historically inaccurate and has no place in framing the future of honors education, which needs to remain individual and idiosyncratic to institutions. Professionalization would move honors toward a business model that is antithetical to the spirit of honors.

The Current Status, Perceptions, And Impact Of Honors Program Review, Rebecca Rook

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) supports routine, systematic program review, research suggests that only about half of honors programs engage in some form of assessment. This study examines the current state of honors program evaluation by gauging honors administrators’ perceptions of program review and assessing the impact of the NCHC’s review process on those programs that have employed it. A census of all NCHC honors directors was taken using questionnaires. Fifteen percent (n = 121) completed the census, with results suggesting substantial increases (87–91%) in program assessment from 2011 and a majority of respondents (87%) describing the review …

The Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council: A Bibliometric Study, Emily Walshe

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This paper analyzes summative content and citation patterns in the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (ISSN 1559-0151), a peer-reviewed, scholarly publication related to honors education, during its first 20 volumes of existence from 2000 to 2019. The bibliometric study consists of two parts: an analysis of articles and analysis of citations. Quantitative and qualitative measures are used to examine article types, authorship patterns, cited references, and coverage of core subjects. Results indicate 522 articles with an annual output average of 26 .1. Annual input averages 37 .4 authors, featuring 492 unique authors who represent 248 unique institutions and …

Editor’S Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The topic of this issue’s Forum, “The Professionalization of Honors,” has a history in the National Collegiate Honors Council that probably goes back to its origins and that has evoked turbulent controversy within the past three or four decades. In the mid-1990s, the proposal to establish a document titled “The Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program” arose from a perceived vagueness about the meaning of “honors education .” Proponents of the document claimed that they were simply trying to create clarity out of chaos in defining the profession of honors while opponents feared the prospect of standardization. Heated …

Honors, Professionalism, And Teaching And Learning: A Response To Certification, John Zubizarreta

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay responds to an argument for certification based on a particular sociological theory of professionalization. The case for certification rests on the supposition that honors has evolved from a nascent educational movement focused on distinct teaching and learning approaches for high-ability students to one that is now ready to professionalize in ways that require more specialization, organizational oversight, systematic evaluation, and exclusive credentialing through certification. The author suggests that honors is already a full-fledged professional endeavor, recognizing that the core emphasis on teaching and learning in honors is a genuinely professional endeavor when performed authentically in the experimental, creative, …

A Requiem For Certification, A Song Of Honors, Jeffrey Portnoy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay rejects any notion of professionalization in honors programs and colleges as well as any plan for the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) that is connected to implementing a process of certification or accreditation. The author offers historical details about the machinations of a small group of powerful NCHC officers who tried to turn the organization into an accrediting or certifying body and how they were successfully blocked by grassroots opposition from the membership and by a large group of NCHC past presidents who recognized the ill will and divisiveness that would result. The author discusses the damage that …

The Professionalization Of Honors Education, Patricia Joanne Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors education in America has undergone a process that sociologist Theodore Caplow describes as professionalization. Caplow identifies four stages whereby a developing profession transitions to a professional association: organizing membership, changing the name of occupation from its previous status, developing a code of ethics, and after a period of political agitation, beginning a process by which to enforce occupational barriers. Each of these defined stages present new challenges to honors educators. This paper examines honors education in the context of specialization, considering both the origins and growth of honors education in the last century and contemporary discourse relating to certification …

Owning Honors: Outcomes For A Student Leadership Culture, Adam Watkins

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author provides an overview of a peer mentorship program within an honors curriculum and an assessment of its leadership culture. This culture is based on the values of servant leadership and an inclusive community of learners, and it is promoted through an orientation, training, and robust extracurricular component. The author explores the efficacy of leadership culture, considering its influence on peer mentors’ identification with the honors community and its influence on their learning outcomes.

Investigando Los Éxitos Y Las Dificultades De Implementar Un Programa De Inmersión Dual A Través De Las Perspectivas De Tres Administradores, Victoria E. Slaybaugh

World Languages and Cultures

This Modern Languages and Literatures senior project investigates and analyses the successes and struggles of implementing a dual immersion program through interviews with three dual immersion principles. In interviewing three highly experienced administrators, ample information was collected on why some programs are prosperous while others see little success. Each individual principal had unique and valuable input, especially with regard to why their respective schools changed programs from 50/50 to 90/10, why they implemented K-12, and even why they chose to eliminate the program entirely. Using supplemental studies to more thoroughly examine the historical and social context of dual immersion, this …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2020)

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Contents

Call for Papers . v

Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines . vi

Dedication to Rae Rosenthal . vii

Editor’s Introduction ix — Ada Long

Forum essays on “The Professionalization of Honors”

The Professionalization of Honors Education 3 — Patricia J. Smith

Honors, Professionalism, and Teaching and Learning: A Response to Certification 19 — John Zubizarreta

The Body of Honors: Certification as an Expression of Disciplinary Power 25 — Richard Badenhausen

A Requiem for Certification, A Song of Honors 33 — Jeffrey A. Portnoy

Swan Song 45 — Joan Digby

A Different Kind of Agitation . …

Democracy For Homework: A Review Of Civic Engagement In Urban Public Schools, Amanda B. Rosenblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Civic engagement education prepares students to actively engage in social and political processes and influence community change. Many educators believe that civic engagement ought to be a central mission of schools because: 1. Adolescent civic engagement predicts adult civic engagement; 2. Schools may be able to reduce the inequity in political participation between individuals of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and 3: Civic engagement orientation and competencies can be developed through any and all content courses and extracurricular opportunities. This literature review on civic engagement education in urban public middle and high schools over the past 15 years explores: 1. …

The Timeliness Of Honors Contracts, Shirley Shultz Myers, Geoffrey Whitebread

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

With roots in a tutorial educational approach introduced by the ancient Greeks and made famous at Oxford and Cambridge, honors contracts in the United States emerged as tutorial arrangements in the late nineteenth century. Early honors programs at Harvard and other universities sought to counter an emphasis on practical training in US higher education after the Civil War with more flexible programs of study, small seminars, and tutorials (Capuana 21–25; Wolken; Repko et al. 28). This curricular reform spanned disciplines and responded to two key changes in education: the late-nineteenth-century growth of graduate education, particularly in the sciences, modeled on …

Curriculum Gone Bad: The Case Against Honors Contracts, Richard Badenhausen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This volume offers a timely and much-needed discussion, for in spite of their apparent ubiquity across the honors landscape, contracts are not a feature of honors education that has received much attention. For example, the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (NCHC) “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program” and its companion statement on honors colleges—documents meant to guide colleges and universities in curricular innovation, engaged pedagogy, and intentional learning—make no mention of contracts. Additionally, NCHC’s 2016 Census of U.S. Honors Programs and Colleges, which captured qualities of 408 responding member institutions, asked over a dozen questions about curricular features of …

Enhancing The Structure And Impact Of Honors By Contract Projects With Templates And Research Hubs, James G. Snyder, Melinda Weisberg

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The Honors by Contract (HBC) option is by its nature underdefined. That is to say, there are likely as many versions of the HBC as there are honors programs or colleges that use them. Some HBCs are attached to non-honors courses to augment the course content, whereas others are stand-alone mentored replacements for honors seminars themselves, following more of an independent study model. Some programs use HBCs to initiate students into the nature and scope of undergraduate research, and the deliverables vary widely. Likewise, the challenges and difficulties surrounding HBCs change from institution to institution. Because it appears natural to …

Building Honors Contracts: Insights And Oversights, Introduction, Kristine Miller

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This book asks an overdue question: can we build honors contracts that transcend the transactional? The word “contract” itself—as both noun and verb—delimits more possibilities than it reveals. The chapters collected here expand this restrictive term by reframing honors contracts as collaborative partnerships for experiential learning. While most, though not all, of the volume’s contributors accept standard definitions of honors contracts as “[e]nriched options within regular [non-honors] courses,” they also imagine many and varied possibilities for such enrichment (Schuman 33). The subtitle’s pairing of “Insights” and “Oversights” thus suggests not that the authors have seen it all or missed the …

Honors Abroad Through Third-Party Providers, Susan E. Dinan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Given the challenges of promoting internationalization by expanding our institutions’ international student populations (Fischer), the development of our students as global citizens through study abroad and curriculum offerings appears more important than ever. Providing innovative and challenging curriculum options that align with the long-espoused pedagogical approaches of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC)— many of which foreshadowed today’s highly touted high-impact practices such as undergraduate research, strong faculty-student mentor relationships, and study abroad—constitutes a desirable path to pursue (NCHC Board; Kuh). Yet, admittedly these valuable practices come with a price for institutions and students. For example, the increasingly popular summer …

Early Impact: Assessing Global-Mindedness And Intercultural Competence In A First-Year Honors Abroad Course, Michael Carignan, Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Within the expanding field of study abroad scholarship, recent research on honors-based programming indicates an evolving understanding of how the goals of most study abroad programs align with those of honors programs (Camarena and Collins; Frost et al.; Markus et al.). The tradition of incorporating international experiences into honors education is longstanding, and recent descriptions of related programming highlight the diversity of disciplines, locations, aims, and pedagogies across institutions (Mulvaney and Klein ix–x). One common thread, however, is a desire to facilitate not only academic but also intercultural competencies in order to prepare honors students for an increasingly interconnected world. …

The Long-Term Impact Of Study Abroad On Honors Program Alumni, Mary Kay Mulvaney

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Note: An earlier version of this chapter was published in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad (vol. 29, no. 1, 2017, pp. 46–67). This essay appears with permission of that journal and in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution License Agreement. This reprint includes an Afterword that briefly explains three international education initiatives that evolved from the original findings of this study.

“Study abroad enables students to experience an interconnected world and to embrace difference rather than being threatened by it; it shows them the collective heritage of mankind” (Wolfensberger 281). Indeed, study abroad is often thought to be …

Honors Contracts: Empowering Students And Fostering Autonomy In Honors Education, Anne Dotter

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Although culturally mandated as a gateway to professional opportunities and wealth, college degrees are the prerogative of only half of the United States population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (Musu-Gilette et al. v). Even those who attend college do not always acquire the training they need to achieve their goals: the lack of written communication or analytical skills directly impacts retention and completion, particularly of students underprepared for college. The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) website features a “Diversity and Inclusion Statement” under its “Definition of Honors Education,” and the organization has placed equity and inclusion at …

One Hand Washes The Other: Designing Mutually Beneficial Honors Contracts, Antonina Bambina

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

At their best, honors contracts can be creative, challenging, exceptional learning opportunities for students and faculty. At their worst, they promote busywork that fails to deliver enhanced educational experiences. While I am proud of the many contracts that allowed honors students at my former institution, the University of Southern Indiana, to collaborate on customized learning and deeper relationships with course material and faculty, I also found myself on occasion having to apologize to students or faculty for the stunted, lackluster projects that one party or the other proposed. These conflicting sentiments illustrate why Richard Badenhausen urges the honors community to …

An Undeserved Reputation: How Contract Courses Can Work For A Small Honors Program, Jon Hageman

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In the first chapter of this volume, Richard Badenhausen argues that contract courses have often suffered from ambiguous or homogenous expectations, compromising honors pedagogy and learning. Anecdotally, not many positive attributes have been ascribed to contract courses in the honors community. Contracts often require more work than courses to establish and administer to completion. Given the shortcomings and the amount of work required to implement contract courses successfully, why are they used at all? I argue that, in some cases, contract courses—or non-honors courses that move beyond regular course requirements with agreed-upon independent study work mentored by the professor—are the …

Honors Contracts: A Scaffolding To Independent Inquiry, Cindy S. Ticknor, Shamim Khan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors contracts can be valuable curricular assets if aligned with institutional goals and properly supported to overcome the challenges they sometimes present. At Columbus State University (CSU), honors contracts allow students to achieve one of our primary learning outcomes: honors graduates will demonstrate the ability to design independent inquiry projects that require critical and creative thinking. We believe graduate schools value this ability, and we know that employers in our community seek honors graduates who can work independently on extended projects, communicate effectively, and solve problems analytically and creatively. We achieve this important learning outcome by requiring a senior project …

A High-Impact Strategy For Honors Contract Courses, Gary Wyatt

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This essay describes a strategy implemented at Emporia State University for offering high-impact honors contract courses in a collaborative environment. After considering the role of honors contract courses in our college, the chapter demonstrates the importance of guiding students and instructors in creating contract applications and shaping requirements to ensure that contract courses are true honors experiences. Our contract applications demand a collaborative effort in which students and instructors demonstrate together how core requirements will be satisfied. Each application is unique and generally involves the development of a mentoring relationship. The chapter includes examples illustrating some key value-added outcomes students …

Ensuring A Quality Honors Experience Through Learning Contracts: Success Beyond Our Wildest Dreams, Julia A. Haseleu, Laurie A. Taylor

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In 1997, when Julia A. Haseleu started teaching at Kirkwood Community College (KCC) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, her charge as a psychology instructor with honors experience was to develop an honors program based on learning contracts. Other faculty and administrators had attempted to offer honors courses at KCC, but these efforts had failed. Rhonda Kekke, KCC Dean of Arts and Humanities, determined that the problem was the honors course format. At small to medium-sized colleges and universities, especially two-year campuses, finding a group of honors students who are interested in the same subjects, able to work the same courses into …

Facilitating Feedback: The Benefits Of Automation In Monitoring Completion Of Honors Contracts, Erin E. Edgington

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As we have seen in this volume so far, contract courses are an increasingly valuable pedagogical strategy for maintaining access to and demand for honors education. Administered with the “[i]ntentionality, transparency, [and] consistency” that Richard Badenhausen proposes in his opening essay (17), they can even, as Margaret Walsh suggests, help “shift [students’] focus from getting out of course requirements to getting into new and different courses to advance their capacity to learn” (40). While good reasons to offer contracts clearly exist, administering them nevertheless presents challenges. This essay considers process and pedagogy, with the aim of empowering both students and …

Honors In Practice: Beyond The Classroom, Kristine Miller

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Six years ago, in my first week as director of the Utah State University (USU) Honors Program, a senior physics major and her frustrated faculty mentor marched into my office. The student was shy and embarrassed, the mentor surly and blunt: “Why,” he asked, “must a senior complete an honors contract in a class that isn’t fundamentally shaping her future?” Good question. Because students were required to earn honors credits each term at USU, the choice facing this student was whether to enroll in an honors general education course she did not need or to develop a contract to deepen …

Honors Internationalization At Washington State University: A Comprehensive Experience, Kim Andersen, Christine K. Oakley

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The interconnected nature of the world economy, including the need for international cooperation in science, politics, the environment, justice, and all aspects of social development, is the reality in which higher education—and not least educational programs catering to the best and brightest—find themselves. The impact of globalization on the United States continues undiminished, and accordingly, honors programs must equip their students with the critical skills and practical knowledge needed to succeed in this global environment to the benefit of themselves, their local and national communities, and the world at large. The fundamental nexus driving the Washington State University (WSU) Honors …

Moving Honors Contracts Into The Digital Age: Processes, Impacts, And Opinions, Ken D. Thomas, Suzanne P. Hunter

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As Richard Badenhausen argues, a foundational quality of honors education is its ability to place gifted students in direct contact with each other and outstanding faculty in honors courses. The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) defines honors education as “characterized by in-class and extracurricular activities that are measurably broader, deeper, or more complex than comparable learning experiences,” built upon a “distinctive learnerdirected environment and philosophy” that is “tailored to fit the institution’s culture and mission” and designed to create a “close community of students and faculty” (“Definition”). This premise for honors education seems to spell the downfall of honors contracts, …

Making The Global Familiar: Building An International Focus Into The Honors Curriculum, Erin E. Edgington, Daniel C. Villanueva

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Increasingly, American colleges and universities are seeking to prepare their students not only for professional success but also for life in a world whose interconnectedness and, indeed, interdependency, will require them to live as global citizens. That the term “global citizen,” or one of its many synonyms, now appears in numerous institutional mission and values statements suggests the significance that institutions of higher education attach to cultivating individuals able to navigate the transnational and intercultural complexities of twenty-first-century economics, politics, and ethics. Honors programs and colleges have enthusiastically adopted a global education orientation along with the larger institutions that house …