Liberal Studies Commons^™

Editor’S Introduction (Vol. 20, No. 1), Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Academics are proficient in the art of complaining. Behind closed doors or in faculty senate meetings, the well-honed quibble can be a portal into instant respect and in-group status. From freshman composition through the dissertation defense, critical thinking has nurtured in us the rhetoric of grievance, sharpening its edges until it gleams with a fine luster, enchanting the listener almost as much as the practitioner. Nevertheless, Richard Badenhausen, despite his impeccable academic credentials, brazenly invited us to abandon the enchantments of grousing and to pursue practical fixes for our problems in honors. His invitation was issued in this Call for …

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.

Characteristics Of Seventh-Grade Middle School Students Who Attended A Continuation High School, Rae Lynn Kit

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study explored pre-existing quantitative data for 55 students when they were in the seventh grade who eventually attended a continuation high school years later. There were 101 students at a particular continuation high school, and this research explored pre-existing data looking solely at the students who were in the same district while they were in seventh grade. Attendance and grades from the pre-existing data in the district’s software system were analyzed using a descriptive methodology followed by a cluster analysis through SPSS. Attendance findings for the 55 students revealed that nine students (16%) were absent with a frequency of …

Undergraduate Students’ Satisfaction And Perception Of Knowledge Gained In A Private University, Cathy Ann Mejia

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

The purpose of the present study is to investigate undergraduate students’ satisfaction and perception of knowledge gained in a freshman level finance class at a private Christian liberal arts university. To study student satisfaction and knowledge gained, several factors were examined for traditional and online delivery formats. Based upon student self-reported data, the predictive factors included student involvement in the course, effective instructor communication, instructor specification of assignments, and the instructor effectively integrating faith and learning. This quantitative study used a Likert-style course evaluation research method in an undergraduate university program. At the subject university, all students enrolled in the …

The Grizzly, March 28, 2019, Courtney A. Duchene, Skylar Haas, Shelsea Deravil, Rosalia Murphy, Sienna Coleman, Johnny Myers, Daniel Walker, David Mendelsohn, Peter Desimone, Zack Muredda

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Alumni Award Winners Announced • Diversity Monologues: A Night of Sharing • Ursinus Honors Dr. Crigler's Legacy • Changing Comic Books One Superhero at a Time • Tess Beck '20 Embracing Aussie • Ursinus Students Building Houses in South Carolina • Opinions: College Admissions Scandal is Shocking, but not Surprising; Backlash Against Rep. Omar Underlines Weakness in Democratic Leadership • The "Off to an Historic Start" Award: Dom Fiorentino • Women's Lacrosse Travels to Nashville and Earns First Win of the Season • UC Baseball Picking up Steam as Season Gets Into Full Swing

The Grizzly, March 7, 2019, Courtney A. Duchene, Madison Rodak, Johnny Myers, Sam Rosenthal, Shelsea Deravil, Lillian Vila Licht, Thomas Bantley, Garrett Bullock, David Mendelsohn, Zack Muredda

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Chair of History Department Featured in Forbes • David Perry Shines Spotlight on College Problems • Book Club Brings Students and Faculty Together • Ariana Brown Reads at Ursinus • Student Worker Profile: Wismer Workers • Senior Feature: Paul Cottam • Opinions: America Could use a Universal Basic Income; New Housing Process Could be a New Mess • The "That was the Coolest Lax Goal I've Ever Seen" Award: Bobby McClure • Athlete Spotlight: Peter DeSimone • UC Swim Teams Complete Outstanding Seasons; Women Win 6th Straight Championship

Engaging Student Nurses In A Professional Association, Nicholas Craig

Student Engagement Posters

Nicholas Craig discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to his involement with the Critical Care Nurses' Club.

More Than A Leadership Position, Kainoa Cuttitta

Student Engagement Posters

Kanoia Cuttitta discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to her involvement in ASLC (the Associated Students of Linfield College).

Student Service To The High School Forensics Community: Insights Gained From Hosting The Annual Singletary Speech And Debate Tournament, Kelsey Bruce

Student Engagement Posters

Kelsey Bruce discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to hosting the annual Singletary Speech and Debate Tournament.

No Missed Opportunities: My Involvement In Rha, Chaylene Grover

Student Engagement Posters

Chaylene Grover discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to her role as president of the Residence Hall Association.

When One Door Closes . . ., Meg Angier

Student Engagement Posters

Meg Angier discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to her participation in Residence Life.

Growth And Development Of A Wildcat, Daniel Endicott

Student Engagement Posters

Daniel Endicott discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to his involvement in various community service and leadership roles on campus.

Bone Marrow Drive: Will Linfield Be The Match?, Ashley Filler

Student Engagement Posters

Ashley Filler discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to organizing a bone marrow registration drive.

Six Word Stories Through Spain And Morocco, Pola Isabelle Bonete, Astrid Gaytan, Jessica Cannon

Student Engagement Posters

Pola Isabelle Bonete, Astrid Gaytan, and Jessica Cannon discuss student engagement at Linfield College with regard to intercultural competence and cultural sensitivity gained through their January Term 2019 course in Spain and Morocco.

Living, Learning, And Leading At Linfield College, Kelsey Bruce

Student Engagement Posters

Kelsey Bruce discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to leadership through student/faculty collaborative research with Dr. Megan Bestwick, speech and debate, and the Linfield Residence Life team.