Liberal Studies Commons^™

Embracing New Opportunities In And Beyond First-Year Honors Composition, Teagan Decker, Scott Hicks

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Authors describe course-embedded research experiences at a diverse, rural, regional university. Emphasizing the capacity for conventional teaching and learning in first-year honors composition, these experiences provide relationshiprich education through faculty and peer mentorships. Positing that first-year honors composition is undervalued as a means for establishing programmatic foundations that resonate with students throughout their honors experience, the authors reinforce its importance as a place for disciplinary research and thus for opportunities in mentoring. By addressing an urgent need for mentoring underrepresented students, the authors consider how a research-based first-year honors composition course might help such students make meaningful disciplinary connections. A …

Building Community During Covid-19 And Beyond: How A Community Garden Strengthened An Honors Community, Steve Garrison

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Amid social distancing restrictions, community gardening becomes a focal point of one honors program. While providing fresh produce to the campus food pantry, this student-run initiative generates a new setting for experiential and service learning.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, honors programs across the U.S. struggled to maintain community as higher education moved largely to a virtual setting. Although this shift produced numerous innovations in creative programming, real social interaction greatly diminished. For young adults, social interaction is especially crucial to intellectual and social development, and with community as a key pillar of honors education, compensating for this …

Disorientations And Disruptions: Innovating First-Year Honors Education Through Collaborative Mapping Projects, Nathan W. Swanson

Honors in Practice Online Archive

A series of courses on the Evolution of Ideas introduces interdisciplinary study, develops collaborative discourse, and promotes a sense of community among first-year honors students. The curriculum encourages faculty to use a range of strategies to help students understand an idea and its history while also fostering awareness as to its social, political, economic, and broader contexts. Using the social history of maps as an example, the author demonstrates how disrupting students’ understanding of the map itself and, through creative group projects, disorienting emergent understanding of campus spaces, fosters a questioning atmosphere and makes room for growth. Through planned disorientation …

Creating Knowledge: The Literary Dictionary Assignment, Rebecca Cepek

Honors in Practice Online Archive

A literary dictionary assignment provides honors students with an understanding of the ways knowledge shifts and changes over time as well as an opportunity to create knowledge rather than just recall correct answers.

For honors students, reciting the correct definitions of key terms—regardless of discipline—is generally simple. Where they struggle is understanding the ways such definitions may shift over time, shedding or accruing meanings with changes in usage, context, and critical perspective. To allow students to engage with such changes and to continue a tradition of “teaching the conflicts,” I have students create a dictionary of literary terms over the …

Honors In Practice, Volume 18 (2022)

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Editorial Policy, Deadline, and Submission Guidelines

Dedication to P. Brent Register

Editor’s Introduction • Ada Long

2021 Conference Remarks

A Sense of Belonging (Presidential Address) • Suketu Bhavsar

The 2021 NCHC Founders Award: Samuel Schuman (Introductory Remarks) • Bernice Braid

Essays

Counterstories of Honors Students of Color • Michael Carlos Gutiérrez

Inclusive and Effective Holistic Admission Frameworks for Honors Programs: A Case Study Continued • Andrea Radasanu and Gregory Barker

Constitution Day: An Opportunity for Honors Colleges to Promote Civic Engagement • Richard J. Hardy, Paul A. Schlag, and Keith Boeckelman

Serving through Transcribing: Preserving History while …

“Best Of Both Worlds”: Alumni Perspectives On Honors And The Liberal Arts, Angela King Taylor, Kelsey Daniels, Molly Knowlton

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This study explores the extent to which skills acquired through liberal arts curricula facilitate immediate post-graduate employment of honors college alumni. Using qualitative methods and semi-structured interviews (n = 16), authors examine the honors college experience and the attainment of skills through the lens of graduates (2017–2020) at a large research institution. Results indicate that while honors alumni identify certain skills that helped them realize initial employment, they were often unable to translate and apply these skills in professional workplaces, particularly nonacademic ones. Data further suggest that liberal arts skills (communication, research competence, critical reasoning, intercultural competence, interdisciplinary inquiry, disciplinary …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council Vol. 23, No. 2. Fall/Winter 2022

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Inside this Issue:

Frontmatter: Masthead • Call for Papers • Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines • Dedication to Patricia J. Smith

Editor’s Introduction. • Ada Long

Forum Essays on “Honors Beyond the Liberal Arts”

Who Owns Honors? • K. Patrick Fazioli

Bringing Professional Honors Communities into NCHC • Beata Jones

Honors Education Is Discipline-Neutral • Mike Sloane

Honors Is Pedagogy • John Zubizarreta

The Messages Are Everywhere: An Intersectional City as Text™ Approach to Enhance Honors Preprofessional Student Learning • Carla Janell Pattin

Modifying Practices to Serve Underrepresented Preprofessional Students with Help from Gifted Education • Bailey …

Finding My Place, Daphne Watson

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.

Each of us enters higher education with our own life experiences and beliefs. As a Black woman over forty, I was not your typical college sophomore. Returning to college full-time filled me with uncertainty, so unlike when I first began undergrad more than twenty years prior. A lifetime of highs and lows, failures and successes cultivated a certain fearlessness, yet I was unsure of where I …

Connections, Andy Walker

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.

I went off to college confident that I knew what I needed from higher education and just how I would put it to use. I had not yet learned of hubris and was afflicted by the arrogance of youth, born of ignorance. Fortunately for me, grown-ups had designed the required curriculum that, along with a scholarship, was part of my honors program, and I was blessed …

Is Honors Worth The Extra Effort?, Quimby Wechter

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.

When many students think about participating in an honors program, their minds immediately rush to harder courses and more work. Frankly, many brilliant classmates did not pursue the honors program because they did not see the benefit. They failed to recognize the implicit value of pursuing a program that is simultaneously challenging and nurturing. Although I did not notice it each day, the honors program had …

Cross-Cultural Connections: How Traditional And Preprofessional Honors Programs Can Survive And Thrive Together, Lynne C. Elkes

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Traditional and preprofessional honors programs have historically been at odds with each other due to the prevailing wisdom that the latter do not reflect the values espoused by the liberal arts. The truth is that both kinds of programs serve engaged scholars of various types in different ways. The values of care, mentorship, and concentrated studies are at the heart of honors programs and the people who administer them, and the national honors organization (NCHC) should be inclusive in developing outlets for both traditional and professional curricula in order to strengthen what is offered and optimally serve the most promising …

Editor's Introduction (To Jnchc 23:2), Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (JNCHC) includes a Forum on “Honors Beyond the Liberal Arts.” The focus of the Forum, as established in the title as well as in its lead essay by K. Patrick Fazioli, is the desirability of outreach to professional schools by the NCHC and by honors educators generally. Although the essays reveal a shared and unambiguous consensus about what is meant by “professional schools,” they display considerable differences in what people mean by “the liberal arts.” While the standard dictionary definition of the liberal arts includes the sciences and social …

Disordered Eating, Perfectionism, Stress, And Satisfaction In Honors: A Research Collaborative Investigating A Community Concern, Jeffrey E. Hecker, Jainie Giguere, Ethan Lowell, Mimi Killinger, Bailey Lewis, Ailin Liebler-Bendix

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Moved by the lived experience of an honors student, authors describe a three-year Honors and Eating Concerns Research Collaborative (2019–2022), which examines the relationship between perfectionism and eating concerns among honors students. Under faculty advisement, first- and second-year honors psychology majors (n = 5) participated in the collective, carrying out three empirical studies (producing two honors theses) and gathering data from 413 high-achieving students across the curriculum (54 identifying as honors). In survey research, the instruments used were questionnaires and interviews; measures involved four scales—Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APSR), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ), and Eating Disorder Examination …

Who Owns Honors?, K. Patrick Fazioli

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The long-term shift in undergraduate enrollment away from traditional humanities disciplines toward vocationally oriented majors poses a unique set of challenges for honors. While some have responded by emphasizing humanities’ centrality to honors education, this essay argues the imperative that honors practitioners and administrators improve outreach efforts to preprofessional honors programs. After considering why fields outside the liberal arts and sciences are underrepresented in the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), the author outlines a number of strategies for soliciting greater participation from academic leaders and faculty in these disciplines as well as improving the experience of careerfocused majors in liberal …

Who Owns Honors? Whoever Defines It—And Maybe, Who Pays For It, Linda Frost

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author examines an evolving landscape for professional honors programs at her institution to consider the inherent relationship between the ownership of honors and its varying definitions as new programs are proposed and launched. Deciding what counts as honors is an exercise not just in classification but also in economics, given the financial benefits that often accompany what is called “honors.”

Bringing Professional Honors Communities Into Nchc, Beata M. Jones

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In response to the issue’s lead essay (Fazioli, 2022), the author warns that if honors programs and professional organizations fail to engage with preprofessional students and programs, the opportunities for building impactful relationships with stakeholders, realizing growth potential, and developing quality educational offerings in honors will be missed. Offering tangible ways to bring professional school colleagues and their students into honors and the global honors community, the author urges NCHC to meet this imperative if it is to articulate its commitment to solving the problems facing our world today and realize its collective mission.

Modifying Practices To Serve Underrepresented Preprofessional Students With Help From Gifted Education, Bailey J. Nafziger

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Gifted education and honors education often parallel one another. By using a theoretical construct from gifted education as guidance, honors colleges could adjust their programs to spark interest and expedite talent development of minorities in STEM and health preprofessional tracks. Small improvements include adjusting advising models, using phenomena-based teaching practices to frame science content in a more feminine context, and making room for indigenous epistemologies in coursework. Adjustments to honors programs may bridge the gap between honors and preprofessional tracks while helping to increase diversity in STEM professional fields.

The Messages Are Everywhere: An Intersectional City As Text™ Approach To Enhance Honors Preprofessional Student Learning, Carla Janell Pattin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay recounts efforts to teach liberal arts to engineering, nursing, pharmacy, and pre-medicine majors. Showing how various forms of public media reinforce harmful ideologies about social identities in the United States serves as a convergence between preprofessional disciplines and the liberal arts. At the same time, City as Text™ offers exploratory learning beyond the traditional classroom. This educational approach fosters students’ transformation in thinking about power and privilege, enabling a dialogue about the miseducation of various economic, racial, ethnic, gender, and (dis)abled communities.

Honors Education Is Discipline-Neutral, Mike Sloane

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Neither the historical antecedents of honors education in the Oxford tutorial model nor Aydelotte’s implementation of honors at Swarthmore College in 1922 involves a privileging of the humanities within honors education. The signature characteristics of honors education and pedagogies are discipline-neutral. Though the historical and institutional implementation of honors education in the U.S. has resulted in a privileging of the humanities, there are no intrinsic constraints on expanding honors to science-focused and preprofessional curricula. Such an expansion would enhance the future viability of honors programs within institutions as well as the future of professional organizations and publications.

Honors Is Pedagogy, John Zubizarreta

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In response to the issue of why and how the humanities—and more broadly the liberal arts and sciences—have historically dominated honors education and disregarded preprofessional fields, the author finds that the crux of the problem is not the nature or worth of the disciplines involved or why this or that subject area is de facto included or excluded from honors. Instead, the author argues that honors is not about privileging specific content in any academic domain but about the approaches to teaching and learning that distinguish the honors enterprise. Grounded in creative, participatory, experiential strategies of what we know as …

Frontmatter 23.2: Cover • Masthead • Call For Papers • Editorial Policy, Deadlines, And Submission Guidelines • Dedication To Patricia J. Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

No abstract provided.

Jnchc Vol. 23, No. 1 (2022): Backmatter, National Collegiate Honors Council

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

No abstract provided.

My Honors Experience As Authentic To My Life, Ayesha Ahmed

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.

Jnchc 23:1 Backmatter

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

about the research authors

about the nchc monograph series

NCHC Monographs & Journals

NCHC Publications Order Form

In This Issue

The Lexicon Of Honors Education, Laura Barrett

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.

The word of the year, as my LIU Brooklyn Honors Program peers and I would identify it in 1979, was “juxtaposition,” not a word I was very familiar with before entering college but one that was tossed about with abandon by professors in my first-year seminars (including Bernice Braid, director and co-founder of the LIU Brooklyn Honors Program) and that would become a close friend by …

From Community Service And Advocacy To A Life Of Civil Service, Autumn Barszczowski

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.

The value of an honors education goes far beyond a specific honors course or project as students gain valuable skills that impact both their personal and professional life. In the almost three years since graduating university, I still find that my honors education has impacted my outlook on life and how I approach various situations in my day-to-day life. After graduation, I decided to pursue a …

Ten Of Ten, Would Recommend, Jamie Beason

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.

I sit on the Honors College Advisory Board at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, my alma mater, where I participated in the Business and University Honors Programs from 2004 through 2008. My first draft of this essay was written before listening to a current honors student describe how University Honors is impacting their life. In that moment, I quickly realized that what they were …

A Bridge To Belonging, Angeline Best

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.

Growing up as a child of immigrants in a predominantly white community, I felt the tension of an identity crisis early on. I remember being the only Vietnamese person in my class and having to explain why my mom packed me rice for lunch instead of sandwiches. I remember not being able to make friends easily at school, instead seeking out other Vietnamese children down the …

Gadgets And Gizmos, Seth Blanton

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Life in honors largely took place in a lounge on the first floor of the Liberal Arts building. Students congregated after, before, and in-between classes, discussing life, school, love, food, and all things in between. Discussions veered into decisions—courses, graduate school, love, and food. That is to say, through its organization, location, and design honors, examined life fastidiously and fatuously. Honors provided community and guidance. It also introduced us to ideas, books, movies, and people that otherwise would have been absent from our educations. Many of the books have faded from my memory, but the people and ideas continue to …

The Honors Connection: Openness And Empathy, Samantha Bronow

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.

I entered college as a performing arts major and graduated with a degree in economics, a rather seismic shift at face value. College is a time of great exploration and soul-searching, and while such freedom is exhilarating, it is often very stressful to sort through constantly evolving goals. Despite transitioning through three different majors, I was able to graduate in four years as planned, largely thanks …