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2020

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Articles 121 - 150 of 185

Full-Text Articles in Liberal Studies

Honors Contracts: A Scaffolding To Independent Inquiry, Cindy S. Ticknor, Shamim Khan Jan 2020

Honors Contracts: A Scaffolding To Independent Inquiry, Cindy S. Ticknor, Shamim Khan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors contracts can be valuable curricular assets if aligned with institutional goals and properly supported to overcome the challenges they sometimes present. At Columbus State University (CSU), honors contracts allow students to achieve one of our primary learning outcomes: honors graduates will demonstrate the ability to design independent inquiry projects that require critical and creative thinking. We believe graduate schools value this ability, and we know that employers in our community seek honors graduates who can work independently on extended projects, communicate effectively, and solve problems analytically and creatively. We achieve this important learning outcome by requiring a senior project …


A High-Impact Strategy For Honors Contract Courses, Gary Wyatt Jan 2020

A High-Impact Strategy For Honors Contract Courses, Gary Wyatt

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This essay describes a strategy implemented at Emporia State University for offering high-impact honors contract courses in a collaborative environment. After considering the role of honors contract courses in our college, the chapter demonstrates the importance of guiding students and instructors in creating contract applications and shaping requirements to ensure that contract courses are true honors experiences. Our contract applications demand a collaborative effort in which students and instructors demonstrate together how core requirements will be satisfied. Each application is unique and generally involves the development of a mentoring relationship. The chapter includes examples illustrating some key value-added outcomes students …


Ensuring A Quality Honors Experience Through Learning Contracts: Success Beyond Our Wildest Dreams, Julia A. Haseleu, Laurie A. Taylor Jan 2020

Ensuring A Quality Honors Experience Through Learning Contracts: Success Beyond Our Wildest Dreams, Julia A. Haseleu, Laurie A. Taylor

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In 1997, when Julia A. Haseleu started teaching at Kirkwood Community College (KCC) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, her charge as a psychology instructor with honors experience was to develop an honors program based on learning contracts. Other faculty and administrators had attempted to offer honors courses at KCC, but these efforts had failed. Rhonda Kekke, KCC Dean of Arts and Humanities, determined that the problem was the honors course format. At small to medium-sized colleges and universities, especially two-year campuses, finding a group of honors students who are interested in the same subjects, able to work the same courses into …


Facilitating Feedback: The Benefits Of Automation In Monitoring Completion Of Honors Contracts, Erin E. Edgington Jan 2020

Facilitating Feedback: The Benefits Of Automation In Monitoring Completion Of Honors Contracts, Erin E. Edgington

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As we have seen in this volume so far, contract courses are an increasingly valuable pedagogical strategy for maintaining access to and demand for honors education. Administered with the “[i]ntentionality, transparency, [and] consistency” that Richard Badenhausen proposes in his opening essay (17), they can even, as Margaret Walsh suggests, help “shift [students’] focus from getting out of course requirements to getting into new and different courses to advance their capacity to learn” (40). While good reasons to offer contracts clearly exist, administering them nevertheless presents challenges. This essay considers process and pedagogy, with the aim of empowering both students and …


Honors In Practice: Beyond The Classroom, Kristine Miller Jan 2020

Honors In Practice: Beyond The Classroom, Kristine Miller

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Six years ago, in my first week as director of the Utah State University (USU) Honors Program, a senior physics major and her frustrated faculty mentor marched into my office. The student was shy and embarrassed, the mentor surly and blunt: “Why,” he asked, “must a senior complete an honors contract in a class that isn’t fundamentally shaping her future?” Good question. Because students were required to earn honors credits each term at USU, the choice facing this student was whether to enroll in an honors general education course she did not need or to develop a contract to deepen …


Honors Internationalization At Washington State University: A Comprehensive Experience, Kim Andersen, Christine K. Oakley Jan 2020

Honors Internationalization At Washington State University: A Comprehensive Experience, Kim Andersen, Christine K. Oakley

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The interconnected nature of the world economy, including the need for international cooperation in science, politics, the environment, justice, and all aspects of social development, is the reality in which higher education—and not least educational programs catering to the best and brightest—find themselves. The impact of globalization on the United States continues undiminished, and accordingly, honors programs must equip their students with the critical skills and practical knowledge needed to succeed in this global environment to the benefit of themselves, their local and national communities, and the world at large. The fundamental nexus driving the Washington State University (WSU) Honors …


Moving Honors Contracts Into The Digital Age: Processes, Impacts, And Opinions, Ken D. Thomas, Suzanne P. Hunter Jan 2020

Moving Honors Contracts Into The Digital Age: Processes, Impacts, And Opinions, Ken D. Thomas, Suzanne P. Hunter

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As Richard Badenhausen argues, a foundational quality of honors education is its ability to place gifted students in direct contact with each other and outstanding faculty in honors courses. The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) defines honors education as “characterized by in-class and extracurricular activities that are measurably broader, deeper, or more complex than comparable learning experiences,” built upon a “distinctive learnerdirected environment and philosophy” that is “tailored to fit the institution’s culture and mission” and designed to create a “close community of students and faculty” (“Definition”). This premise for honors education seems to spell the downfall of honors contracts, …


Making The Global Familiar: Building An International Focus Into The Honors Curriculum, Erin E. Edgington, Daniel C. Villanueva Jan 2020

Making The Global Familiar: Building An International Focus Into The Honors Curriculum, Erin E. Edgington, Daniel C. Villanueva

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Increasingly, American colleges and universities are seeking to prepare their students not only for professional success but also for life in a world whose interconnectedness and, indeed, interdependency, will require them to live as global citizens. That the term “global citizen,” or one of its many synonyms, now appears in numerous institutional mission and values statements suggests the significance that institutions of higher education attach to cultivating individuals able to navigate the transnational and intercultural complexities of twenty-first-century economics, politics, and ethics. Honors programs and colleges have enthusiastically adopted a global education orientation along with the larger institutions that house …


Keeping The Program Alive: Internationalizing Honors Through Post-Travel Programming, Kevin W. Dean, Michael B. Jendzurski Jan 2020

Keeping The Program Alive: Internationalizing Honors Through Post-Travel Programming, Kevin W. Dean, Michael B. Jendzurski

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Every December, the world turns its eyes to Norway for the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize, recognized as the “world’s most important, visible and prestigious prize,” according to Fredrik S. Heffermehl (xi). Since its inauguration in 1901, a pantheon of impressive individuals and organizations has assumed the title of Nobel Peace Laureate. Yet Alfred Nobel harbored a concern as he established the prize in his will: he wanted the prize to be a new beginning for its recipients, not an end to their stories. Nobel wrote, “I wish to help the dreamers, as they find it difficult to get …


Internationalizing With Intention: A Case Study Of The Mahurin Honors College, Craig Cobane, Audra Jennings Jan 2020

Internationalizing With Intention: A Case Study Of The Mahurin Honors College, Craig Cobane, Audra Jennings

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As an honors college in a predominantly rural, lower-socioeconomic, and conservative region of the country and in a state ranking third-lowest in the nation for the percentage of its residents holding valid U.S. passports (ChartsBin), internationalization required intention at Western Kentucky University (WKU). For most of its history, WKU had a small, underdeveloped honors program. In the early 2000s, it had fewer than two hundred active students, and only approximately ten students per year graduated from honors. Moreover, WKU had a modest education abroad office, and a small number of students went abroad each year. Of the students who did …


Transformative Learning Abroad For Honors Students: Leveraging High-Impact Practices At Global Partner Institutions, Craig Wallace Jan 2020

Transformative Learning Abroad For Honors Students: Leveraging High-Impact Practices At Global Partner Institutions, Craig Wallace

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The substantial increase in student participation in learning abroad and the proliferation of program types have greatly changed the international education landscape in the United States and beyond, providing new opportunities for global outreach and collaboration. Creative global partnerships can help students overcome longstanding barriers to studying abroad and provide students with opportunities to enhance their undergraduate education by stacking the high-impact practice of study abroad with other transformative high-impact practices, such as undergraduate research and service learning, which are defining elements of an honors experience. Given the potential for transformation as a result of learning abroad, honors educators and …


“Let’S Get A Coffee!”: A Transformative International Honors Partnership, Leslie Kaplan, Sophia Zevgoli, Andres Gallo Jan 2020

“Let’S Get A Coffee!”: A Transformative International Honors Partnership, Leslie Kaplan, Sophia Zevgoli, Andres Gallo

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Advocates of study abroad have emphasized that semester- and year-long programs offer greater opportunities than short-term programs for students to enhance their personal, academic, and professional development (Dwyer). But can carefully constructed short-term study abroad experiences, which are increasingly popular choices for undergraduates, have similar effects? One study suggests they can achieve important outcomes, such as encouraging tolerance for ambiguity, appreciation for diversity, and openness to experience (Shadowen et al.). Another study shows that even shortterm exposure to other cultures can enhance creativity (Leung et al.), and a third demonstrates that creative problem solving was improved by cultural study in …


Intercultural Conversations: Honors-Led Partnerships To Engage International Students On Campus, Robert J. Pampel Jan 2020

Intercultural Conversations: Honors-Led Partnerships To Engage International Students On Campus, Robert J. Pampel

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

At a time when many universities are interested both in enrollment growth and the prestige of academic selectivity, international student recruitment and honors education emerge as popular strategic initiatives on college campuses. An influx of international students can enhance campus culture, fill enrollment gaps, and increase tuition revenue. Meanwhile, a selective undergraduate honors community serves as an exemplar of scholarship and distinction, which may attract academically talented students to the institution. On the surface, these trends appear unrelated. Lee notes, however, that international students are often motivated by institutional prestige and reputation when deciding to study in the United States …


Balancing International Aspirations With Honors Expectations: Expanding Honors To A Branch Campus In Florence, Italy, James G. Snyder, Vanessa Nichol-Peters Jan 2020

Balancing International Aspirations With Honors Expectations: Expanding Honors To A Branch Campus In Florence, Italy, James G. Snyder, Vanessa Nichol-Peters

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Education abroad has the potential to leave a deep and transformative impact on the lives of honors students. That education abroad and a broader focus on the larger world beyond the boundaries of campuses comprises a core value of many honors programs and colleges comes as no surprise. In addition to providing a rigorous education and undergraduate research opportunities, many honors programs aspire to making their students more cosmopolitan in their worldview. The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah explains that cosmopolitanism blends two important values: it stretches us “beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and …


The Fulbright International Education Administrators Seminars: Pathways To International Partnerships, Rochelle Gregory, Kyle C. Kopko, M. Grant Norton Jan 2020

The Fulbright International Education Administrators Seminars: Pathways To International Partnerships, Rochelle Gregory, Kyle C. Kopko, M. Grant Norton

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

While the benefits of studying abroad are well documented (e.g., Braskamp et al.; Lewis and Niesenbaum; Ludlum et al.; McCabe; Williams), honors administrators face significant challenges in internationalizing their honors programs and colleges. The U.S. Fulbright Commission, by partnering with commissions in France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and Taiwan to host programs for international education administrators from around the United States each year, is addressing the challenges of internationalizing American higher education. According to the Institute of International Education, the seminar in Germany in 1984–1985 was the first of its kind. Other seminars were added in 1986 (Japan), 1999 …


The Honors Thesis For Health Sciences Students: A Service Abroad Model, Misty Guy, Heidi Evans Knowles, Stephanie Cook, Zane Cooley, Ellen Buckner Jan 2020

The Honors Thesis For Health Sciences Students: A Service Abroad Model, Misty Guy, Heidi Evans Knowles, Stephanie Cook, Zane Cooley, Ellen Buckner

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Despite advances in health care sciences and increased awareness of health disparities, unnecessary gaps in outcomes among vulnerable populations and a lack of adequate solutions to combat common diseases worldwide continue. Those deficiencies and the blurring of international borders have led to an increased need for health care professionals to understand health and the factors that influence it on a global scale (Wernli et al.). Nurses comprise the largest group of direct patient care providers in the world and have historically played an essential role in promoting health and improving patient outcomes regardless of the setting. The multifaceted and ever-changing …


“Same Same, But Different”: Trans-Nationalizing Honors In A U.S. Branch Campus, Jesse Gerlach Ulmer Jan 2020

“Same Same, But Different”: Trans-Nationalizing Honors In A U.S. Branch Campus, Jesse Gerlach Ulmer

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In July of 2013, I was appointed to lead the Honors Program at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts in Doha, Qatar (VCU Qatar), a branch campus of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. I attended my first National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) conference the following November. The location was New Orleans, Louisiana, a twentysomething hour flight from Doha, Qatar’s capital city. My goal was simple: to engage with honors directors like myself who were running honors programs outside the United States. Jet-lagged beyond belief, I stumbled through the conference in a stupefied, nine-hour time difference haze, rarely straying …


Drawing On Gifts Of International Students To Develop International Partnerships, Kevin W. Dean Jan 2020

Drawing On Gifts Of International Students To Develop International Partnerships, Kevin W. Dean

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

It was Tuesday of the first week of classes for the fall 2012 term. At two o’clock in the afternoon, swamped with student petitions to register for classes and balancing myriad administrative issues, I found a young man with an unfamiliar accent standing on my office threshold. “I don’t have an appointment, but might you have a moment? My name is Carl. This is my second day in the states from Norway, and I heard about the honors program and would like to join.” A few days exist in an educator’s life that one can consider change moments, and that …


Assessing Honors Internationalization: A Case Study Of Lloyd International Honors College At Unc Greensboro, Chris J. Kirkman, Omar H. Ali Jan 2020

Assessing Honors Internationalization: A Case Study Of Lloyd International Honors College At Unc Greensboro, Chris J. Kirkman, Omar H. Ali

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Lloyd International Honors College (LIHC) of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC Greensboro) is a useful example of the reimagining of a traditional honors program into an honors college with an international focus.1 The process of becoming an internationally focused honors college, which began in 2006, was part of the university’s strategic goal of internationalizing its curriculum, student body, faculty, and culture. It has involved an extended process of program development; campus-wide partnership building, specifically in conjunction with the university’s International Programs Center (IPC) and Global Engagement Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP); and iterative assessment. This chapter outlines the …


Introduction To Internationalizing Honors (2020), Mary Kay Mulvaney, Kim Klein Jan 2020

Introduction To Internationalizing Honors (2020), Mary Kay Mulvaney, Kim Klein

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The world of higher education in the twenty-first century recognizes the necessity, not merely the desirability, of educating our students as global citizens. According to the American Council on Education’s Center for Internationalization and Globalization Engagement (CIGE), campus efforts toward internationalization are increasing: approximately half of all institutions now include a global studies component in their general education requirements, roughly half specify internationalization as one of their top five institutional strategic priorities, and nearly two-thirds have identified an international or global outcome as one of the student learning outcomes applicable to the entire student body (Mapping Internationalization). While including an …


Mental Health Matters: College Student Mental Health In The Twenty-First Century, Gary H. Bischof, Alexander J. Hamilton, Adrian J. Hernandez Jan 2020

Mental Health Matters: College Student Mental Health In The Twenty-First Century, Gary H. Bischof, Alexander J. Hamilton, Adrian J. Hernandez

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Authors present the content, delivery, and benefits of a one-semester honors college lecture series on college student mental health.


The Campus Improvement Project: A High-Impact Practice To Stimulate Honors Community And Empower Student Leadership On Campus, Steve Garrison, Cody Parish Jan 2020

The Campus Improvement Project: A High-Impact Practice To Stimulate Honors Community And Empower Student Leadership On Campus, Steve Garrison, Cody Parish

Honors in Practice Online Archive

First-year students are challenged to complete a Campus Improvement Project to first identify a problem on campus and then propose a solution. Students develop basic research skills and a sense of belonging to their university and honors community while simultaneously maturing as leaders.


What Works In Honors: Discovering “London As A Detective Story”, Kelsey L. Bennett, Nicole Becwar Jan 2020

What Works In Honors: Discovering “London As A Detective Story”, Kelsey L. Bennett, Nicole Becwar

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An honors program director and university archivist/librarian team up to offer a two-week study abroad course that blends itinerant offerings of City as Text™ with fixed support for first-time student encounters with archival collections at the British Library and the National Archives.


Intellectual Risk, Ashleen Williams Jan 2020

Intellectual Risk, Ashleen Williams

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Intellectual risk works, but it requires creating the space to fail in honors.


Using The Online Forum For Honors Learning, John Zubizarreta Jan 2020

Using The Online Forum For Honors Learning, John Zubizarreta

Honors in Practice Online Archive

An online forum in which students share not only what content they have learned but more importantly how, when, and why they have learned provides a safe, open, generative space for learning beyond the limitations of the classroom. Suggestions for its effective use and integration are provided.


Best Practices In Honors Pedagogy: Teaching Innovation And Community Engagement Through Design Thinking, Beth H. Chaney, Tim W. Christensen, Alleah Crawford, Katherine Ford, W. Wayne Godwin, Gerald Weckesser, Todd Fraley, Phoenix Little Jan 2020

Best Practices In Honors Pedagogy: Teaching Innovation And Community Engagement Through Design Thinking, Beth H. Chaney, Tim W. Christensen, Alleah Crawford, Katherine Ford, W. Wayne Godwin, Gerald Weckesser, Todd Fraley, Phoenix Little

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Honors colleges aim to provide unique first-year experiences that promote life skills and emphasize process over product in an interdisciplinary setting that builds community. A two-semester, five-semester-hour course sequence with colloquia tackles these challenges by introducing an entrepreneurial mindset that pushes students toward innovative understanding and building of community. The first iteration includes an introduction to design thinking; identification of wicked problems; collection of data using immersion experiences, interviews, and literature review; and experiments (n = 35) in project-based entrepreneurial methodologies using Lean LaunchPad. The second iteration involves assessment, applied qualitative analysis, out-of-class learning, and peer mentoring. Results provide a …


2019 Presidential Address: Radical Honors: Pedagogical Troublemaking As A Model For Institutional Change, Richard Badenhausen Jan 2020

2019 Presidential Address: Radical Honors: Pedagogical Troublemaking As A Model For Institutional Change, Richard Badenhausen

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This presidential speech to attendees of the 2019 NCHC annual conference in New Orleans resituates honors education as a site of deeply radical practices and provides a call to action to honors educators both to own the transgressiveness of our pedagogical approaches and to extend that troublemaking project to processes beyond the classroom, processes like honors recruitment and admissions, faculty appointments, co-curricular programming, and assessment, among others. Given the academy’s traditional resistance to change, an opportunity exists for those in the honors community to step forward and radically alter the structures and practices of higher education, all in the service …


Undergraduate Research Seminars At Your Humanities Center, Anne Dotter Jan 2020

Undergraduate Research Seminars At Your Humanities Center, Anne Dotter

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Communal, collegial spaces for undergraduates to share their research enrich student experience and academic development in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.


A Dialogical Exercise For Honors Students, J. Robert Baker Jan 2020

A Dialogical Exercise For Honors Students, J. Robert Baker

Honors in Practice Online Archive

To expand students’ abilities to think critically, honors instructors ask them to step aside from their objections to a passage in The Handbook of Epictetus to consider how that passage makes sense to Epictetus.


A Potential For Improving Honors Retention With Degree Planning, Teddi S. Deka Jan 2020

A Potential For Improving Honors Retention With Degree Planning, Teddi S. Deka

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Students who begin in honors do not always complete program requirements. As an investigation into student retention, the author introduces a degree-planning workshop into a freshman seminar. The study involves two groups of students from different incoming classes: one (2018) participating in their degree-planning through the workshop and the other (2015) not. Students (n = 150) were compared against three retention criteria based on successive enrollment and withdrawal. Chi-square analyses reveal significant differences only for program withdrawal, indicating that those completing the workshop were less likely to be removed from the program due to lack of progress. The workshop group …