Including Families in the Honors Experience

Countless articles in the news, combined with colorful anecdotes from faculty and staff, share common complaints about helicopters, lawnmowers, bulldozers, and snowplows—not transportation options on campus but rather parents of college students who stay actively involved in their students’ lives. Honors faculty and administrators are tempted to dismiss this involvement as unnecessary and burdensome. We even have the backing of federal law via the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which dictates what we can and cannot share about a student’s educational record with parents. At the University of Florida, though, rather than keeping our distance from parents and family members, we have opted to embrace the strengths of parental involvement by including them in our honors program. Working as true partners while always mindful of FERPA regulations, we have enhanced our efforts to open lines of communication with the goal of helping our students be successful. Given the parent and family involvement in higher education, examination of current institutional and honors initiatives can provide direction for honors administrators as they negotiate interactions with their students’ families

Engaging Honors Students in Purposeful Planning Through a Concept Mapping Assignment

In Larry Clark’s monograph chapter on the education of academically talented college students, he challenged honors educators to consider our role in helping students find their path, particularly through the addition of self-reflection and exploratory projects in honors courses. He noted, “Our first effort should be directed toward helping students learn what paths will be most satisfying in their lives in relationship to their other desires, involvements, and commitments” (84). Despite little available research available on what defines an honors student, we know from experience that honors students tend to be eager and exploratory (Achterberg) as well as willing to take intellectual risks (Slavin). From an academic advising perspective, honors students tend to have complex academic needs, high expectations and goals, and a strong interest in postgraduate educational opportunities (Schuman). In an honors first-year experience (FYE) course for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors at the University of Florida, one assignment was designed in particular to meet the special needs of honors students and to achieve Clark’s goals. My perspective as instructor, along with the comments of two first-year students—Stephanie Podjed and Sean Taasan—who took the class in the fall 2012 semester, might serve as an illustration and model of “helping students find their path.” The honors FYE course for STEM majors is taught by an honors advisor with the assistance of two honors student leaders who are also STEM majors. This elective course introduces students to opportunities in the STEM fields that include research with faculty, internships, and global engagement while at the same time building skills in areas such as networking, interviewing, and résumé development. This one-credit course meets once a week for an hour but also includes a hybrid component where students complete online modules to prepare them for each week’s class. The online modules provide a series of guides where students reflect on the previous week’s topic, review background material for the next week’s topic, and search for and discuss opportunities relevant to their interests. The course, limited to twenty-five students, enrolled twentyfour in the fall 2012 semester

Relationship between cardiovascular risk and lipid testing in one health care system: a retrospective cohort study.

BackgroundThe US Preventive Services Taskforce (USPSTF) recommends routine lipid screening beginning age 35 for men [1]. For women age 20 and older, as well as men age 20-34, screening is recommended if cardiovascular risk factors are present. Prior research has focused on underutilization but not overuse of lipid testing. The objective is to document over- and under-use of lipid testing in an insured population of persons at low, moderate and high cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk for persons not already on statins.MethodsThe study is a retrospective cohort study that included all adults without prior CVD who were continuously enrolled in a large integrated healthcare system from 2005 to 2010. Measures included lipid test frequency extracted from administrative data and Framingham cardiovascular risk equations applied using electronic medical record data. Five year lipid testing patterns were examined by age, sex and CVD risk. Generalized linear models were used to estimate the relative risk for over testing associated with patient characteristics.ResultsAmong males and females for whom testing is not recommended, 35.8 % and 61.5 % received at least one lipid test in the prior 5 years and 8.4 % and 24.4 % had two or more. Over-testing was associated with age, race, comorbidity, primary care use and neighborhood income. Among individuals at moderate and high-risk (not already treated with statins) and for whom screening is recommended, between 21.4 % and 25.1 % of individuals received no screening in the prior 5 years.ConclusionsBased on USPSTF lipid screening recommendations, this study documents substantial over-testing among individuals with low CVD risk and under-testing among individuals with moderate to high-risk not already on statins. Opportunity exists to better focus lipid screening efforts appropriate to CVD risk

Designing a Collaborative Blog about Student Success

The term “web log,” or “blog,” was first coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger (Blood). Blogs have been used in education as online journals, discussion platforms, course websites, and alternatives to mainstream media publications (EDUCAUSE, 2005). Two of the more common blogging platforms, Wordpress and Blogger , are relatively simple to use, requiring no knowledge of HTML to post entries. One of the many advantages of using blogs is that they can foster interaction among peers, thereby building community (EDUCAUSE, 2005; Richardson). For further explanation of how blogs work, Common Craft has created an easy-to-follow video entitled Blogs in Plain English

The Colliding Cultures of Honors and Housing

The University of Florida’s honors residential college was completed in 2002. It remains the newest and most expensive residence hall on campus to this day, housing more than 600 honors students, a faculty-in-residence, a classroom, and a multiroom study lounge. On paper, the residential college is a beautiful partnership between Florida’s University Honors Program and the Department of Housing and Residential Education. In practice, however, two distinct cultures have emerged between the two offices

The Colliding Cultures of Honors and Housing

The University of Florida’s honors residential college was completed in 2002. It remains the newest and most expensive residence hall on campus to this day, housing more than 600 honors students, a faculty-in-residence, a classroom, and a multiroom study lounge. On paper, the residential college is a beautiful partnership between Florida’s University Honors Program and the Department of Housing and Residential Education. In practice, however, two distinct cultures have emerged between the two offices

State violence, party formation, and electoral accountability: the political legacy of the Marikana massacre

Democratic governments sometimes use violence against their people, yet little is known about the electoral consequences of these events. Studying South Africa's Marikana massacre, we document how a new opposition party formed as a direct result of violence, quantify significant electoral losses for the incumbent, and show that those losses were driven by voters switching from the incumbent to the new party. Three lessons emerge. First, incumbents who preside over state violence may be held electorally accountable by voters. Second, such accountability seemingly depends on the existence of credible opposition parties that can serve as a vector for disaffected voters. Where such parties do not exist, violence may create political cleavages that facilitate the formalization of opposition movements. Third, immediate proximity to violence is correlated with holding incumbents accountable