Phil
November 2nd, 2007, 06:42 AM
A report from the Annual Meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Council -- Phil
Rae Rosenthal, Community College of Baltimore County, Essex: Honors above all needs to be assertive. The honors movement is a force for innovation and experimentation on campus. We all believe in the value of undergraduate education, team teaching, and intellectual communities. But more than this, honors programs and colleges should be the contrarian force on university campuses. If high GPA/ACT is the defining feature of university admissions decisions, we should go for a different subset of the population. If large classes are the norm, our classes should be small. If narrow disciplinarity is the norm, expand your horizons to include more interdisciplinary teaching opportunities. The NCHC should be part of the opposition too. Change is about being contrarian.
Bonnie Irwin, Eastern Illinois University: Honors programs usually cost more than the programs for our undergraduate population as a whole. Honors programs serve less than seven percent of the student body as a rule of thumb. So how do we serve the larger campus? We encourage team teaching, we do interdisciplinary work, and we can export those impulses to the rest of campus. We can provide research mentoring and academic culture mentoring. Undergraduate research is very important these days on university campuses. We can serve that mission by providing research grant writing workshops. We can institute summer honors reading lists; a campus-wide freshman reading initiative. We can host the National Student Exchange. We can demonstrate that we care about all of the students, not just the few who are enrolled in honors courses. Show the rest of campus the ?pass-through? value of your programs.
Gary Bell, Texas Tech University: We can show leadership on curriculum, research, and teaching. But we face some extraordinarily challenges. We are now thrust into the role of saving higher education. Since the publication of the Carnegie Boyer Report, we now know that we?ve failed our students. We care only about the professoriate and private development dollars for athletic activities. The administration is drowning in paperwork. Cost-benefit analysis is the norm. Escalating tuition and declining services. Honors can be the remedy for the undergraduate. We can put them back at the center of our educational activities. It is our role today to save higher education, to promote learning and inquiry in a student-centered environment. Students need personal contact with faculty members. We need to remind students that learning is a pleasurable activity. As mentors to our students we need to sponsor social activities for our students to show them that we are not just remote leaders.
Bob Spurrier, Oklahoma State University: How do you document the success that you are having? How do you assess? You need to have a detailed annual report. Make them data heavy. You need that report to be more than thirty pages long. First, you need to preserve your institutional memory. Showcase your students to personalize the data. Strategic planning is something that you need to tailor to your own needs. You can beat the system by being there first. Implement your own strategic plan before the administration imposes one on you. Set the measures at reasonable levels. Do not set goals that cannot be reached. Be writing your annual reports all the time. Add to the report as events take place. Disseminate that report widely. Send copies to the president and provost, knowing full well that these people might never read it. Have a cover sheet with an executive summary, listing the five things you want the reader to carry away from your report.
Rae Rosenthal, Community College of Baltimore County, Essex: Honors above all needs to be assertive. The honors movement is a force for innovation and experimentation on campus. We all believe in the value of undergraduate education, team teaching, and intellectual communities. But more than this, honors programs and colleges should be the contrarian force on university campuses. If high GPA/ACT is the defining feature of university admissions decisions, we should go for a different subset of the population. If large classes are the norm, our classes should be small. If narrow disciplinarity is the norm, expand your horizons to include more interdisciplinary teaching opportunities. The NCHC should be part of the opposition too. Change is about being contrarian.
Bonnie Irwin, Eastern Illinois University: Honors programs usually cost more than the programs for our undergraduate population as a whole. Honors programs serve less than seven percent of the student body as a rule of thumb. So how do we serve the larger campus? We encourage team teaching, we do interdisciplinary work, and we can export those impulses to the rest of campus. We can provide research mentoring and academic culture mentoring. Undergraduate research is very important these days on university campuses. We can serve that mission by providing research grant writing workshops. We can institute summer honors reading lists; a campus-wide freshman reading initiative. We can host the National Student Exchange. We can demonstrate that we care about all of the students, not just the few who are enrolled in honors courses. Show the rest of campus the ?pass-through? value of your programs.
Gary Bell, Texas Tech University: We can show leadership on curriculum, research, and teaching. But we face some extraordinarily challenges. We are now thrust into the role of saving higher education. Since the publication of the Carnegie Boyer Report, we now know that we?ve failed our students. We care only about the professoriate and private development dollars for athletic activities. The administration is drowning in paperwork. Cost-benefit analysis is the norm. Escalating tuition and declining services. Honors can be the remedy for the undergraduate. We can put them back at the center of our educational activities. It is our role today to save higher education, to promote learning and inquiry in a student-centered environment. Students need personal contact with faculty members. We need to remind students that learning is a pleasurable activity. As mentors to our students we need to sponsor social activities for our students to show them that we are not just remote leaders.
Bob Spurrier, Oklahoma State University: How do you document the success that you are having? How do you assess? You need to have a detailed annual report. Make them data heavy. You need that report to be more than thirty pages long. First, you need to preserve your institutional memory. Showcase your students to personalize the data. Strategic planning is something that you need to tailor to your own needs. You can beat the system by being there first. Implement your own strategic plan before the administration imposes one on you. Set the measures at reasonable levels. Do not set goals that cannot be reached. Be writing your annual reports all the time. Add to the report as events take place. Disseminate that report widely. Send copies to the president and provost, knowing full well that these people might never read it. Have a cover sheet with an executive summary, listing the five things you want the reader to carry away from your report.