Risky Honors

Most educators today are likely to proclaim a commitment to teaching critical thinking. Willingness to take intellectual risks such as questioning orthodox teachings or proposing unconventional solutions is an important component of critical thinking and the larger project of liberal education, yet the reward structures of educational institutions may actually function to discourage such risk-taking. In light of the extra importance placed on grades and high-stakes entrance exams in an increasingly competitive educational marketplace, this problem might presumably be magnified among honors students. This essay concludes by calling on honors educators and other interested parties to contribute their voices, their questions, and their proposed solutions to a new JNCHC Forum focusing on the tension among talented students between taking intellectual risks and a desire to avoid the personal struggle and possible failure that sometimes come from taking such risks

Introduction: The Demonstrable Value of Honors Education

In May of 2016, a small cadre of scholars was called to the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, for the Honors Education Research Colloquium, a two-day meeting focusing on the future direction of research in honors education. The participants were assembled by Jerry Herron, who at the time was president of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), close on the heels of a decision by the NCHC Board of Directors in June of the previous year to make research—along with professional development and advocacy—one of three strategic priorities. After a day of presentations, in turn, by each of the participants, the colloquium discussion turned on the second day to an enumeration of ways in which the goal of encouraging honors research might best be effected. That enumeration included such topics as bridging the gap between those scholars doing related educational research inside and outside of honors and the establishment of an infrastructure to facilitate data collection and other collaborative research across multiple NCHC member institutions. One of the concepts that emerged most forcefully from those discussions was vocal consensus about the need for more, and more robust, research evidence addressing the question of whether honors education adds value—for a society that helps to support the educational enterprise, for faculty and others who work to provide honors programming, for the institutions that house honors programs and colleges, and, especially, for the students who participate in such programs

Variability and Similarity in Honors Curricula across Institution Size and Type

As Samuel Schuman argues in his seminal introduction to honors administration, “The single most important feature of any honors program is its people: the students who learn there and the faculty who teach them” (33). Next, argues Schuman, comes the curriculum; the context of the learning that takes place when honors faculty and honors students come together is framed by the curriculum. Honors curricula provide opportunities for honors students to endeavor challenges beyond what traditional undergraduate curricula provide. For faculty, honors is a unique opportunity to blend research and teaching and to provide a curricular laboratory for experimenting with varied topics and pedagogical approaches

Variability and Similarity in Honors Curricula across Institution Size and Type

As Samuel Schuman argues in his seminal introduction to honors administration, “The single most important feature of any honors program is its people: the students who learn there and the faculty who teach them” (33). Next, argues Schuman, comes the curriculum; the context of the learning that takes place when honors faculty and honors students come together is framed by the curriculum. Honors curricula provide opportunities for honors students to endeavor challenges beyond what traditional undergraduate curricula provide. For faculty, honors is a unique opportunity to blend research and teaching and to provide a curricular laboratory for experimenting with varied topics and pedagogical approaches

Disciplinary Affiliation and Administrators’ Reported Perception and Use of Assessment

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 and program review. We discuss these differences and their implications for the National Collegiate Honors Council

Characteristics of the 21st-Century Honors College

Today, honors education can be found in almost every corner of U.S. higher education. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there also has been significant growth in the number of honors colleges in the United States, but there have been limited data to describe with any precision how fast that growth has been. Sederberg (2005, 2008) was among the first to document the emergence and growth of a distinct honors college organizational form and to identify unique characteristics that distinguish honors colleges from honors programs, but further growth within the organizational field of higher education necessitates an updated profile of honors colleges. This chapter presents results from the 2021 Census of U.S. Honors Colleges. We identified all known honors colleges in the United States and conducted an omnibus survey of honors college leaders. We used data from the survey to create one of the most complete statistical profiles of honors colleges to date, including information on leadership characteristics and student demographics; institutional size and structural features; admissions criteria, acceptance rates, and yield rates; honors curricula; and resources such as facilities, personnel, budgets, and endowments. We find that the number of honors colleges at American universities has more than doubled (140% increase) in the past two decades. While there are significant tendencies toward institutional isomorphism among honors colleges, we also find significant variation across honors colleges depending on institutional mission (i.e., Carnegie Classification) and whether they have more autonomous, free-standing structure within their own institutional context

Creating a Profile of an Honors Student: A Comparison of Honors and Non-Honors Students at Public Research Universities in the United States

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 an honors program/college. Knowing what high-ability students expect from their education could also be useful in structuring an honors curriculum and experience accordingly. Finally, knowing better the wants and needs of high-ability students could be useful for advising, mentoring, and counseling honors students

Institutional Variability in Honors Admissions Standards, Program Support Structures, and Student Characteristics, Persistence, and Program Completion

In the autumn of 2014, the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) launched the Admissions, Retention, and Completion Survey (ARC) in an attempt to collect for the first time honors program benchmarking data on important admissions, persistence, and completion metrics, data that are already widely used throughout higher education generally. The ARC survey is part of NCHC’s ongoing effort to collect such data, which began in 2012 with the first iteration of what has come to be known as the NCHC Census, an omnibus survey asking a wide range of questions about honors administrative practices, curricular offerings, basic staffing, and the characteristics of honors directors and deans. While these surveys do not examine honors relative to the larger institutional contexts within which honors programs are located, the data emerging from the surveys allow us to begin identifying the extent of variation among key features of honors programs. The survey results have special value to the honors administrators who serve the approximately 350,000 honors students enrolled at NCHC member institutions. Results from the 2012–13 survey revealed differences especially between honors colleges and honors programs in terms of faculty and administrative resources and in the delivery of their programs (Scott), but they also revealed a substantial degree of similarity across honors programs and colleges in the provision of specific elements of curricular programming such as undergraduate research and senior-level capstone experiences (Cognard-Black and Savage). Data resulting from the 2012–13 NCHC survey allowed us to paint a more complete picture of honors nationally, but the final version of that survey did not include any items tapping into honors admissions practices or the measures of persistence and completion that have come to dominate discussions of higher education in the last decade. While limitations and risks are associated with restricting our discussions to measures like four- and six-year graduation rates (Humphreys) or with the very process of deciding what and how to measure and incentivize (Guzy; Portnoy), we have had little data in honors to even start such discussions. The NCHC ARC survey is one of the first large-scale attempts to begin to fill that gap

The Demonstrable Value of Honors Education: New Research Evidence

“We all know—instinctively, experientially—that what we as honors teachers and administrators do for our students adds value to their college education and general college experience. Providing hard, demonstrable evidence for that which we know in our bodies as it were . . . turns out not to be so easy, a fact anyone who has had to make the case for additional, or even simply continued, honors funding to a new dean or college president has likely encountered. The results presented in this volume provide, in a diversity of ways via a diversity of research approaches, the sorts of evidence honors teachers and administrators have long needed. Will that evidence be enough to convince every dean or college president of the need for continued honors sustenance? The answer may have to depend on the particular dean or president in question. I believe the essays in this monograph provide the strongest case for the added value of honors that has been made to date.” —Dr. Rusty Rushton, University of Alabama at Birmingham Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Demonstrable Value of Honors Education • Andrew J. Cognard-Black Honors Value Added: Where We Came From, and What We Need to Know Next • Hallie E. Savage History and Current Practices of Assessment to Demonstrate Value Added • Patricia J. Smith Proving the Value of Honors Education: The Right Data and the Right Messaging • Bette L. Bottoms and Stacie L. McCloud Honors Education Has a Positive Effect on College Student Success • Dulce Diaz, Susan P. Farruggia, Meredith E. Wellman, and Bette L. Bottoms High-Impact Honors Practices: Success Outcomes among Honors and Comparable High-Achieving Non-Honors Students at Eastern Kentucky University • Katie Patton, David Coleman, and Lisa W. Kay GPA as a Product, Not a Measure, of Success in Honors • Lorelle A. Meadows, Maura Hollister, Mary Raber, and Laura Kasson Fiss Adding Value through Honors at the University of Iowa: Effects of a Pre-Semester Honors Class and Honors Residence on First-Year Students • Art L. Spisak, Robert F. Kirby, and Emily M. Johnson The Value Added of Honors Programs in Recruitment, Retention, and Student Success: Impacts of the Honors College at the University of Mississippi • Robert D. Brown, Jonathan Winburn, and Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez Community College Honors Benefits: A Propensity Score Analysis • Jane B. Honeycutt Contributions of Small Honors Programs: The Case of a Public Liberal Arts College • George Smeaton and Margaret Walsh Demonstrating the Value of Honors: What Next? • Jerry Herron and D. Carl Freeman Appendix: Original Call for Proposals About the Authors About the NCHC Monograph Serie