: This essay rejects any notion of professionalization in honors programs and colleges as well as any plan for the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) that is connected to implementing a process of certification or accreditation . The author offers historical details about the machinations of a small group of powerful NCHC officers who tried to turn the organization into an accrediting or certifying body and how they were successfully blocked by grassroots opposition from the membership and by a large group of NCHC past presidents who recognized the ill will and divisiveness that would result . The author discusses the damage that certification would do to the organization by fracturing the collegial spirit and workings of the organization and the honors community it has nourished for over fifty years . As part of the JNCHC Forum initiated by Patricia J . Smith’s “The Professionalization of Honors Education,” this response takes issue with Smith’s application of sociologist Theodore Caplow’s theory of professionalization to NCHC and the honors community and with her implicit endorsement of certification . The essay asserts that evidence for professionalism in honors at the collegiate level is to be found in the structure and resources of NCHC’s national office; the skilled and thoughtful practitioners of honors education at their home institutions; and the scholarship, intellection, and commitment found in NCHC’s monograph series and refereed journals .
: The author provides an overview of a peer mentorship program within an honors curriculum and an assessment of its leadership culture . This culture is based on the values of servant leadership and an inclusive community of learners, and it is promoted through an orientation, training, and robust extracurricular component . The author explores the efficacy of leadership culture, considering its influence on peer mentors’ identification with the honors community and its influence on their learning outcomes .
This paper analyzes summative content and citation patterns in the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (ISSN 1559-0151), a peer-reviewed, scholarly publication related to honors education, during its first 20 volumes of existence from 2000 to 2019 . The bibliometric study consists of two parts: an analysis of articles and an analysis of citations . Quantitative and qualitative measures are used to examine article types, authorship patterns, cited references, and coverage of core subjects . Results indicate 522 articles with an annual output average of 26 .1 . Annual input averages 37 .4 authors, featuring 492 unique authors who represent 248 unique institutions and agencies . Collectively, data show an increased emphasis on evidenced-based practice, program assessment, and theoretical research, signifying steady decadal development in this area . Predictive factors associated with the growth and general health of scholarly publication also demonstrate marked improvements: an editorial board that has nearly doubled in size, sustained interdisciplinarity (54 fields of study), high degree of collaboration (31%), significant (72%) jump in pagination, and low rate of self-citation (10%) . This research involves statistical analyses of written publication and thus aims, in part, to identify and examine trends in honors-related discourse on higher education . Merits, weaknesses, and a complete statistical profile of the journal are provided .
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 .
: The commodification of education is an increasing threat to university honors programs . In honors, we seek to unpack this transactional model of education and uncover the inherent joy of learning . Honors professionals can challenge the commodification of education by helping students contextualize their educational experiences and by facilitating joyful, self-directed learning . Framed by research of both gifted K–12 students and college honors students, this article explores specific conversations and course designs that may combat a commodification culture and foster self-reflection and self-direction in honors students .
The Monroe College Honors Program, located in New York, enjoys an extremely diverse student body, which can be attributed to its location within and proximity to New York City . Data about the Monroe College Honors Program are presented . More importantly, this essay presents the strategies that the honors program uses to meet the needs of a diverse student body . Our students face many challenges, including difficult family situations and economic hardship, and so the honors program has created a rigorous but flexible curriculum and co-curriculum to meet their needs . The approaches used to serve this population focus on getting to know students, implementing an adequate budget, and creating flexible curricular/co-curricular options . The essay also addresses student-centered tactics that increase the visibility of the honors program on campus .
The article examines how to incorporate issues of social justice and diversity in the honors classroom through critical imagination . Inclusion and diversity are among the five strategic pillars of honors education, but the challenge is to create space for social justice as an academic inquiry . This article describes an honors project where students were tasked to come up with their own concept for a television show, using their imagination to bridge gaps in representations on television . Critical imagination allowed the students to move beyond analyzing television in its current state and conceptualize what more inclusive television could look like in the future . Students often feel overwhelmed by issues like racism that seem insurmountable, and they can feel pressured to come up with a right answer rather than trusting their own observations . Critical imagination requires students to examine issues from multiple viewpoints and explore their own thoughts on the problem in front of them . The article concludes with suggestions for incorporating critical imagination in a few classroom scenarios and assignments .
