Liberal Studies Commons^™

Forming Oral History Researchers: Diversifying And Innovating Honors Experiential Learning Across Campus, Myrriah Gómez, Anna M. Nogar

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This article presents a transdisciplinary, cross-campus collaboration among honors and non-honors students in the field of humanities. Trained in oral history methodologies and integrated as IRB-certified researchers into an ongoing (2018–present) project, a cohort of students (n = 34) participate in place-based, community-engaged learning and research involving Hispanic New Mexicans, known as Nuevomexicanas/os. Drawing on the tenets of experiential learning as a mode of honors discourse, the authors describe how this challenging ethnographic project serves to bring a diverse group of learners together while deepening interpersonal, intercultural, and interdisciplinary connections. Results indicate that students benefit from working with more diverse …

Close Reading Responses: A Streamlined Approach To Teaching Critical-Thinking Writing In Honors, Katie Quirk

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study presents a scaffold approach to building critical academic writing skills among honors students. Faced with limited instructional time, a reading-intensive curriculum, and students in need of rigorous writing instruction, a scaffold model was developed to include a series of condensed writing assignments called “Close Reading Responses.” Coupled with rubrics and guided peer review, these assignments allow for repetitive critical practice at various stages along a trajectory toward the final paper. Results indicate that this incremental, explicit form of writing instruction allows students to hone critical-thinking skills in a condensed manner without demanding that they produce (and instructors read) …

“One Singular Sensation”: Integrating Personal Narratives Into The Honors Classroom, Marc Napolitano, Mimi Killinger

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Contemporary emphases on standardization, specialization, and selectivity in higher education alienate students and teachers from their own creativity, intellectual curiosity, and personal stories. This trend runs counter to the central focus of honors on fostering a diverse, scholarly learning environment. Authors suggest that integrating student personal narratives into honors curricula reinforces its values of multiplicity, inclusivity, and meaningful learning. Using metaphorical reference to the Broadway musical A Chorus Line as a unique lens into the pedagogical benefits of such integration, this essay provides ways of incorporating and sharing personal narratives in the classroom and offers strategies to ensure that all …

A View Of Health As A Human Right: A Snapshot From An Honors Program, Peter Longo, Satoshi Machida, John Falconer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This study examines implications of a rights-based perspective among honors students through the lens of healthcare. Students (n = 71) surveyed in April 2019 were asked to consider issues relating to health entitlement and government responsibility. Perspectives on local, regional, national, and global access to health care; state and national government fiscal responsibility; and rights-based approaches to health entitlement were elicited. Data indicate a propensity for understanding health as a human right among honors students. Probit regressions show a more inclusive stance on healthcare policy and a general preference toward a universal healthcare system. Acknowledging that innovative curricula can help …

“To Seek A Newer World”: Honors In Virtual Reality, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Honors education was never intended to be a virtual offering; it takes intimate, three-dimensional, communal, and intellectual interaction among faculty and students to tackle wicked problems. The COVID-19 crisis forced honors educators into an extreme reboot, extracting courses from comfortable working spaces and relocating them to strange new platforms for remote, computer-mediated instruction. For many faculty, the 2020 pandemic introduced online instruction for the first time. Toward this end, many novices were able to brilliantly reimagine and re-engineer their courses while others struggled. In this essay, the author points out that higher education has always adapted new technologies, asserting that …

First-Generation College Student Network, Ashleen Williams, Ainsley Ash

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Authors describe the college’s First-Gen Student Network, a cohort of faculty, students, and practitioners committed to equity, access, and success of firstgeneration learners. Optional biweekly meetings address a range of topics, including financial aid and opportunities for employment.

The Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi often prides itself on being the edge of the knife in conversations about equity and access, yet such conversations only work in honors when we commit tangible actions and resources to generate positive outcomes. Over the last couple of years, we have recognized a group that was consistently forgotten in our …

Virtual Honors Forum, Bruce Thompson

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This article describes how one honors leadership team adapted a traditional in-person Forum to a digital platform during the coronavirus crisis. Integrating a variety of asynchronous and synchronous remote technologies created a positive virtual learning experience for honors practitioners and students.

One of the hallmark experiences of honors learning at Frederick Community College (FCC) in Frederick, MD, is participating in the Honors Forum each semester. The Forum is a mini-conference on campus in which students are required to participate whether enrolled in an honors class or attempting to complete an honors contract. There is a registration desk where presenters, faculty …

Modeling Vulnerabilities In The Research Process, Rebecca Summer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

When honors faculty share experiences from their own research, students learn that making mistakes and trying again is an important part of the learning process.

For all our emphasis on independent student inquiry in honors curricula, students get limited examples of the inevitable bumps in the road of advanced research. In our courses, we typically assign published works, which means that the research students read about is complete, polished, and deemed successful by the broader scholarly community. What students do not encounter in these models of successful research are the many uncertainties, missteps, and revisions along the way. Students are …

Putting Community Voice And Knowledge At The Center, Lynn Sondag

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Service-learning curriculum is grounded in a critical, asset-based framework of community engagement to guide honors students beyond a mere acquisition of skills toward understanding how participatory and democratic processes increase social equity and justice. An innovative, collaborative community arts program is described.

Brain Activity And Experiential Learning, Paul Witkovsky

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The chapters in this book deal primarily with students’ learning experiences as documented through self-awareness, knowledge acquisition, and behavior. Language makes it possible to communicate these changes to others. This essay, in contrast, will examine learning from the perspective of brain function. The current framework of thinking among neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers is that the brain is fully responsible for our minds, and thus studying how the brain functions in molecular, cellular, and systems terms sheds light on all mental processes, including those that are the substrate of learning. A scientific understanding of brain function thus helps to explain the …

Integrating Dynamic Systems Theory And City As Text™ Framework: In-Depth Reflections On ‘Lens’, Ron Weerheijm, Patricia Vuijk, Bernice Braid

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

City as Text™ provides a semi-structured learning environment in which small groups of people are challenged to examine parts of a city through “mapping, observing, interpreting, analyzing, reflecting.” In 2014, I (Ron Weerheijm) attended a City as Text (CAT) Faculty Institute in Lyon. During an early session on the hills overlooking the eastern part of Lyon, our group observed a Basilique, the Notre Dame de Fourvière (1872–1884; interior finished 1964). Having a degree in architecture, I looked at this church from architectural and historical viewpoints. I was puzzled. In a quick scan, many different styles competed for my attention, hurting …

The Body Of Honors: Certification As An Expression Of Disciplinary Power, Richard Badenhausen

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Using Michel Foucault’s writing on discipline and training, the author suggests that processes like certification ultimately serve as covert normalizing activities that run counter to the spirit and practice of honors education. The author argues for an open, fluid, generative approach to honors program review.

Honors In Practice (Theory): A Bourdieusian Perspective On The Professionalization Of Honors, K. Patrick Fazioli

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Patricia J . Smith’s essay on the professionalization of honors advances several original and provocative arguments that deserve serious consideration. Although Smith makes a plausible case that honors has fulfilled at least three of Theodore Caplow’s four stages of professionalization, a closer reading of this text reveals that the developments identified by Smith fail to satisfy the basic functions that each stage serves on the path toward professionalism. This essay argues that honors has little incentive to become a distinct profession because much of its highly skilled workforce enjoys the protection of occupational closure as college faculty and administrators. The …

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.

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 . …

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 …