Draft Proposal /
Utzinger
QEP: Enhancement of
the HSC Honors Program
Aim: To
develop more effectively honors students (both recruited and “discovered”) at
Background: As stated in the Academic Catalogue, “The Honors Program is designed specifically for the student who gives evidence of intellectual curiosity, independence of thought, excitement in learning, appreciation of knowledge—for the young man who sparks the enthusiasm of fellow students and challenges the best in his teachers” (p. 29). Analogous to the College’s intentional development of special needs students who require remedial help, the honors program is designed to ensure the development of exceptional students to their full academic potential. In recent years, however, the program has suffered from an inability to meet the demands of increasing honors enrollment in the college. Further, external reviews of the honors program consistently suggest that the honors should expand its course offerings in a more vertical direction. Such suggestions are in concert with the National Collegiate Honors Council.
I.
Focus of
the Plan
1. The
goal of this QEP is the enhancement of the honors program by creating a more
vertically structured set of courses to improve the academic development of our
growing honors student population at the college. These students include those individuals
recruited as honors students and those that participate later as
2. The
QEP in question will create a structured and challenging learning environment
for recruited honors students (on the front end) and any HSC students who manifest
“evidence of intellectual curiosity, independence of thought, excitement in
learning, appreciation of knowledge.” It
is, therefore, potentially available to any HSC student. The development of these students, who quite
often spark “the enthusiasm of fellow students and challenges the best in his
teachers” should collaterally benefit Hampden-Sydney’s “environment of sound
learning” as a whole.
The plan in a nutshell:
Keeping in mind that the program wishes to honor faculty sentiment that honors students not become “a college within a college,” I propose the College:
1. Create
HONS 2XX (3 credits): Topics in Honors. This course would invite honors students to
explore a topic of general interest within the confines a particular division
and discipline. Anne Lund’s one semester
honors course on epidemiology or Roger Barrus’s one semester honors course on
terrorism (both taught last year) would be examples of the type of course I
have in mind. This course would be
offered once per year and rotate divisionally.
All recruited and
2. Create HONS 3XX (1 credit): Honors Colloquium. This faculty directed colloquium would create a forum for honors scholars to attend and then discuss the papers, discussion, and addresses of campus visiting speakers. The speakers, if possible, would meet with the scholars providing. This colloquium would help the honors to reach programmatically its objective “to broaden the cultural horizons of the honor scholars by providing access to a variety of musical, theatrical, and cultural events in the surrounding area.” [This course could be folded into the citizenship QEP or the resident writers QEP as well.]
3. Create HONS 3X1 and 3X2 (1 credit @): Colloquium for Departmental Honors and Senior Fellows. This faculty directed colloquium would be required for all senior fellow and departmental honors candidates. Student will meet regularly to share their developing work with one another. The colloquium culminates with spring honors presentations. Such a course would encourage collegiality, increase work productivity and quality, and set benchmarks completion of honors work over the year.
4. Summer honors projects receiving college credit will receive an official honors designation (and departments may choose count such course toward major requirements).
5. Students having competed 15% of their graduating credits (18 credits) in honors (including freshman honors, summer honors work, readings courses, HONS 2XX, HONS 3XX, HONS 3X1, HONS 3X2, and/or courses hours for departmental honors) will have “with College Honors” designated on their transcript and diploma.
Rationale for vertical honors
structure:
The National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Basic
Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program” argues that “the
program requirements themselves should include a substantial portion of the
participants' undergraduate work, usually in the vicinity of 20% or 25% of
their total course work and certainly no less than 15%.”
Currently,
“Issue” of Retention:
The initial draft of this proposal suggested that this program might help the retention of honors scholars and thereby protect the College’s substantial financial investment in these students. Thanks to the initiative of Dean Fleck, Mark Newcomb compiled honors retention rates for those honors students entering the College in 1999 and 2000. The data is as follows:
The Fall 1999
Entering Cohort consisted of 307 new Freshmen 48 of the 307 were Honors
Scholars, and 39 of them have been graduated to date, for a 6 year rate of
81.25% (Attrition is therefore 18.75% for them).
258 of the 307 were non-Honors Scholars--150 of them have been graduated to
date (6 year rate of 58%, Attrition-42%).
The disparity is less pronounced, but still indicative of the same pattern for
the Fall 2000 Entering Cohort (297 new Freshmen). 39 of 297 were Honors Scholars-- 30 of them
have been graduated to date (5 year rate: 77%, Attrition-23%). 258 of 297 were non-Honors Scholars--160 of
them have been graduated to date (5 year rate: 62%, Attrition-37.33% (with 1
man--0.33% enrolled FA05).
Honors retention was considerably higher than retention generally, which is not surprising given the scholarship money awarded to these students. The improvement of the general retention of students has rightfully become a clear mandate of the administration. These statistics suggest that, while retention of all students has improved, the retention of honors students has slipped. If this trend continues it will be of more concern because the enrollment of honors scholars the past two years is around 40% higher than the years provided to me by Dean Fleck and Mr. Newcomb.
A more vertical program will encourage collegiality among honors students as well as further developing their academic talents in a manner that will keep them at the college.
Issue of “the Limited Focus” of this
QEP:
Any QEP that is to be considered must show that it directly impacts student learning and enhance the academic environment of the College as a whole. As I see it, any QEP can make a claim that it will enhance student learning by suggesting that it will be generally “offered” to students to enhance their learning. However, unless a QEP has a mechanism by which it can show that it will or, more to the point, can enlist student involvement, such claims to enhance the educational environment by reaching large numbers of students finally ring hollow.
This QEP would directly impact, on any given year, 15-20% of the student
body. Because this QEP would mandate
that scholarship recipients participate in honors courses, the College can be
assured that the educational impact would be significant and guaranteed. The collateral impact of these students,
having their academic talents developed and honed in this program, could raise
the level of the academic environment in all our classes. Furthermore, by opening HONS 2XX to any
student with a 3.0 GPA and promoting summer honors by supporting faculty
involvement, even more students may be impacted. Ultimately, a more fully developed program
would serve to, in the words of the NCHC “be both visible and highly reputed throughout
the institution so that it is perceived as providing standards and models of
excellence for students and faculty across the campus.”
How can this QEP be accomplished?
1. The QEP will ask that the college invest money to pay for a faculty position of ½ or 1 FTE.
In the one-half option the College would “buy the time” of one current faculty member so that he or she could teach during an academic year the following courses: HONS 101 (3 credits), HONS 102 (3 credits), HONS 2XX (3 credits), HONS 3X1 (1 credit), and HONS 3X2 (1 credit). The remaining four courses would be taught in the appropriate department of the faculty member. This position would rotate divisionally each year. The funds for the FTE should then be designated to replace needed teaching (through adjuncts or overloads) in the department from which the faculty member comes. The 300-level course would be taught as an overload by the faculty member in question.
A full FTE option would “buy” (either in overload or time) a second and third faculty member to teach HONS 101 and HONS 102. This would help make teaching in honors more attractive to a broader range of faculty, many of whom complain that they would teach in honors if they had the release time (i.e. money is not the issue).
One could also consider “buying” postdocs or ABD grad students to serve in
an honors position (as
2. The College should invest more money into summer honors as well. Money exists to for student use to; however, faculty members should be remunerated in a manner beyond the $250.00 stipend currently offered. This would encourage faculty members to participate in projects that promote student research.
Part 2: Institutional Capability for the Initiation and Continuation of the
Plan
Has the institution assigned qualified
individuals and oversee its improvement?
The honors committee, under the direction of Katherine Weese, already exists and could be utilized to carry out this change over the course of the five years of its implementation. Further, the curricular changes would be governed and appropriately honed by our elected AAC.
Cost: Faculty will be recruited in house to save money. HONS 3XX could be taught as a one credit overload by the Honors director or associate director. Although money exists currently to develop honors courses and pay overloads, this QEP should give new money to develop the program vertically and solve some of our current staffing issues for HONS 101-102. Average increases in summer honors would amount to around $12,000 ($1000 stipend per faculty advisor).
Assessment: Honors assessment already exists. The new courses would need to be plugged in to the current assessment models. However, any suggestion for improvement is always considered and welcomed. Retention impact can easily be measured over time.