Liberal Studies Commons^™

Understanding And Addressing Mental Health In Honors Programs, Gavin D. Hood, Katherine H. Tennis

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Evidence of psychological experiences unique to high-achieving students is examined, revealing prominent themes relating to student mental health including academic identity, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, burnout, and overcommitment. These themes are explored in the context of program feedback from honors students gathered through focus group meetings as part of the program review process. Strategies for reframing failure, normalizing self-care, fostering supportive community, and engaging in nonacademic self-exploration are included. The article closes with suggestions for programmatic interventions that directly address these concerns among high-achieving students. While most honors programs are not positioned to engage in clinical interventions, they can take small …

Connecting Classroom And Community: Building Ecosystems For Meaningful Alternative Breaks, Chelsea Redger-Marquardt, Jean A. Patterson

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay presents best practices in experiential learning via an alternative break program at a large public research university. In this interpretative qualitative study, authors analyze on-trip reflective blogs of students participating in an immersive alternative spring break program focused on food and shelter insecurity in Washington, D.C. (n = 11). A sensemaking/sensegiving theoretical framework is applied to explore the role of program partnering between student affairs (alternative break) and honors (coursework). Findings suggest that special care and attention be given when creating strong, direct-service experiences through reciprocal community partnerships, creating spaces for reflection during the immersive experience, and …

Generative Ai And The Honors Thesis: A Rhetorical Framework For Gai Policy, Pedagogy, And Equity, Sean Chadwick

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article offers a rhetorical framework for understanding how honors students engage with the capstone thesis following the emergence of generative AI (GAI) tools. Author reviews the nature of the honors thesis and analyzes some rhetorical models for thinking about GAI and literacy before offering a heuristic framework identifying four interdependent skill categories—writing, social, executive, and subject matter—that shape students’ thesis work. Drawing on findings from an interview study, this framework clarifies how GAI tools interface with existing thesis practices and pain points, allowing honors practitioners to better articulate our values, evaluate use cases, and craft GAI-informed policy. As a …

Motivational Factors Influencing Honors Student Attrition: An Expectancy–Value Perspective, Nina Marijanović, Naomi Rowland, Morgan Flanagan, E. Myo Zin, Megan Bailey

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This study investigates the motivational factors underlying student withdrawal from an honors college using expectancy-value theory (EVT) as a guiding framework. Drawing on qualitative analysis of self-reported withdrawal forms (n = 1,110) collected between 2018 and 2023 at a midsize public university, authors identify the core drivers of attrition across three constructs of EVT: expectancy (belief in one’s ability to succeed), value (perceived benefits of participation), and cost (perceived burdens or tradeoffs). Findings indicate the most common motivations as value-related concerns, including misalignment with academic goals or career trajectories. Cost-related factors, such as workload demands, scheduling conflicts, and financial …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council (2025) 26(1): Front And Back Matter

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Front and back matter for the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (2025) 26(1).

Investing In The Future, Sophia Phelan

Posters - 2025

Research question

Do HBCUs and HSIs liberal arts provide higher returns on investments than Non-Minority Serving liberal arts institutions for students?

Uniqueness of HBCUs and HSIs

Historically Black Universities and Colleges

• Must be founded before 1964

• Provide educational opportunities for Black Americans

• Strong ties to Black culture and history

• Focus on community service and leadership development

Hispanic-Serving Institutions

• At least 25% of the student body is Hispanic or Latino

• Incorporate culturally relevant curriculum and support services

• Committed to making higher education accessible to Hispanic students

The Grizzly, March 27, 2025, Kate Horan, Renee Washart, Xazlee Carroll-Smith, Caitlin Cunnane, Emily Veasey, Adam Denn, Jesse Cherone

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Stand Up for Science Rally • Parlee Center Receives $3.2 Million Gift • Nowruz, the Persian New Year Celebration • Ritter Refresh • Breaking Biology Barriers • Opinion: "Who Are You, the Fashion Police?" • Wonderful Winter Stars! • Baseball's Successful Spring

The Grizzly, March 6, 2025, Kate Horan, Jesse Cherone, Ashley Adam, Nathaniel Nerone, Saher Khan, Sidney Belleroche, Adam Denn

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Bears' Basketball Season Comes to an End • Tidbits About Title IX • Bears Together Strong • Saher on the Modern Rainbow Scare • Fundamentals • Opinions: Ranking Dining Options on Campus • Gymnastics Looks to Finish Strong! • Women's Wrestling Ready to Rumble

Collaborative Ai: Oer Materials For Exploring Ai As A Partner Rather Than A Tool, David Smith

Open Educational Resources

The Collaborative AI Open Educational Resource (OER) explores how artificial intelligence can act as a creative and analytical collaborator rather than a tool. Centered on the Balanced Blended Space (BBS) framework and the philosophy of the Center for Holistic Integration (CHI), the OER includes curriculum materials, theoretical models, and live research environments. It offers an interesting approach to blending physical, virtual, and conceptual spaces through shared human–AI agency and invites ongoing participation in interdisciplinary meta-projects.

The Grizzly, February 27, 2025, Kate Horan, Caitlin Cunnane, Renee Washart, Nathaniel Nerone, Claudia Tracy, Emily Veasey, Adam Denn, Jesse Cherone

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

The Fateful Fire of Elliott House • Mother Mold: A Cosmogony • Couldn't Have Been an Email • Grubhub: Convenience or Chaos? • Opinions: Where Are My Fabulous Friends? • Bears Going to Battle: Men's Wrestling • Bears' Basketball Squads Make Conference Playoffs

The Grizzly, February 20, 2025, Kate Horan, Sidney Belleroche, Renee Washart, Claudia Tracy, Adam Denn, Ashley Adam

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Sigma Gamma Rho: Semester of Service • The UC Tonight Modern Band • BearShare Now Open! • After the Career Fair: Checklist • Bird is the Word! • El Gordo Bros: Adding Flavor to Collegeville • Opinions: Bear-Bones • Ursinus Swimming Set for Championships! • A Wonderful Weekend of Sports: February 15-16th

An Attitude Of Openness: Adapting Body Neutrality For Performers, Kerstin A. Vaughn, Emily Baird

Feminist Pedagogy

For performers, specifically dancers and actors, the body constitutes the vast majority of focus and training. It is what we present onstage, share with audiences, and contract to casting directors and choreographers. Our bodies, the way they look and move, directly influence the amount and quality of work we make. The concept of body neutrality, then, poses an interesting challenge for performers and those of us who train them. How do we balance a healthy relationship with the body while also thinking critically about all of the ways our bodies carry meaning in performance? How do we, as educators, promote …

The Grizzly, February 13, 2025, Kate Horan, Sidney Belleroche, Renee Washart, Nathaniel Nerone, Claudia Tracy, Emily Veasey, Hadley Whitman, Jesse Cherone

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

The Launch of Soulful Creations • Annual UC Career Fair Coming Soon! • CIE Syllabus Change Proposals • Professor Pairs • Behind Their Doors: Meet the New Staff of Ursinus • Valentine's Day: Friend or Foe? • Shattering Limits: Bears Break School Records • Basketball Bears Push Towards Playoffs!

Navigating Climate Action: The River As Teacher For Eco-Literacy, Educational Regeneration And Creative Participation, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cultures' engagements with land and its more-than-human elements reveal their attitudes toward these dimensions, spanning a spectrum from reciprocal to transactional practices. In time, these engagements form a body of knowledges that nurtures the culture and its land, or arrests their vital and diverse qualities. This research project aims to bring to light how the different ways of engaging with and relating to land are embedded in knowledge production, distribution and communication—in short, in general educational endeavors and their philosophies—to promote a better understanding of the principles of eco-literacy. Additionally, a purpose of this project is to provide insights into …

Team Teaching As Honors Faculty Professional Development, Richard Badenhausen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Discusses how team teaching may serve as professional learning and development for honors faculty in higher education and why it is valuable to frame it as such.

A Critical Role For An Honors Community Of Practice, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson, Scott O'Leary, Scott Breuninger, Karen D. Youmans, Jeff Chamberlain, Sheila Nowinski

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The Honors Community of Practice is a promising form of professional development in honors, where the wide variety of institutions, professional roles, and structures can present challenges to inclusive and relevant programming. The HCoP’s flexible and responsive format allows individuals in different contexts to connect, share resources, and learn from one another. The fluid nature of HCoP discussions, in which participants shift between mentor and mentee roles, highlights expertise in the community and encourages new voices to emerge. Of course, the advantages of Communities of Practice are not confined to honors. Their adaptability and simplicity make it effective programming in …

An Edifying Honors Collaboration, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Hedi M. Appel, Joy L. Hart, Paul Knox, Andrea Radasanu, Daniel M. Roberts, Timothy J. Nichols, Leigh E. Fine, William L. Ziegler, Mary Bryk, Susan Sumner, Rachael Budowle, Kaetlyn Cordingly, Graham E. Bastian, Noah Roerig, Adam Stroud, Keith Garbutt

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In this chapter, we describe how one honors collaborative was formed, how it functions, and how it continues to evolve. For members of this collaborative, it has been an extraordinary professional journey with edifying impacts as we have been instructed, improved, and enlightened by our involvement.

Our collaborative emerged as a space to engage with colleagues across the nation with the common goal of better preparing honors students to tackle the grand challenges we face as a society (Appel et al., 2023). It comprises a network of honors leaders from 14 universities representing a variety of land-grant, Historically Black Colleges …

Hacking Through The Silos: Honors Faculty Development, Joy L. Hart, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson, Hedi M. Appel, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Paul Knox, Susan Sumner, Noah Roerig, William L. Ziegler, Leigh E. Fine

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Based on our work with a multi-institutional honors hackathon, we examine the faculty benefits of planning and leading hackathons, focusing especially on enhanced understanding across disciplines—or hacking through academic silos.

Where Honors Education And Faculty Development Meet: Front And Back Matter, John Zubizarreta, Victoria M. Bryan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Front and back matter

Where Honors Education and Faculty Development Meet [NCHC Monograph Series], John Zubizarreta and Victoria M. Bryan, editors

Lincoln, Nebraska, United States: National Collegiate Honors Council, 2025

Includes:

Front and back covers

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword, Victoria Mundy Bhavsar and Suketu P. Bhavsar

Introduction, John Zubizarreta and Victoria M. Bryan

About the authorsAbout the NCHC Monograph Series

List of NCHC monographs and journals

NCHC publications order form

From the back cover:

This volume contains an assorted collection of theoretical and practical essays that demonstrate the value of collaborations between honors programs or colleges and faculty development, …

Lgbtq+ Maine Timeline (Sources Included), Megan Macgregor

USM Libraries & Learning Scholarship

This timeline is in no way complete. If you would like to add something to the timeline please reach out to Megan MacGregor ([email protected]) with the event AND a source showing that it happened.

Leadership Academy: Fostering Honors Faculty Growth Through Peer-To-Peer Learning, Chelsea Redger-Marquardt, Doug Stucky, Cindi Mason, Bobby Berry, Samantha Gregus, Kimberly Engber

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Discusses the Lead for Tomorrow program at the Cohen Honors Leadership Academy at Wichita State University, fostering honors faculty growth through peer-to-peer learning.

Empowering Honors Education: A Joint Initiative For Teaching Excellence And Curriculum Enhancement, Alexandra Bitton-Bailey, Ryan Z. Good, Gabriela Hamerlinck, Melissa L. Johnson

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors leaders should consider faculty development partnerships as outlets for not only communicating instructional opportunities to a wider audience but also broadening teaching opportunities for faculty in departments that are not always represented and for faculty in non-tenure-track as well as tenure-track lines. An ongoing partnership with a faculty development group can also help honors leaders stay aware of teaching with new technologies, manage emergent trends in the classroom such as the use of artificial intelligence, contribute to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and provide an outlet for reflection about honors instruction. The CTE-Honors partnership at the University of …

Leadership And Change From Within: An Honors College And Ctl Partnership, Connie M. Schroeder, Hilary K. Snow

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Scaling sustainable change in teaching and learning is an institutional priority in higher education, yet often it is elusive, given the decentralized and siloed academic landscape. Most colleges and departments lack the necessary expertise to design and implement scaled change or the critical organizational structures to sustain change. Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) seek to advance improvement in teaching and learning and highlight improving institutional culture as part of their mission. Reliance on traditional programming and consultations, however, primarily targets individual change versus scaled or sustainable change.

The successful process of change at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Honors College …

Reimagining An Honors Education: Building A Community Of 21st-Century Learners, Robyn M. Brighton, Rebecca J. Toole

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Throughout the spring 2021 academic term and in response to a multiyear redesign of the long-established Seneff Honors College, faculty and staff from both the honors college and the Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Valencia College set out to develop a professional development certification that would provide faculty with the information and tools needed to develop an honors curriculum aligning with the newly designed honors college.

The Brief Life Of A Students-As-Partners Model For Improving General Education, Rick Fisher, Janel Seeley

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

A Students-as-Partners (SaP) model has significant potential for meaningful relationships between centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) and honors programs or colleges. Honors programs and colleges are excellent partners in that they often have flexibility in course offerings and students interested in non-traditional learning opportunities. Too often, education planning and assessment are done to students rather than with them. Having students conduct scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) on university-wide initiatives not only provides the institution with valuable information about its teaching and learning efforts but also offers applicable research experience for students that can meaningfully impact future programming.

A Comprhensive Honors College Faculty Certification Model, Magda J. Castineyra, Virginia Fuillerat, Marianne Maduro

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Provides an overview of the Honors College (HC) at Miami Dade College (MDC) which uses a faculty certification process to introduce the honors college model and present classroom expectations.

Honors Civic Foundations Faculty Fellows Program, Lauren E. Davis, Kevin D. Egan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In 2022–2023, Drexel University’s Pennoni Honors College implemented the Honors Civic Foundations Faculty Fellows Program, a new initiative for faculty development and enrichment grounded in principles of civic education.

A Faculty Inquiry Group For The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning In Honors, Kevin Sackreiter, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson, Christine Larson, Evren Celik-Wiltse

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This chapter details a collaboration between the Van D. and Barbara B. Fishback Honors College and the Center for Professional Enrichment and Teaching Excellence (CPETE), formerly known as the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), at South Dakota State University (SDSU). This collaboration launched an Honors Faculty Inquiry Group (FIG) on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Greater philosophical themes, such as the desire to normalize scholarly emphasis on teaching and learning and how honors faculty can serve as teaching leaders on campus, will be explored in addition to the practical details and outcomes of the collaboration.

From Classrooms To Communities: Integrating The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Into Honors Education, Megan Mcilreavy, Pamela L. Martin

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Embracing the United National Education for Sustainable Development (SDG) framework empowers students to reflect on their actions and understand current and future social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues from local and global perspectives. Inherent in the concept of lifelong learning, these values should resonate with our next generation of students (Gen Z) who, studies show, are making career choices that contribute to making real changes on our planet. Leveraging different institutional strengths, honors programs and colleges can tailor their education within the framework that SDG provides to accommodate various needs that will benefit the institution itself.

Launching Cures In Non-Traditional Settings: How One Honors Program Propels Primary Research For The Institution, Kathryn M. Macdonald

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This essay considers how course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) can drive original research. Honors students in career-oriented majors (accounting, hospitality management, health services administration, criminal justice) develop primary research studies that are proposed for institutional review and then conducted within a specific population across the university. The author describes the CURE model within an honors curriculum, observing that it actively engages students in the full research cycle from conceptualization to dissemination and fosters critical thinking, methodological rigor, and ethical awareness. The author recommends its use in either group or individual settings to honors programs seeking to position students as active …