Liberal Studies Commons^™

Congregational Honors: A Model For Inclusive Excellence, Naomi Yavneh Klos

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay proposes a conception of honors programs and colleges as sacred communities that acknowledge and embrace the unique human dignity of each of their members. Drawing on Ron Wolfson’s congregational model articulated in Relational Judaism, McMillan and Chavis’s definition of “sense of community,” and the pedagogy of educators such as Paolo Freire and bell hooks, I argue that to create a true culture of inclusive excellence, an honors program or college should not be constructed as a checklist of “exceptional experiences for exceptional students” but rather as a “community of relationships.” Leading with a student-centered, holistic focus that …

The Case For Heterodoxy, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite being originally designed to educate men, honors programs are not very attractive to male students in general and to male students of color in particular. Because access to honors programs is limited by a credentialing process that favors white men, many members of minority groups find them inhospitable and are significantly underrepresented. This essay suggests three concepts to be used to reimagine honors programs to be more welcoming of minority students: radical hospitality, asset-based thinking, and heterodoxy.

The Power Of Creation: Critical Imagination In The Honors Classroom, Jennie Woodard

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The article examines how to incorporate issues of social justice and diversity in the honors classroom through critical imagination. Inclusion and diversity are among the five strategic pillars of honors education, but the challenge is to create space for social justice as an academic inquiry. This article describes an honors project where students were tasked to come up with their own concept for a television show, using their imagination to bridge gaps in representations on television. Critical imagination allowed the students to move beyond analyzing television in its current state and conceptualize what more inclusive television could look like in …

Taking On The Challenges Of Diversity And Visibility: Thoughts From A Small Honors Program, Kathryn M. Macdonald

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Monroe College Honors Program, located in New York, enjoys an extremely diverse student body, which can be attributed to its location within and proximity to New York City. Data about the Monroe College Honors Program are presented. More importantly, this essay presents the strategies that the honors program uses to meet the needs of a diverse student body. Our students face many challenges, including difficult family situations and economic hardship, and so the honors program has created a rigorous but flexible curriculum and co-curriculum to meet their needs. The approaches used to serve this population focus on getting to …

Shunning Complaint: A Call For Solutions From The Honors Community, Richard Badenhausen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While members of the academy are particularly adept at complaining and poking holes in most proposals that cross their paths, we are less comfortable with offering solutions. This essay asks members of the honors community to consider some of the major challenges facing honors education today and propose solutions that might be adapted on a variety of campuses. Rather than asking respondents to take up rather straightforward issues that commonly face honors program and colleges, this piece urges readers to dig into more intractable problems like access, mental health, innovation, and the position of honors on campus.

No Complaints, Please: Just Time To Rethink Honors, Linda Frost

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article responds to a lead essay by Richard Badenhausen posing current challenges to honors education and requesting solutions. Frost argues that the place of honors in our undergraduate curriculum needs to be rethought in part because general education core requirements are shrinking; accordingly, the NCHC Basic Characteristics noting honors viability by the number of honors credit hours a student takes need to be revised as well. As one of the few nimble academic units in the university, the honors program or college has been, is, and can continue to be a key site for innovation on our campuses.

Being Honors Worthy: Lessons In Supporting Transfer Students, Carolyn Thomas, Eddy A. Ruiz, Heidi Van Beek, J. David Furlow, Jennifer Sedell

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the ever-growing discussion of how to build and support honors programs that reflect the diverse communities our institutions serve, the recruitment of transfer students has only recently been identified as a key avenue to enacting more equitable programs. Reflecting on four years of recruiting, enrolling, and graduating transfer students in the University Honors Program at the University of California, Davis, we push the conversation beyond how to welcome transfer students in honors to how to meaningfully support them. We present the initial findings of our ongoing self-assessment to stimulate discussion about the unique challenges and opportunities transfer students experience …

With Great Privilege Comes Great Responsibility, Anne Dotter

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay contends that honors education should seize the opportunity to expose our students to the horrors of our society such as “the violence against those among us with the least amount of power.” We can affirm our curricular foundation (writing, reflection, and critical thinking) by supplementing it with histories of oppression in order to better equip our students with the tools necessary to become change agents. Such a shift in curricular content and pedagogies could engender changes in our institutional practices that model successful collaboration across races, cultures, and disciplines for our students, ultimately leading the way to a …

Understanding The Development Of Honors Students’ Connections With Faculty, Shannon R. Dean

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Nearly 40% of full-time students enrolled at four-year institutions depart within the first year. Previous research has shown college students are more likely to graduate if they have meaningful interactions with faculty. Honors students provide unique perspectives because of their high levels of interaction with faculty, yet not much is known about how these connections develop. The purpose of this study was to understand how honors students develop connections with faculty. Six upper-division students were interviewed, and participants reflected on meaningful connections made with faculty during their first year. Two themes were identified as influential in developing connections: approachability of …

Resisting Commodification In Honors Education, Jodi J. Meadows

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The commodification of education is an increasing threat to university honors programs. In honors, we seek to unpack this transactional model of education and uncover the inherent joy of learning. Honors professionals can challenge the commodification of education by helping students contextualize their educational experiences and by facilitating joyful, self-directed learning. Framed by research of both gifted K–12 students and college honors students, this article explores specific conversations and course designs that may combat a commodification culture and foster self-reflection and self-direction in honors students.

Creating A Profile Of An Honors Student: A Comparison Of Honors And Non-Honors Students At Public Research Universities In The United States, Andrew J. Cognard-Black, Art L. Spisak

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This study uses data from the 2018 Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Survey of undergraduate degree-seeking students to develop a profile of an honors student. Nineteen research universities participated in the 2018 SERU Survey, with a resulting sample size of almost 119,000 undergraduate students, of whom 15,280 reported participation in or completion of an honors program. No other study has surveyed honors students on such a scale and across so many institutions. This study could be useful for recruiting since it would give recruiters a better idea of what to look for that would make prospects successful in …

Faculty As Honors Problem Solvers, Annmarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Postsecondary honors educators are adept at identifying problems and proposing solutions in honors education, but they may not disseminate their solutions effectively. This essay argues that honors administrators should familiarize themselves with the professional and scholarly resources that NCHC institutional membership affords, and then they should share what they have learned with honors teaching faculty. Rather than simply serving as advisors on administrative and programmatic issues, honors faculty also need the tools and opportunities to be effective honors problem solvers for day-to-day pedagogical issues.

Honors And The Curiouser University, Kristine A. Miller

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

With roots in the Latin cūriōus, meaning “full of care or pains, careful, assiduous, inquisitive,” the word “curiosity,” like this forum on “Current Challenges to Honors Education,” grows out of both the pain and promise of critical inquiry. This essay takes up the challenge of moving honors from the periphery to the heart of higher education by daring to redefine the college or university itself. Honors fosters—and even demands—the curiosity to look beyond the comforting confines of one’s own mind. Facilitating the conversation, collaboration, and innovation that shape a curious university, honors offers students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community …

Disciplinary Affiliation And Administrators’ Reported Perception And Use Of Assessment, Patricia J. Smith, Andrew J. Cognard-Black

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Using survey data collected from 269 participants in the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2017, this study examines whether any changes might have occurred within the last 20 years regarding the disciplinary affiliation of honors administrators. Additionally, we explored current assessment practices of honors administrators and possible associations between these practices and the administrators’ disciplinary affiliation. Our study investigates disciplinary variation among honors directors in their attitudes toward and perceived effectiveness with outcomes assessment. While we mostly found similarities among directors/deans in their use of assessment, some significant differences occurred in attitudes toward and confidence with using assessment …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2019): Forum On Current Challenges To Honors Education

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Contents
Call for Papers
Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines
Dedication to Linda Frost
Editor’s Introduction Ada Long

Forum Essays on “Current Challenges to Honors Education”

Shunning Complaint: A Call for Solutions from the Honors Community Richard Badenhausen

Congregational Honors: A Model for Inclusive Excellence Naomi Yavneh Klos

Taking on the Challenges of Diversity and Visibility: Thoughts from a Small Honors Program Kathryn M. MacDonald

The Case for Heterodoxy Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

The Power of Creation: Critical Imagination in the Honors Classroom Jennie Woodard

With Great Privilege Comes Great Responsibility Anne Dotter

No Complaints, Please; Just Time to Rethink …

University-Community Engagement Projects: Design To Empower Community, Anthony Michael Hanline

Senior Projects

This paper examines University-Community engagement projects from the perspective of an adult student. Explicating the difficulties of community engagement as it applies to team based experiential learning, community partnerships, and university instructors, this paper analyzes personal experience of designing and implementing a community engagement project. To aid in overcoming the obstacles universities face engaging community this paper provides program specific suggestions and visual models explaining the importance of a flexible project design to the mobility, needs, and limitations of the community partner.

Academic Prioritization Or Killing The Liberal Arts?, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, professor of English at Linfield College, laments the downsizing of liberal arts and humanities programs and departments by college administrators bent on promoting more "job-oriented" disciplines.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

Law School News: Roger Williams University Announces 11th President 02-13-2019, Ed Fitzpatrick

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Diversity And Inclusion Annual Report, Truth And Reconciliation, 2018-2019, Lawrence University

Diversity and Inclusion Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Honors Value Added: Where We Came From, And What We Need To Know Next, Hallie E. Savage

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The pressure is on, and growing greater when it comes to defining, disseminating, and defending the value of higher education generally and the reasons for funding it (Harnisch 2011). Complaints abound regarding the rising costs of higher education, and many legislators and the public are demanding accountability. Funding cuts are forcing many colleges and universities to prioritize and to evaluate what merits support and what does not. As a part of a large array of undergraduate programs, honors programs and honors colleges face increasingly greater pressure to justify their existence.

That said, honors programs and colleges are in a good …

Community College Honors Benefits: A Propensity Score Analysis, Jane B. Honeycutt

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

According to Morgan and Badenhausen (2015), honors education began in the United States in 1921 when Frank Ayedelotte became president of Swarthmore College. At that time, Ayedelotte initiated an interdisciplinary curriculum that stressed critical thinking and active learning. Almost a century later, the National Collegiate Honors Council (2013) defines honors education in terms true to Ayedelotte’s original vision:

Honors education is characterized by in-class and extracurricular activities that are measurably broader, deeper, or more complex than comparable learning experiences . . . [and] honors experiences include a distinctive learnerdirected environment and philosophy. (para. 2)

Similar to four-year university honors programming, …

Proving The Value Of Honors Education:The Right Data And The Right Messaging, Bette L. Bottoms, Stacie L. Mccloud

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Administered within over 1,500 honors colleges and programs in two- and four-year institutions worldwide (National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) 2017; Scott and Smith 2016; Wolfensberger 2015), honors education serves the best interests of students and adds quality to the academic mission of host institutions by promoting the highest intellectual standards. Necessarily differing in form and content, all honors programs and colleges share the goals of identifying and supporting the most talented students as they achieve success in college and as they learn how to prepare not only for successful careers, but also for lifelong learning and meaningful civic engagement (Humphrey …

Demonstrating The Value Of Honors: What Next?, Jerry Herron

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Our professional organization, the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), has provided a good general definition of honors education while at the same time recognizing the “diversity of honors experiences across many institutions of higher learning.” Here’s how the definition reads, in part, from the NCHC website:

Honors education is characterized by in-class and extracurricular activities that are measurably broader, deeper, or more complex than comparable learning experiences typically found at institutions of higher education. (NCHC 2013)

History And Current Practices Of Assessment To Demonstrate Value Added, Patricia J. Smith

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

With more than 1,500 honors programs currently in operation and hundreds of millions of dollars being spent throughout American institutions, external pressure is building for accountability in honors programs (Scott and Smith 2016). Today’s society “expects colleges and universities to graduate students who can get things done in the world and are prepared for effective and engaged citizenship” (Keeling et al. 2004:5). Doyle (2004) also has noted the increasing scrutiny of higher education:

the attention given to higher education’s success at fostering student learning has increased in recent years. The rapidly rising cost of higher education and the increased attention …

Adding Value Through Honors At The University Of Iowa: Effects Of A Pre-Semester Honors Class And Honors Residence On First-Year Students, Art L. Spisak, Robert F. Kirby, Emily M. Johnson

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Activities that take place early in students’ college career can strongly influence their academic engagement and success. Two experiences that honors programs may provide during the initial phases of the undergraduate experience are pre- or earlysemester programs and honors residence halls. This study compares honors students who lived in an honors residence hall and/or took part in a pre-semester academic, credit-bearing class upon entry into college to their honors peers who did not elect these options. It tracks the degree of the students’ subsequent engagement with the honors program and also several measures of their academic success, such as grade …

Contributions Of Small Honors Programs: The Case Of A Public Liberal Arts College, George Smeaton, Margaret Walsh

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The Keene State College Honors Program began as the vision of a former college president to attract more high-achieving students to this particular public liberal arts college. In the fall of 2007, after the college had secured initial funding, a small cohort of twenty first-year students were selected for the honors program by admissions staff for their achievements and promise. The numbers were intentionally small, but the goals were ambitious for a rural college that serves a high percentage of first-generation college students (43%). The students selected for admission into honors would enroll in an honors-level writing course and live …

Introduction: The Demonstrable Value Of Honors Education, Andrew J. Cognard-Black

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In May of 2016, a small cadre of scholars was called to the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, for the Honors Education Research Colloquium, a two-day meeting focusing on the future direction of research in honors education. The participants were assembled by Jerry Herron, who at the time was president of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), close on the heels of a decision by the NCHC Board of Directors in June of the previous year to make research—along with professional development and advocacy—one of three strategic priorities.

After a day of presentations, in turn, by each …

The Value Added Of Honors Programs In Recruitment, Retention, And Student Success: Impacts Of The Honors College At The University Of Mississippi, Robert D. Brown, Jonathan Winburn, Douglass Sullivan-González

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In a recent essay, M. Roy Wilson (2015), President of Wayne State University, and Jerry Herron, Dean of the Honors College, discuss the value added of honors programs in terms that should be familiar to numerous constituencies associated with honors education. Wilson and Herron write about honors education largely in terms of the experiences it provides students:

the [honors] college is not tied to any particular academic discipline; instead, it represents the virtues of a liberal education that reaches across departments, schools, and colleges. For our students, the aim is to integrate the specialized—and essential—knowledge of the disciplines into a …

Honors Education Has A Positive Effect On College Student Success, Dulce Diaz, Susan P. Farruggia, Meredith E. Wellman, Bette L. Bottoms

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Over 1,500 U.S. universities and colleges have honors programs or honors colleges to provide extra support for their most prepared students (National Collegiate Honors Council 2018; Scott and Smith 2016). Honors programs typically provide additional financial support, faculty mentors, smaller class sizes, and other benefits compared to what institutions can typically offer all of their students. Students involved in an honors program usually earn higher GPAs compared to highly motivated students not in an honors program (Pritchard and Wilson 2003) and are more likely to stay in college and graduate within four years (Cosgrove 2004).

The additional success of honors …

High-Impact Honors Practices: Success Outcomes Among Honors And Comparable High-Achieving Non-Honors Students At Eastern Kentucky University, Katie Patton, David Coleman, Lisa W. Kay

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Alexander Astin’s Inputs-Environment-Outcomes (I-E-O) model for longitudinal study of student success in higher education challenges researchers to account explicitly for the wide range of educational, social, and cultural backgrounds that students bring with them to college. Astin’s approach factors in an understanding that educational outcomes are associated not only with the various educational environments to which students are exposed during their college years, but also with the inputs of these students—the factors that shaped them long before they first arrived in a university classroom. Meaningful conclusions concerning factors that contribute to student success must take into account the complex interactions …