Liberal Studies Commons^™

Through The Scholastic Looking Glass: The Pedagogical Potential Of Textual Deformation For Poetic Studies, Taylor Dietrich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the pedagogical usefulness of the antithetical reading model of textual deformation for the study of poetic works. No formal pedagogical plan exists for the education of students in poetic studies through textual deformance. This thesis does not go as far as structuring one in its entirety. Rather, it surveys the digital humanities landscape, showing a collective affinity within a number of textual studies approaches that advocate for textual deformance as useful for interrogating texts, and aligns the overlapping symmetries within those working methodologies with pedagogical imperatives like those embedded in Ryan Cordell’s Kaleidoscopic Pedagogy Laboratory—the intent being …

African American Existential Heroes: Narrative Struggles For Authenticity, Michael Cotto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

African American Existential Heroes: Narrative Struggles for Authenticity argues for the development of existential authenticities and their impact on African American self-identity constructions in three African American literary classics:

Richard Wright’s The Outsider, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. For that purpose, the introduction puts forward the aforementioned topic; defines the major terms, authenticity, existentialism, and African Americanness; identifies the three texts to be studied; explicates its methodology; studies the anagnorisis of each text in relation to the existential crisis; accounts for the existential philosophers used, Martin …

Democracy For Homework: A Review Of Civic Engagement In Urban Public Schools, Amanda B. Rosenblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Civic engagement education prepares students to actively engage in social and political processes and influence community change. Many educators believe that civic engagement ought to be a central mission of schools because: 1. Adolescent civic engagement predicts adult civic engagement; 2. Schools may be able to reduce the inequity in political participation between individuals of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and 3: Civic engagement orientation and competencies can be developed through any and all content courses and extracurricular opportunities. This literature review on civic engagement education in urban public middle and high schools over the past 15 years explores: 1. …

Mainstreaming Creativity: Creative Writing Enters General Education’S Advanced Writing Requirement, John Paul Tassoni

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This essay describes twenty-first century general education reforms that create opportunities for creative writing studies proponents to negotiate a central role for the field in the core curriculum. This essay draws on existent research in creative writing pedagogy to make a case for “Introduction to Creative Writing” as part of the advanced writing requirements appearing now in liberal education plans. The essay also draws from scholarship and anecdotes describing new directions in general education at the author’s own school as well as colleges and universities nationwide to identify trends that can curtail or facilitate CW’s status as mainstream curricular business.

Volume Cxxxvii, Number 12, January 31, 2020, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

Volume Cxxxvii, Number 11, January 24, 2020, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

Rhetoric And Race - Background And Assignment - Shu Mlk Symposium 2020, Jon Radwan

CHDCM Publications

Provides an overview of Rhetoric and describes the historical development of Race as a rhetorical construct. Offers two associated assignment options: a digital audio interview plus video debrief on contemporary racism, and/or an essay on 21st century abolitionist rhetoric. - Jon Radwan and Angela Kariotis

Volume Cxxxvii, Number 10, January 17, 2020, Lawrence University

The Lawrentian

No abstract provided.

Lesson Plan Template, Karen Escalante

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

Lesson planning supports beginning teachers in their development as an educator and it helps to ensure PK-12 students are being taught to think and engage with the content area, with the ultimate goal of transferring that knowledge to global understandings and patterns. Becoming an effective teacher takes time, preparation, purposeful planning and deep knowledge of your students and the content / curriculum.

2020 Ruby Yearbook, Tiffini Eckenrod, Allyssa Borrelli, Alex Mossaidis

The Ruby Yearbooks, 1897-2020

A digitized copy of the 2020 Ruby, the Ursinus College yearbook.

Lawrence University Course Catalog, 2020-2021, Lawrence University

Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

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. …

Rollins Magazine, Spring 2020, Rollins College Office Of Marketing And Communications

Rollins Magazine

No abstract provided.

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 …

Honors Contracts: Empowering Students And Fostering Autonomy In Honors Education, Anne Dotter

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Although culturally mandated as a gateway to professional opportunities and wealth, college degrees are the prerogative of only half of the United States population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (Musu-Gilette et al. v). Even those who attend college do not always acquire the training they need to achieve their goals: the lack of written communication or analytical skills directly impacts retention and completion, particularly of students underprepared for college. The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) website features a “Diversity and Inclusion Statement” under its “Definition of Honors Education,” and the organization has placed equity and inclusion at …

One Hand Washes The Other: Designing Mutually Beneficial Honors Contracts, Antonina Bambina

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

At their best, honors contracts can be creative, challenging, exceptional learning opportunities for students and faculty. At their worst, they promote busywork that fails to deliver enhanced educational experiences. While I am proud of the many contracts that allowed honors students at my former institution, the University of Southern Indiana, to collaborate on customized learning and deeper relationships with course material and faculty, I also found myself on occasion having to apologize to students or faculty for the stunted, lackluster projects that one party or the other proposed. These conflicting sentiments illustrate why Richard Badenhausen urges the honors community to …

An Undeserved Reputation: How Contract Courses Can Work For A Small Honors Program, Jon Hageman

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In the first chapter of this volume, Richard Badenhausen argues that contract courses have often suffered from ambiguous or homogenous expectations, compromising honors pedagogy and learning. Anecdotally, not many positive attributes have been ascribed to contract courses in the honors community. Contracts often require more work than courses to establish and administer to completion. Given the shortcomings and the amount of work required to implement contract courses successfully, why are they used at all? I argue that, in some cases, contract courses—or non-honors courses that move beyond regular course requirements with agreed-upon independent study work mentored by the professor—are the …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 …