Liberal Studies Commons^™

From Theory To Curriculum: A Best Practices Model For A New International Student Cultural Acclimation Course, Denise Leinonen

Capstone Collection

This course-linked capstone (CLC) is inspired by the current international student cultural acclimation course at State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta. Surprisingly, there are few cultural acclimation courses offered in the United States and there is lack of academic research evaluating the effectiveness of such courses. This course model will incorporate the successful aspects of the few current cultural acclimation courses offered, including the Oneonta course, and integrate learning, cultural adjustment, and student development theories into the curriculum to provide a basis for the content and structure of the course. Qualitative research through surveys and interviews with international …

Graphic Mathematical Mediated Structure: The Link For Hispanic/Latino And English Learners' Mathematical Success, Sylvia Casteloes

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project’s goal is to promote and improve the mathematical literacy of fourth-grade Hispanic/Latino and English learners through the use of a graphic mathematical mediated structure. Current California Common Core data finds fourth-grade Hispanic/Latino and English learners significantly behind White and Asian students in mathematics, especially in understanding written word problems.

Research supports the assumption that as a tool, a graphic mathematical mediated structure could: 1) foster conceptual understanding; 2) build content terminology; 3) allow students opportunities to justify their solutions; 4) integrate writing in math; and 5) provide a platform for discourse. This innovative pedagogical project specifically focused on …

School Climate: A Comparison Of Teachers, Students, And Parents, James A. Jacobs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to examine the benefits of positive school climate and to measure the perceptions of school climate for intermediate grades in a Northeast Tennessee School district. An online school climate survey was used to collect responses from participants in intermediate grades and focused on the 3 major components of school climate: school engagement, school environment, and school safety. Data were collected for 2 consecutive years in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. Response totals included 1,955 student responses, 116 teacher responses, and 210 parent responses that were analyzed and used for this study. Of the student totals, some students that …

The Importance Of Teaching Young Children Academics Through Multi-Sensory Activities, Tiffany Schardt

Senior Theses

In this project, one will find information regarding the benefits of multi-sensory learning. Multi-sensory learning is a hands-on form of learning. One will find information on how technology is causing children to spend less time learning through their senses. The project is accompanied by information for parents and what they can do to promote multi-sensory learning at home. Along with this information, parents will find a guidebook that incorporates academic concepts with multi-sensory lessons. The project is organized so that one can find information on technology, importance of multi-sensory learning, proof, and guidebook contents. The project is easily laid out …

Academic And Social Effects Of Waldorf Education On Elementary School Students, Christian Zepeda

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

As society becomes more critical of public education, alternative education systems are becoming more popular. The Waldorf education system, based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, has increased in popularity and commonality each decade. Currently, 23 Waldorf institutions exist in California. With this increase in popularity, it is important to analyze and examine the effectiveness of this education philosophy. An examination of Waldorf education, through research and interviews of Waldorf teachers and administration, will provide parents and teachers with an understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, Waldorf education provides a positive environment for students, yielding positive effects but this …

Perceptions Of Advisors Who Work With High-Achieving Students, Melissa Johnson, Cheryl Walther, Kelly J. Medley

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors programs in higher education are designed to optimize highachieving students’ potential by addressing their particular academic and developmental needs and common characteristics. Gerrity, Lawrence, and Sedlacek suggested that high-achieving students can be “best served by course work, living environments, and activities that differ from the usual college offerings” (43). Schuman, in his handbook Beginning in Honors, noted:

"An important point to keep in mind as regards honors advising is that honors students can be expected to have as many, and as complicated, problems as other students. It is sometimes tempting to envision all honors students as especially well …

How To Drink From The Pierian Spring: A Liberal Arts And Humanities Question About The Limits Of Honors Education, Christopher Keller

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors educators frequently engage in conversations about the decline of interest in and funding for the liberal arts and humanities. Larry Andrews’s essay “The Humanities are Dead! Long Live the Humanities!” is one of several that contributes to a metanarrative about the liberal arts and humanities, playing out along the following lines: workforce-minded politicians, short-sighted university administrators, STEM-related programs, and market-driven students no longer understand the true value of the liberal arts and humanities because they cannot be easily measured in dollars and cents; consequently, higher education today typically narrows students’ perspectives, facilitates short-term and uncritical thinking, and fails to …

Linking Academic Excellence And Social Justice Through Community-Based Participatory Research, Lydia Voigt

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Naomi Yavneh Klos poses two questions for the NCHC community in her essay, “Thinking Critically, Acting Justly,” which appears in this issue of JNCHC: (1) how honors pedagogy/curriculum can engage the highestability and most motivated students in questions of social justice; and (2) how the honors curriculum can serve as a place of access, equity, and excellence in higher education. The University Honors Program (UHP) at Loyola University New Orleans has recently implemented several honors social justice seminars that have been experimenting with various approaches to these pedagogical, curricular, and programmatic questions. Violence and Democracy, an honors sociology/criminology seminar, not …

Creating A National Readership For Harper’S Weekly In A Time Of Sectional Crisis, Ashlyn Stewart

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

PORTZ-PRIZE-WINNING ESSAY, 2017

Throughout the 1840s and ’50s, localized and specialized periodicals serving specific regions, religions, pastimes, and vocations inundated the American magazine market (Lupfer 249). The vast majority of these publications were short-lived; Heather A. Haveman, a sociologist who in 2015 conducted a quantitative analysis of historical American magazines, estimates that the average lifespan of a magazine between 1840 and 1860 was a mere 1.9 years (29). As book historian Eric Lupfer says, “most were risky ventures— undercapitalized, poorly advertised, haphazardly managed, and with limited circulation” (249). However, magazines with the stability and capital of a sponsoring publishing house, …

What Makes A Curriculum Significant? Tracing The Taxonomy Of Significant Learning In Jesuit Honors Programs, Robert J. Pampel

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Over the last few years, I have sat in the opening sessions of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) conference and felt equal parts concern and conviction. In 2015 and 2016, opening speakers enumerated the challenges and opportunities that confront honors educators in a rapidly changing higher education landscape. I sympathized with their concerns in an institutional and cultural context marked by what Schwehn called the “Weberian ethos” of education—an instrumental, and less charitable, attitude toward academic inquiry. Yet, even as I acknowledged the veracity of their arguments, I was buoyed by belief in the Jesuit mission that animates my …

Editor's Introduction (Vol. 9, No. 1), Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Even in these perplexing times, most citizens of the United States would agree that social injustices in this country need to be addressed and alleviated. Most would acknowledge the high rates of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, incarceration, economic inequality, racial discrimination, and bias in college admissions, for instance, that undermine the ideals essential to a thriving democracy. The challenge, though, is getting beneath these abstractions to a level of empathy that can bring about change. While the National Collegiate Honors Council has taken on this challenge in years past, the energy and commitment required to meet the challenge has generally waned …

Thinking Critically, Acting Justly, Naomi Yavneh Klos

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In October 2011, just two months after I became Director of the University Honors Program at Loyola New Orleans, my new home town was simultaneously proclaimed both “America’s Best City for Foodies” (Forbes) and the country’s “Worst Food Desert” (Lammers). The city known for beignets and crawfish, Mardi Gras and jazz, was revealed to have only one supermarket for each 16,000 residents (half the national average), with some residents traveling over fifteen miles from their homes to purchase fresh produce.

In the past six years, the situation has been somewhat ameliorated by multiple farmers markets throughout the city that accept …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2018): Forum On Honors And Social Justice, National Collegiate Honors Council

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Call for Papers

Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines

Dedication to Jack W. Rhodes

Editor’s Introduction — Ada Long

Forum on “Honors And Social Justice”

Thinking Critically, Acting Justly . — Naomi Yavneh Klos

Making Honors Success Scripts Available to Students from Diverse Backgrounds — Richard Badenhausen

Cultivating Empathy: Lessons from an Interdisciplinary Service-Learning Course — Megan Jacobs and Marygold Walsh-Dilley

Socioeconomic Equity in Honors Education: Increasing Numbers of First-Generation and Low-Income Students — Angela D. Mead

Social Justice Education in Honors: Political but Non-Partisan — Sarita Cargas

Research Essays

What Makes a Curriculum Significant? Tracing the Taxonomy …

Making Honors Success Scripts Available To Students From Diverse Backgrounds, Richard Badenhausen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In her lead forum essay, Naomi Yavneh Klos thoughtfully encourages us to reexamine our admissions practices in honors. She argues,

"We need a more nuanced reevaluation of standards that recognizes the role of systemic bias in traditional metrics of academic excellence and that holistically evaluates each student’s strengths and challenges in the context of individual and cultural experience. Such practices strengthen honors by identifying a diverse spectrum of students who both benefit from and enrich our honors community. (8)"

I would like to take that call for reevaluation one step further by asking members of the honors community to interrogate …

Social Justice Education In Honors: Political But Non-Partisan, Sarita Cargas

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?, Neil Gross introduces research that suggests fifty to sixty percent of college professors are leftist or liberal, a much higher proportion than the seventeen percent of Americans in general (7). He posits the conservative fear that “bias” in higher education is a “very serious” problem (Gross 5). April Kelly-Woessner and Matthew Woessner examine studies that also show that college students are more ideologically diverse than the professoriate (498) and, further, that students tend to discredit information presented by biased professors and consider them untrustworthy sources (499). If the majority …

Cultivating Empathy: Lessons From An Interdisciplinary Service-Learning Course, Megan Jacobs, Marygold Walsh-Dilley

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In “Thinking Critically, Acting Justly,” Naomi Yavneh Klos suggests that the key questions for honors education and social justice are first “how to engage our highest-ability and most motivated students in questions of justice” and second “how honors can be a place of access, equity, and excellence in higher education.” These goals are both important and complementary; achieving the latter helps achieve the former. Honors education creates a fruitful space for inclusion where the knowledge and experience of diverse students develop skills oriented toward justice for the whole community. Making honors a place of access and equity prompts deeper engagement …

From Campus To Corporation: Using Developmental Assessment Centers To Facilitate Students’ Next Career Steps, Rick R. Jacobs, Kaytlynn R. Griswold, Kristen L. Swigart, Greg E. Loviscky, Rachel L. Heinen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

introduction

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. —Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Honors graduates have much to learn when transitioning into their first position after college. For instance, workplaces have an entirely different culture and set of expectations from undergraduate honors classrooms (Wendlandt & Rochlen). Furthermore, the skills they need to become successful employees or graduate students are different from those required of successful honors college students, with a greater emphasis on communication skills (Stevens) as one example.

Honors students are bright, curious, and hard-working (Achterberg), and honors programs give …

General Strain Theory And Prescription Drug Misuse Among Honors Students, Jordan Pedalono, Kelly Frailing

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under fifty years of age, having surpassed deaths from guns, HIV, and even car crashes. Clearly driving this trend is prescription drug misuse, especially of opioids. Of the over 62,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016 alone, a full third resulted from the misuse of prescription opioids such as Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Vicodin, and Morphine (Katz; NIDA; see also DHS). Evidence indicates that college students are among those losing their lives each year to prescription drug misuse (Spencer), but many facets of prescription drug misuse, including types, prevalence, and especially explanations, are …

Socioeconomic Equity In Honors Education: Increasing Numbers Of First-Generation And Low-Income Students, Angela D. Mead

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Many honors administrators can cite the numbers and percentages of students of color and statistics on the male to female ratio. Public institutions might cite in-state to out-of-state comparisons. For most, however, socioeconomic status is low on their list, if there at all, even though it is an important measure of diversity. First-generation college students, neither of whose parents has a baccalaureate degree, make up 58% of college enrollments (Redford & Hoyer). Students with a Pell Grant, which qualifies them as having a low-income background, compose 33% of the American higher education population (Baum et al.). Approximately 24% of college …

Editorial Matter: Jnchc 19:1 (Spring/Summer 2018)

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Cover

Masthead

Indexing Statement

Production Editors

Editorial Board

Contents

Call for Papers

Editorial Policy

Deadlines

Submission Guidelines

Dedication -- Jack W. Rhodes, The Citadel

Forum on Honors and Social Justice

About the Authors

About the NCHC Monograph Series

NCHC Monographs & Journals

NCHC Publications Order Form

Back cover

ISBN 978-0-9911351-9-6

2018 Research & Scholarship Schedule, University Of Southern Maine

1st Annual USM Research & Scholarship Symposium

Symposium schedule and workshop descriptions.

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: About The Authors, Richard Badenhausen, Hanne Ten Berge, Meg Case, Milton D. Cox, Susan E. Dinan, James Ford, Annmarie Guzy, Matthew Carey Jordan, Leslie G. Kaplan, Barbara J. Millis, Ken R. Mulliken, Dahliani Reynold, Becky L. Spritz, Janina Tosic, Rob Van Der Vaart, Todd Zakrajsek, John Zubizarreta, Jeffrey A. Portnoy

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

No abstract provided.

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: The Honors Professional Development Portfolio: Claiming The Value Of Honors For Improvement, Tenure, And Promotion

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

All of us working in honors face a similar challenge when we are asked to account for the value of our efforts as teachers or leaders in our honors programs or colleges. Much of what we do is invisible to all but the most discerning and appreciative eyes: hours spent designing new courses and pedagogical approaches; advising students on curricular, career, and personal matters; coordinating faculty and student development opportunities; forging beneficial alliances across campus to grow and strengthen our institutional areas; collaborating with students on research projects; drafting grants and other proposals; maintaining alumnae relations; leading students to academic …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Constructing An Honors Composition Course To Support A Research-Based Honors Curriculum

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As the research focus of post-secondary honors education intensifies, the honors composition course can be designed to support this mission by introducing students to discipline-specific research tools and argumentation styles while building an interdisciplinary community of scholars who can debate issues both within and outside their fields. Not only do students develop skills in selecting, reading, and writing researched academic arguments, but they also gain insight into the publication and presentation processes as related to professional development in a given discipline. Students learn how publishers and editors serve as gatekeepers of what is considered knowledge in a field, how researchers …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Building And Enhancing Honors Programs Through Faculty Learning Communities

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Many important institutional concerns and opportunities, observes John R. Cosgrove, involve honors programs and colleges, such as their impact on undergraduate academic performance, retention, and graduation (Cosgrove). Another consideration for honors programs is the area of curriculum revision or enhancement, for example, increasing ethical inquiry across courses in the honors curriculum. Others involve inspiring faculty to create new honors courses, adjusting criteria for student requirements and recognition, initiating joint enterprises with liberal education and STEM programs, and advancing the role of the honors curriculum in advocating change across the institution. These opportunities beckon solutions that can be investigated and proposed …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Foreword, Richard Badenhausen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

When I first stumbled upon honors education over two decades ago while team-teaching a seminar called “Poetry and the Condition of Music,” it was the freedom inside and outside the classroom that most caught my attention. Sprung from the shackles of my usual British Literature survey, one in which students trudged through a rigid chronology of canonical authors, I was free to design a course with the university’s choral director that put ancient oral poets in dialogue with rap musicians; that explored the collaboration between W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten; that set Langston Hughes against crucial jazz influences. Additionally, …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Reading To Improve Teaching And Learning, John Zubizarreta

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Scholarship on teaching and learning has exploded in volume and influence in recent decades, providing all of us who are dedicated to improving our roles as professors with a dizzying array of books and other resources. Faculty development as a specific area of study and professional growth and centers designed to promote and support better teaching (often called CETLs for Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning or CATLs for Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning) have multiplied on campuses around the globe.

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Teaching For Learning In Honors Courses: Identifying And Implementing Effective Educational Practices

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Teaching and learning are interesting endeavors. As faculty members, we spend a great deal of time working with students to help them understand a concept, a fact, or a point of view, but we often do not spend equal time better understanding and improving teaching and learning. Time and again, individual educators note that they were trained in a given discipline, not in the process of teaching. In most states, it takes more credentialing in teaching to become a first-grade instructor in math than it does to teach a graduate seminar in psychology. Because of the assumption that those who …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Using Student-Generated Questions To Promote Learning

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Faculty who teach gifted honors students often ask themselves, “How can I ask questions that foster higher-order thinking?” “How can I get more students to respond?” “How can I ensure that students are learning from question-based discussions?” Another key concern: “How can I get students to begin interacting with each other rather than conducting a discussion much like a ping-pong match where the rapid exchanges occur only between a single student and me and then another student and me?” This last question can lead faculty to a different model of questioning, one in which students generate questions that are then …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Honors Components In Honors Faculty Development

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In this chapter we describe the design characteristics of a professional development course about honors teaching. We claim that the principles of learning and teaching in honors are also applicable to the design of a course for honors faculty.

The context of our research is Utrecht University in The Netherlands, a large and high-ranking research university that offers undergraduate and graduate programs in a wide variety of academic disciplines. Dutch higher education does not have a longstanding

tradition in honors; Utrecht University was among the first research universities that started experimenting with honors programs in the 1990s. The rationale was …