Honoring the First-Year Seminar: Exploring High-Impact Learning Experiences for the First Year in Honors PDF Free Download
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HONORING THE
Exploring High-Impact
Learning Experiences
for the First Year in Honors
HONORING THE
FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR
Exploring High-Impact
Learning Experiences
for the First Year in Honors
Series Editor | Jerey A. Portnoy
Perimeter College, Georgia State University
National Collegiate Honors Council
Monograph Series
HONORING THE
Exploring High-Impact
Learning Experiences
for the First Year in Honors
Copyright © 2025 by National Collegiate Honors Council®
Manufactured in the United States
National Collegiate Honors Council
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International Standard Book Number
978-1-945001-23-9
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ..............................................................................................ix
Introduction: Strategies and Structures for
the Honors First-Year Seminar .........................................................................xi
Anton Vander Zee
Westminster University: Program Prole ........................................................1
Richard Badenhausen
Keeping Company: Genuine Conversation .....................................................5
as a First-Year Honors Seminar Pedagogy
Richard Badenhausen
Oregon Institute of Technology: Program Prole ........................................33
Christopher J. Syrnyk
Bringing the Idea of Ideas to Life ....................................................................39
Christopher J. Syrnyk
College of Charleston: Program Prole .........................................................65
Trisha H. Folds-Bennett, Jesslyn Collins-Frohlich,
and Robert Maynor
Disrupting Privilege: Community Engagement in the First Year ...............69
Trisha H. Folds-Bennett, Jesslyn Collins-Frohlich,
and Robert Maynor
Virginia Commonwealth University: Program Prole ................................95
Christy Tyndall and Jacqueline Smith-Mason
Flourishing in the First Year and Beyond: .....................................................99
Promoting Personal Wellbeing and Mindfulness
in an Honors First-Year Seminar
Christy Tyndall and Jacqueline Smith-Mason
Southwest Baptist University: Program Prole .......................................... 119
Jodi Meadows
Know yself: A Model for Integrating Gied Research .......................... 123
into the Honors First-Year Seminar
Jodi Meadows
Kennesaw State University: Program Prole .............................................. 143
Michelle Miles and Rita L. Bailey
e Impact of Daybook Reection Practices
in the Honors First-Year Seminar ................................................................ 149
Michelle Miles and Rita L. Bailey
West Chester University of Pennsylvania: Program Prole ...................... 183
Kevin W. Dean and Zachary Wooten
Reection in First-Year Honors Courses: ................................................... 187
Why We Can’t Take It for Granted
Kevin W. Dean and Zachary Wooten
University of Missouri–St. Louis: Program Prole .................................... 221
Kimberly Baldus
Developing Peer Mentors as Co-Educators for the
Honors First-Year Seminar ........................................................................... 225
Kimberly Baldus, Gerianne Friedline, and Ann Torrusio
First-Year Seminar Program Prole Supplement
University of Mary Washington: Program Prole ..................................... 261
Kelli M. Slunt and Mara N. Scanlon
Rutgers University–Camden: Program Prole ........................................... 267
Lee Ann Elliott Westman
Grand Rapids Community College: Program Prole ................................ 273
Michael Schavey
East Carolina University: Program Prole .................................................. 277
Todd Fraley
T C
Colorado School of Mines: Program Prole ............................................... 283
Lauren Shumaker, Carrie J. McClelland, Toni Leon,
and Sarah Jayne Hitt
University of Maryland, College Park: Program Prole ............................ 291
Christine A. Jones
Elon University: Program Prole ................................................................. 297
Steve Bednar
Eastern Kentucky University: Program Prole .......................................... 301
David Coleman
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth: Program Prole ....................... 305
Amy M. Shapiro and Brian J. Ayotte
Elmhurst University: Program Prole ......................................................... 311
Mary Kay Mulvaney
About the Authors .......................................................................................... 316
About the NCHC Monograph Series ........................................................... 322
T C
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
he editors would rst like to express our gratitude and admira-
tion for the contributors who have shared their expertise, passion,
and innovation in the honors classroom in the following essays. Our
authors’ work to ensure a dynamic curricular foundation for their
students is remarkable. Our contributors have also been exible,
patient, and gracious colleagues throughout the process of putting
this collection together. We would also like to thank our colleagues
who contributed to the supplementary proles at the collection’s end.
e decision to include this supplement came aer the collection was
assembled, and we appreciate how swily these prole contributors
responded to our call for additional seminar models—models that help
us present as complete a picture of the honors rst-year seminar as
possible.
We would also like to thank Jerey A. Portnoy for his dedica-
tion to this project and his commitment to the honors community in
general. e substantial and ever-growing body of resources available
through the NCHC Monograph Series guides honors innovation and
provides a crucial platform for honors scholarship. Je amplies our
voices, enhances our style, and ensures that the work we do in honors
is widely shared for the benet of us all.
is project grew out of a national survey of the honors rst-year
seminar, the results of which were rst published in the Journal of
the National Collegiate Honors Council (vol. 17, no. 1). Without Ada
Long’s early support for this project and her expert guidance in seeing
that survey into print, this volume would not exist. So much of our
past and future work in honors is a testament to her legacy and the
immense impact she has had—and that she will continue to have—on
our work in honors.
Anton Vander Zee and Trisha H. Folds-Bennett
INTRODUCTION
Anton Vander Zee
College of Charleston
I
encounter many rst-year students in my line of work. At my insti-
tution, I oen lead conversations on our college’s shared reading
text with rst-year student groups during our convocation in the fall;
I consistently teach rst-year writing; and for many years, I led our
honors rst-year seminar. When a campus welcomes hundreds—and
more likely thousands—of new students to campus each year, it is easy
for those on the front lines to lose sight of how radical and novel this
change is for our students. And so, before I engage rst-year students
at the start of a semester, I do my best to fully appreciate and recall
once more the momentousness of this transition to college. Certainly,
many students experience signicant transitions before college as they
navigate identity formation and grapple with unforeseen disruptions
because of changing family structures and geographical dislocations.
For college-bound students, however, few transitions are so fundamen-
tally reorienting and disorienting at just about every level—personal
and emotional, economic and professional—as starting a college career.
So much depends upon how students navigate this transition.
Parents want to see their emerging adults amply supported in this
new environment. College administrators want to see their recruits
retained—a key focus in any enrollment environment, but more so
in an era when demographic and other large-scale factors have led to
lower enrollments across various institution types. Finally, students
navigating this new world in real time oen have no idea how much
thought and labor have gone into the layers of academic and personal
support that are built into the crucial constellation of services and pro-
gramming that we have come to call the rst-year experience (FYE):
from well-orchestrated orientation programs and shared intellectual
experiences to dedicated rst-year advising, dynamic living-learning
Introduction
communities, and a host of other elements oen anchored by a care-
fully considered rst-year seminar.
Given all the hopes and energies invested in that rst year, it makes
sense that the FYE has also become a key marketing emphasis for stu-
dent recruitment: university press releases and homepages tout their
rst-year programming strength, oen with reference to U.S. News &
World Report rankings. is ranking juggernaut, in an eort to shine a
light on aspects of the college experience that might not always register
in traditional rankings related to nancial value or academic preemi-
nence, recently began issuing rankings aligned with select practices that
the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) des-
ignates as high impact, a categorization informed by the criteria George
D. Kuh established in his foundational work High-Impact Educational
Practices: What ey Are, Who Has Access to em, and Why ey Mat-
ter (2008). ese high-impact practices (HIPs) include service learning
and writing-intensive courses, collaborative projects and global learning
focused on diversity, and, crucially, rst-year seminars or experiences.
First-year seminars (FYSs) might not be the ashiest of the HIPs.
Global learning via study abroad, undergraduate research leading to
publication, or internships that launch careers are more likely to make
it onto a college magazine’s front page. Given how oen the FYS either
includes or promotes just about every other HIP, however, the FYS
has become the curricular anchor that grounds this broad array of
programming and ensures that students’ college experience includes
as many of these formative experiences as possible. It makes sense,
then, that according to one 2012 study, 96.5% of four-year institutions
reported the presence of some type of FYS on campus (Barefoot et al.
12). Although more recent surveys suggest that the ubiquity of the FYS
has ticked down slightly, the FYS—in its traditional form or as a set of
curricular experiences diused throughout the rst year’s specialized
and general education oerings—remains ubiquitous (Young, 2017).
Despite this ubiquity, a striking disconnect exists between the
richness of the conversation unfolding around this curricular anchor
in relation to general campus populations and the much more lim-
ited discussions taking place in relation to honors FYSs. e growth
in broader-campus FYSs has been propelled and sustained by a well-
established body of research on the rst-year experience led by the
National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience (NRC).
Introduction
Founded in 1986, the NRC has emerged as the central clearinghouse
for scholarship and best practices related to all aspects of the rst-year
experience. eir in-house journal (Journal of e First-Year Experi
-
ence & Students in Transition), monograph series, recurring research
reports, online courses, and a major annual conference oer myriad
venues for those seeking practical guidance or theoretical reection
on the FYS in particular.
While the recurring national surveys of the FYS established a clear
baseline for research into this foundational seminar, my colleagues—
Trisha H. Folds-Bennett, Elizabeth Meyer-Bernstein, and Robert
Maynor—and I noted that the honors community lacked a compre-
hensive analytical framework that might generate a more informed
approach to the honors FYS. How prevalent are honors FYSs nation-
ally? What, broadly speaking, distinguishes honors FYSs from other
FYS oerings on campus? What curricular structures and learning
outcomes characterize the honors FYS? And what types of consider-
ations motivate the creation of distinct seminars for rst-year honors
students? To nd answers to these and other questions, we conducted
the rst national survey about honors FYSs, the results of which were
discussed in our 2018 article appearing in the Journal of the National
Honors Collegiate Honors Council, “From Orientation Needs to Devel-
opmental Realities: e Honors First-Year Seminar in a National
Context” (Vander Zee et al.).
To frame the essays and program proles that follow and reinforce
this knowledge in the honors community, this introduction provides a
general overview of the FYS, reviewing the most relevant terminology,
revisiting some of the most signicant ndings of the Honors FYS Sur-
vey noted above, and engaging with more recent research in the eld.
is volume includes eight analytical essays exploring a range of dis-
tinct pedagogical emphases united by an intensive focus on reection,
metacognitive practice, interdisciplinary engagement, and mentor-
ship. Each of these essays is framed by a program prole that provides
institutional context, introduces the honors unit, and oers a brief
overview of the FYS curriculum and its evolution over time. To ensure
that this collection provides relevant models for the broadest possible
audience—whether one teaches at a two-year college, a private liberal
arts school, or a agship university—the collection concludes with a
supplement containing ten additional program proles. Together, the
Introduction
essays and program proles collected here detail a wide range of pro-
gram models and pedagogical approaches to the honors FYS that other
honors units can draw upon as they develop and rene their own FYS
programming.
FOUNDATIONS FOR HONORS FYS RESEARCH
While the developmental needs of college-age students have been a
longstanding research interest, new frameworks for understanding the
transition to college have emerged in tandem with the recognition of
what psychologist Jerey Jensen Arnett, in a landmark 2000 study in
American Psychologist, has termed “Emerging Adulthood,” a develop-
mental category that has now, although not without some controversy,
attained disciplinary status as a new life stage. Emerging adulthood,
according to Arnett, is a time of instability, intensive identity explora-
tion, and self-focus, a time that can seem at once daunting and full of
promise (470). Studies in brain maturation in post-adolescent years,
such as that conducted by neuroscientist Elizabeth R. Sowell and her
colleagues, have provided some physiological evidence for this new
life stage, with studies emerging in the late 1990s that show the brain
continuing to develop through age twenty and beyond (859). Accom-
panying this conversation are debates in both popular media and the
academy about the eects of prominent parenting styles—self-esteem
boosting, helicoptering, and cell phone tethering—on rst-year col-
lege students. Educators should also note emerging research on the
prevalence of mental health issues increasingly faced by high-achieving
students—an issue of particular relevance to honors units. A widely
referenced 2019 study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engi-
neering, and Medicines, for example, places students in high-achieving
educational contexts in the same risk category as students living in
poverty or those with incarcerated parents. Mental health concerns
have only become more prevalent during and aer the COVID-19 era
because of the myriad disruptions the disease has wrought both edu-
cationally and personally.
Given these new realities—psychological, physiological, and cul-
tural—it makes sense that eorts to address these transitional issues in
college have increasingly focused on rst-year programming in general
and the FYS in particular. Indeed, as noted in the 2012
–
13 National
Introduction
Survey of First-Year Seminars, the past three decades have witnessed a
marked increase in the presence of FYSs on campuses across the U.S.
(Young and Hopp). e survey also revealed that nearly 70% of respon-
dents indicated an FYS was being oered for most enrolled students,
suggesting that these seminars have taken on a deep institutional pres-
ence nationally.
With regard to honors communities, the assumption might be that
less attention would be focused on students’ basic orientation needs:
the “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” addressed by a more remedial
“University 101” curriculum that preoccupied many campuses in the
1970s and 1980s. Research suggests, however, that honors programs
and colleges, perhaps wary of overlooking or underestimating the core
developmental realities students continue to face, oer dedicated FYSs
with increasing prevalence even as they oen look beyond the estab-
lished orientation model.
As Gerald M. Greeneld and his colleagues note in Developing and
Sustaining Successful First-Year Programs: A Guide for Practitioners, FYSs
have been widely proven to improve outcomes such as higher GPAs,
promote meaningful interaction with faculty and peers, and increase
use of campus services and resources (89). Krista M. Soria and Robin
Stubbleeld, focusing on the reective engagement that many FYSs
employ, nd that students whose strengths and interests are identied
and employed in the rst year have higher academic self-ecacy and
more positive engagement in the learning process (69). Trends found
in recent FYS research, such as an emphasis on peer educators, integra-
tion of curricular and co-curricular experiences, and incorporation of
high-impact practices, clearly indicate that both broader-campus and
honors FYSs are looking beyond the University 101 model that was so
foundational for FYSs in their early years.
Furthermore, although students’ social and academic development
remains at the forefront of conversations about FYSs, studies have also
demonstrated the importance of the FYS in promoting retention. Vahe
Permzadian and Marcus Credé, in their 2016 meta-analysis of the eect
of FYSs on one-year retention rates, found that they have some mea-
surable, albeit modest, impact. A high degree of variance, however, was
evident at individual institutions (295). Building on this work, Young,
working from larger national data sets, approximates a 2.3% boost,
controlling for a range of variables, in retention rates for institutions
Introduction
that have a dedicated FYS—a rate that increases to 6% for academi-
cally focused course types (“Is First-Year” 382–83). A dedicated honors
FYS might similarly enhance retention in honors, especially, as we will
see below, given the prevalence of academically oriented seminars in
honors units. For all of these reasons, it makes sense for the honors
community to attend more fully to, and to participate more regularly
in, this growing eld of research.
e FYS has emerged as a remarkably exible tool that can accom-
modate general education requirements, partake in broader linked
curricula, enhance student connection to the institution, and be stra-
tegically scaled to suit specic institutional contexts and student needs.
Although quantitative reections on how the FYS has encouraged
resource awareness, promoted student success, and impacted honors
retention at individual institutions are minimal, one need not make a
giant leap of logic to conclude that an honors FYS oers clear benets
for the intellectual culture of an honors community.
Before sharing some of the results from the Honors FYS Sur-
vey, I will review the established seminar typology employed in FYS
research. Aer conducting a survey about FYSs, Betsy Barefoot and
her colleagues reviewed the descriptions for approximately two hun-
dred courses to develop a basic typology for FYSs. ey published the
results in 1992. Barbara F. Tobolowski and colleagues later modied
the survey to include the “hybrid” seminar in a 2006 iteration of the
survey. e Honors FYS Survey used this typology as well:
1. Extended-orientation seminar. Oen called rst-year
orientation, college survival, college transition, or student
success course, these courses include an introduction
to campus resources, time management, academic and
career planning, learning strategies, and students’ devel-
opmental concerns.
2. Academic seminar with generally uniform content
across sections. is seminar may be an interdisciplinary
or theme-oriented course, sometimes part of a general
education requirement. e primary focus is on an aca-
demic theme or discipline but oen includes academic
skills components such as critical thinking and exposi-
tory writing.
Introduction
3. Academic seminars on various topics. is seminar’s
content may be similar to #2 except that specic topics
vary from section to section.
4. Basic study skills seminar. Oered for academically
underprepared students. e focus is on basic academic
skills such as grammar, note-taking, and reading texts.
5. Hybrid. is approach combines elements from two or
more types of seminars.
Starting with a broader view of the institutional presence of FYSs
in honors and broader-campus contexts, our survey indicated that,
of the 313 schools that responded to this survey, just over 70% oer a
broad campuswide rst-year seminar intended for the general student
population. By comparison, two-thirds of honors units oer an hon-
ors FYS. Notably, when four-year schools are considered exclusively,
the proportion of institutions oering campuswide and honors FYSs
is roughly equal at 75%.
One fundamental question is how do these honors FYSs connect
to their institutional context. e survey indicated that nearly half of
honors FYSs exist separately from their campuswide counterparts. Less
frequently, honors FYSs exist in the absence of campuswide oerings
(17%) or as a subsection of the campuswide oering (4%). Respon-
dents noted, in relation to a question asking whether such courses are
typically required, that the course is mandatory in 78% of the cases
where a distinct honors FYS is oered through the honors program or
honors college. ese data suggest that most of the honors programs
and colleges represented in this sample consider some type of FYS to
be an essential foundational experience for honors students. Further-
more, as the signicant overlap of distinct broader-campus and honors
FYSs indicates, it is not simply the absence of an institutionalized FYS
program that spurs the development of an honors FYS; instead, some-
thing about the nature and objective of honors education itself seems
to contribute to this distinction.
e surprising degree to which the honors FYS functions as a dis-
tinct curricular entity from its broader-campus counterpart relates to
the prevalence of certain seminar types in honors contexts. Deploy-
ing the FYS typology discussed above, the Honors FYS Survey asked
Introduction
respondents to indicate the seminar type for their campuswide and
honors oerings, respectively. Of the respondents, 39.5% indicated that
the extended-orientation is the most common campuswide FYS at their
institution, a number consistent with the 2012–2013 National Survey
of First-Year Seminars (Young and Hopp). In this regard, campuswide
and honors oerings dier. Specically, extended-orientation semi-
nars are signicantly less likely to be the model used for the honors
FYSs. Instead, honors FYSs were more likely to be academic semi-
nars on either uniform or various content, which, when combined,
form a distinct majority (61%) of the FYSs oered in honors. Although
extended-orientation seminars are one of the least commonly oered
standalone types in the honors context, it is essential to note that
the hybrid seminar types, which are more prevalent in honors than
in campuswide contexts, oen combine academic content with an
extended-orientation focus. Nearly 20% of honors oerings adhere to
this style. In other words, academic seminar content grounds 75% or
more of these honors seminars.
Although the 2012–2013 National Survey of First-Year Seminars
showed that academic seminars were the fastest-growing campuswide
FYS model and one that supports recruitment and retention goals, the
most recent national survey of the FYE indicated a notable decline in
institutions claiming to oer an FYS of any type: a decline of nearly
18 points (Young and Hopp). While this drop could be explained by
an instrument or researcher error, it might also suggest the prohibi-
tively resource-intensive nature of academic seminars, which tend to
be three credits. Honors units are oen considered laboratories that
can serve as a model for how certain curricular innovations might be
made available at scale. e relative predominance of academically
oriented honors FYSs—and the apparent decline of broader-campus
FYS oerings nationally—suggest two things: rst, this curricular area
is uniquely suited to the academic goals of honors colleges and the
dispositions of its students; and second, while many enterprises in hon-
ors might be suitably scaled, the fact that some particularly intensive
endeavors cannot suggests the unique value of a thoughtfully devel-
oped honors curriculum.
e FYS is a remarkably exible curricular entity serving many
student learning and institutional objectives regardless of seminar
type. e Honors FYS Survey asked respondents to identify important
Introduction
seminar traits and goals in three distinct categories: curricular and
pedagogical structures and strategies; student development empha
-
ses; and broader motivations for creating a distinct FYS in the rst
place. Aer being asked to identify all relevant items in each category,
respondents were asked to select the three most essential items for each
in relation to their FYS. A quick overview of the results highlights the
most critical aspects of the honors FYS while also aptly framing the
essays selected for this volume. Although these essays were not cho-
sen because they aligned with what emerged to be the most important
seminar traits and goals, that a clear alignment emerged in the orga-
nizing of these contributions says something about the accuracy of the
survey and the representative relevance of the essays selected.
e rst question related to seminar traits and goals asked respon-
dents to select items from a list that reflects the most important
curricular and pedagogical structures of their FYSs. A follow-up to
this question asked them to rank selections for importance. In terms
of frequency, over 90% of the institutions indicated the presence of dis-
cussion-based elements; over 80% noted assignments that encourage
student collaboration; and over 70% highlighted advising and mentor-
ing. ese traits were also cited as the three most important elements.
e remaining types of curricular and pedagogical structures—lec-
ture-based elements, engagement with campuswide reading programs,
learning communities, and team teaching—were mentioned by many
programs, but their signicance was less apparent overall.
ese results can be tricky to parse, however, because some of the
curricular and pedagogical strategies identied, such as discussion-
based elements, can seem so broad and essential that their relative
importance can, in many ways, be assumed. In that sense, their preva-
lence might draw attention away from items less frequently highlighted.
One might also think that a standard pedagogical feature, such as occa-
sional lectures, would be mentioned with some frequency but rarely
elevated to a primary level of importance. e results are more telling
in relation to particularly resource-intensive and concrete pedagogi-
cal initiatives such as the presence of team-teaching models, which the
survey indicated are featured in over a quarter of honors FYSs, and
peer-educator programs, which nearly 40% of the honors operations
surveyed employ in their FYSs. Even though these more resource-
intensive practices were less frequently mentioned, these pedagogical
Introduction
approaches certainly contribute to the pedagogical strategies related to
discussion, mentoring, faculty networking, and collaboration, which
were identied as being the most important.
e second question related to seminar traits and goals asked
respondents to select items from a list of important student-develop-
ment and program-level outcomes. A follow-up to this question asked
them to rank their selections based on their importance. Over 80%
of the respondents armed the importance of critical thinking, stu
-
dent-faculty interaction, and academic skill development; these traits
were also most frequently selected as one of the three most impor-
tant emphases, and just over 75% cited the importance of reective
engagement. Less prevalent—but still important—emphases selected
by roughly half the respondents included negotiating the college tran-
sition, understanding the liberal arts, information literacy, leadership,
and knowledge of a range of campus resources.
One of the nal questions on the Honors FYS Survey was a quali-
tative question that asked respondents what motivated the creation of
a distinct FYS course at their institution. e responses to this ques-
tion largely conrmed the quantitative data, but they also brought up
a few new and important concerns that are not as clearly reected in
the data. By asking about motivations, this question evoked responses
regarding student-learning objectives, curricular structures, and insti-
tutional goals, as well as less concrete reections on what distinguishes
an honors FYS from campuswide FYS oerings.
When respondents were asked about core motivations, the
overriding concern was the importance of community and cohort
building—issues that are not directly related to the course’s pedagogi-
cal structure or student learning outcomes. is response echoes a
campuswide concern, which is evident in national broader-campus
FYS surveys, with cultivating a connection to the institution. is phe-
nomenon, however, happens on a much smaller and more intimate
scale in the honors setting. If campuswide FYSs encourage students to
have some anchor to ground them, honors FYSs have a more substan-
tive emphasis: they encourage students to be fully networked and to
assume control of their own academic and extracurricular trajectory.
Furthermore, the concern with community in honors oen involves
a connection to a living-learning environment. Honors communities
are formed around the idea that students can push and challenge one
Introduction
another, oen more eectively than their professors or the institution
itself can. e sense of community, then, goes beyond a mere need
for connection to the institution and becomes a critical factor in any
given student’s experience, a factor felt personally, academically, and
professionally.
Another common concern that is implicit throughout the survey
but much more explicit in the context of the question about motiva-
tions is the sense that high-achieving students require a more relevant
and challenging rst-year curriculum that speaks to their unique goals
and capabilities. As noted above in reference to Kuh’s work, this sense
of challenge is a key strategy for making the FYS a high-impact expe-
rience. e overall sense here is that honors students expect a certain
level of rigor and that the expectations of campuswide FYSs tend to
be too low. is claim may suggest a certain elitism, a perception that
honors colleges and programs oen struggle with. While some respon-
dents stated the case rather critically, the broader sentiment reects an
eagerness to challenge high-achieving students with a rigorous, tai-
lored approach to the rst-year seminar. e expectations of honors
students are high, and it follows that honors educators should have
similarly high expectations for their students. Students across campus
oen share these expectations and do not always see the value in well-
intended, extended-orientation seminars that oer information and
access rather than depth and reection.
With this foundational understanding, we can form a distinct de-
nition of the honors FYS. Betsy Barefoot and Paul P. Fidler developed
the broadly established denition of the FYS as courses “designed to
enhance the academic skills and/or social development of rst-year
college students” (49). e nature of the honors FYS, however, seems
dierent in some fundamental ways. An honors FYS is a course that
does not simply enhance: it fundamentally directs and grounds rst-
year honors students’ academic and social transition processes. Given
the high academic expectations for honors students, the honors FYS is
an opportunity to orient them within the networks, the resources, and
the scholarly habits that will be critical to their success.
As the essays in this monograph demonstrate, the honors rst-year
seminar exists in a space of curricular variation and innovation that
emerges alongside a host of institutional, curricular, and pedagogical
variables. My institution’s struggle has been accomplishing all we hope
Introduction
in a constrained curricular space (our course is just a single credit).
If there is any advice I would oer institutions exploring a new FYS
model, it would be to give it the curricular space it needs to ourish.
Not all honors curricula can free up six credits in the rst year for a
comprehensive rst-year seminar sequence, and many honors units
struggle to oer even a three-credit FYS. Even as honors educators
acknowledge those constraints, they should seriously attend to a key
attribute of high-impact practices noted above in reference to Kuh:
they should require signicant time and eort. is curricular space
is especially important if the honors FYS is to allow for the kinds of
intensive reection and collaboration with faculty mentors and peers
represented in the essays that follow.
THE HONORS FYS IN FOCUS: AN INTENSIVE APPROACH
In their contribution to an important collection—e First Year of
College: Research, eory, and Practice on Improving the Student Expe-
rience and Increasing Retention—leading FYS researchers Jennifer R.
Keup and Dallin George Young of the National Resource Center for
e First-Year Experience and Students in Transition articulate how
important it is for scholars to examine precisely how FYSs deliver the
kind of experiences that qualify as high impact. Such experiences, as
Kuh and others have noted, must be demanding; they should require
the investment of dedicated time and energy that, among other key fea
-
tures, include engagements with both peers and faculty on important
issues. ey should invite students to reect and synthesize in ways that
enhance self-exploration and personal development, and they should
also present opportunities for students to see course content as holding
real-world relevance and potential opportunities for engaging beyond
the classroom (Kuh and O’Donnell). is kind of exploration, Keup
and Young argue, has not been nearly prevalent enough:
Although there is a voluminous body of literature on the history
and outcomes of rst-year seminars—most notably with respect
to retention, academic performance (i.e., grades), and satisfac-
tion with the institution—surprisingly few studies and almost
no national research identies specic seminar strategies for
reection, integrated learning assignments and demonstrations
Introduction
of competence, the type and nature of feedback, and opportuni-
ties for real-world application. e unfolding research agenda
on rst-year seminars must prioritize a wide-scale, multi-institu-
tion examination of syllabi and classroom practices to create an
inventory and typologies to facilitate scholarly and best-practice
discussions of the rst-year seminar as a high-impact practice.
(120)
Because research into the honors FYS so often looks beyond
factors related to retention and student success, it is particularly rel-
evant in this emerging conversation. Honoring the First-Year Seminar:
Exploring High-Impact Learning Experiences for the First Year in Honors
thus joins a body of work on broader-campus FYS programs, which
includes Tracy L Skipper’s case studies in What Makes the First-Year
Seminar High Impact? An Exploration of Eective Educational Practices,
in addressing this gap.
Such broader-campus FYS research remains highly relevant to
honors, especially in areas focusing on the experiences of minority
and rst-generation students who are essential to building diverse and
sustainable honors communities. Increasingly, despite the apparent
need for more focused research into the FYS classroom, the focus of
rst-year scholarship has tended to zoom out, framing the FYS in the
context of the broader constellation of initiatives related to the rst-year
experience. is practice is evident in the 2017 National Survey on the
First-Year Experience, which Young of the National Resource Center
also led. Issued every few years from 1988 through 2014, this survey had
previously focused exclusively on the FYS. In a recent reappraisal of the
FYS that also argues for a broad view, John Gardner and Andrew Koch,
key gures in the FYE movement, note the degree to which the host of
curricular oerings geared toward rst-year students, oen under the
rubric of general education coursework, are radically underresearched
when compared to a campus’s designated FYS. is decentering of the
FYS in the context of the broader rst-year experience has certain ben-
ets. Still, we must not overlook the continuing need for more intensive
exploration of FYS practices, which Keup and Young advocate.
Honors units, of course, are also focused on these broader mat-
ters of the FYE, academic and otherwise. The array of first-year
programming is a carefully coordinated enterprise that is particularly
Introduction
collaborative and complex in honors communities because they join,
modify, adapt, or reinvent a variety of campuswide elements within the
FYE. e focus in the present volume, however, is intentionally inten-
sive rather than extensive. at is, it takes Young and Keup up on the
key exigence they identify by taking readers into the FYS classroom
to see what kinds of practices are in place that can make this course a
genuinely high-impact experience. e essays in this volume are inten-
sive in other ways, too. Taking us deep into the FYS classroom, the
essays here also focus on a particularly intensive array of approaches
and practices.
In “Keeping Company: Genuine Conversation as a First-Year Hon-
ors Seminar Pedagogy,” Richard Badenhausen explores how the FYS
at Westminster University harnesses the idea of “genuine conversa
-
tion” to serve as both method and subject matter in their yearlong
sequence (see Badenhausen, “Wesminster University: Program Pro-
le”). rough carefully scaolded instruction and practice, students
move from basic discussion skills to sophisticated analysis of how dia-
logue functions as a mode of learning and knowledge creation. e
program reinforces this development through peer mentors who model
productive discourse while helping students see conversation as central
to academic and civic life.
Building on this focus on the metalevel analysis of fundamental
academic practices, Christopher J. Syrnyk’s contribution, “Bringing the
Idea of Ideas to Life,” examines Oregon Institute of Tech nology’s Hon-
ors Idea Seminar and demonstrates how organizing their FYS around
the concept of “ideas” creates rich opportunities for interdisciplinary
inquiry and metacognitive development (see Syrnyk, “Oregon Insti-
tute of Technology: Program Prole”). In this FYS, rather than simply
exploring individual ideas, students learn to analyze how ideas form,
circulate, and evolve across dierent contexts and disciplines. rough
a carefully sequenced set of assignments examining ideas from mul-
tiple angles, the course helps students develop sophisticated analytical
capabilities while also building fundamental research and argumenta-
tion skills that serve them throughout their academic careers.
Moving from these theoretical foundations to questions of practi-
cal engagement, Trisha H. Folds-Bennett, Jesslyn Collins-Frohlich, and
Robert Maynor, representing an FYS taught at the College of Charles-
ton, show how structured engagement with community partners can
Introduction
push students to examine complex questions of privilege and service
(see Folds-Bennett et al., “College of Charleston: Program Prole”).
eir essay, “Disrupting Privilege: Community Engagement in the First
Year,” reveals how carefully designed reection activities help students
move beyond simplistic notions of “helping others” to wrestle with
questions of power, access, and social change. By integrating theoreti-
cal frameworks with direct experience, the program helps students
develop both intellectual sophistication and ethical awareness in the
context of building lasting connections with their community.
is attention to students’ social and ethical awareness takes an
inward turn in Virginia Commonwealth University’s contribution
from Christy Tyndall and Jacqueline Smith-Mason. eir essay—
“Flourishing in the First Year and Beyond: Promoting Personal
Wellbeing and Mindfulness in an Honors First-Year Seminar”—
examines how their Flourishing seminar integrates wellbeing and
mindfulness into a rigorous academic experience (see Tyndall and
Smith-Mason, “Virginia Commonwealth University: Program Pro-
le”). eir analysis demonstrates how attention to students’ holistic
development enhances rather than detracts from intellectual growth.
rough careful assessment, they show how helping high-achieving
students develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence deepens
their academic engagement and prepares them for long-term success.
is focus on understanding high-achieving students’ unique
needs is further developed in “Know yself: A Model for Integrating
Gied Research into the Honors First-Year Seminar,” Jodi Meadows’s
discussion of how the honors FYS at Southwest Baptist University
integrates gied education research (see Meadows, “Southwest Bap-
tist University: Program Prole”). By examining how theoretical
frameworks from gied education can inform practical pedagogi-
cal approaches, Meadows oers valuable insights into supporting
high-achieving students’ unique needs and challenges. e analysis
demonstrates how attention to gied education research can help pro-
grams develop eective strategies for fostering academic excellence and
personal growth—especially through reective practice.
Two additional essays provide focused examinations of how reec-
tion can be structured to support these developmental goals. In “e
Impact of Daybook Reection Practices in the Honors First-Year Semi-
nar,” Michelle Miles and Rita L. Bailey of Kennesaw State (see Miles
Introduction
and Bailey, “Kennesaw State University: Program Prole”) provide a
detailed analysis of how dierent reective practices serve distinct
pedagogical purposes, oering practical insights for incorporating
meaningful reection into honors courses. Similarly, in “Reection in
First-Year Honors Courses: Why We Can’t Take It for Granted,” Kevin
W. Dean and Zachary Wooten (see Dean and Wooten, “West Chester
University: Program Prole”) detail the broadly integrated approach
to reection in the FYS and related programming at their institution,
arguing persuasively that eective reection requires careful structure
and support rather than simply asking students to reect. Together,
these essays demonstrate how systematic attention to reection prac-
tices can help programs develop more sophisticated approaches to
supporting student development.
Finally, Kimberly Baldus, Gerianne Friedline, and Ann Torrusio’s
contribution from the University of Missouri–St. Louis brings many of
these threads together in examining how peer educators—a common
feature of many FYSs represented here—can be incorporated as true
partners in academic work rather than just as support sta (see Baldus,
“University of Missouri–St. Louis: Program Prole”). In “Developing
Peer Mentors as Co-Educators for the Honors First-Year Seminar,” they
explore how careful selection, training, and integration of peer educa-
tors enhances both the academic rigor and the community-building
aspects of the FYS. e essay thus provides valuable insights into how
honors programs can reimagine traditional roles to create more collab-
orative and eective learning environments that support the intensive
approaches to learning demonstrated throughout this collection.
e essays that form the core of this volume, along with this intro-
duction, establish a useful analytical framework for understanding and
developing a range of honors FYS possibilities. If there is one thing we
learned as we put this project together, however, it is that an astonish-
ing variety of approaches to the honors FYS are ourishing even as
they draw on a relatively stable set of student development emphases,
program objectives, and curricular and pedagogical structures. e
supplement that concludes this collection oers an additional ten pro-
les representing a range of institutions and approaches that echo and
expand the FYS models discussed in the core set of essays.
Experiential learning and community engagement shape many of
these rst-year seminars. Kelli M. Slunt and Mara N. Scanlon, faculty
Introduction
members at the University of Mary Washington, a public liberal arts
institution, describe HONR 101’s use of City as Text® methodology,
moving from pre-semester exploration of Fredericksburg, VA, to
eight weeks of ethnographic training. e course combines critical
observation skills with structured reection, teaching students to
analyze their community environment. Lee Ann Elliott Westman of
Rutgers University–Camden, an urban R2 institution serving a diverse
student population, presents a First-Year Forum built around the
question “What is a Just Community?” It begins with walking tours
examining the city’s history and Walt Whitman’s legacy. Students also
engage in twenty-ve hours of service with community organizations
and reect on their experiences through three papers that connect
theory with practice. At Grand Rapids Community College, Michigan’s
rst community college where most students attend part-time, Michael
Schavey details a seven-week seminar combining honors coursework
with service projects. Students engage with guest speakers while
developing professional skills through shared service experiences and
regular reection.
Two of the programs featured in this supplement extend these
place-based approaches to incorporate elements of design thinking.
Todd Fraley outlines a two-semester sequence addressing grand chal-
lenges through human-centered design and evidence-based discovery
at East Carolina University, a comprehensive public university focused
on regional transformation. Students develop solutions through stake-
holder interviews and the Lean LaunchPad platform, moving from
project conception to implementation. Housed at Colorado School of
Mines, a public university specializing in applied science and engineer-
ing, Lauren Shumaker, Carrie J. McClelland, Toni Leon, and Sarah
Jayne Hitt present two pathways: IDEAS integrates humanities through
visual arts and literature, while Leadership by Design focuses on sys-
tems thinking and making. Both incorporate Place as Text methodology
and combine design projects with ethical inquiry, using eld trips and
lectures by experts to connect theory with practice.
Alongside this emphasis on student engagement beyond campus,
forging a strong campus community and sense of belonging remains
central to these programs. Several of them structure their seminars
around peer education and community building. Christine A. Jones of
the University of Maryland, College Park, the state’s agship research
Introduction
university, describes the Gateway Seminar’s organization of students
into four Houses, each led by Collegiate Fellows who teach core skills
and mentor rst-year students. e house system creates sustained
relationships through curricular activities and a yearlong points-based
competition. Steve Bednar outlines a paired approach using peer edu-
cators to create a bridge between courses at Elon University, a private
undergraduate-focused institution. Students move from a one-credit
orientation seminar to a four-credit exploration of responsibility in
domestic and global contexts. David Coleman presents the Examined
Life seminar, which is featured at Eastern Kentucky University, a pub-
lic comprehensive university serving a signicant regional population.
is course begins with a three-day pre-semester program led by peer
mentors. e seminar builds from these early community bonds into
shared academic inquiry and structured reection.
Several programs emphasize interdisciplinary analytical methods
and cultural engagement alongside a broadly shared focus on commu-
nity building. Amy M. Shapiro and Brian J. Ayotte describe how the
FYS at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, a comprehensive
regional doctoral university, focuses on reasoning skills and contem-
porary information challenges. Students examine probability, cognitive
bias, and research methods through fact-checking exercises and formal
debates demonstrating their analytical capabilities. A similar model
is found at Elmhurst University, a regional institution that recently
achieved Hispanic-Serving Institution status. Mary Kay Mulvaney
describes a seminar centered on developing intercultural competence
through structured engagement with Chicago’s cultural institutions
and campus intercultural lectures. Students connect these experiences
to honors education through reective writing while developing their
understanding of cultural perspectives and identities.
e FYS approaches that the essays and proles in this volume
explore and model chart out a map of possibilities that honors programs
can use as they invent or rene their rst-year oerings. Although this
work is dicult, it is important. One of the outside reviewers of the cur-
rent volume noted the intensity of some of these programs: how they
pack so much in and oen breach the curricular borders of the class
itself, spilling into a range of extracurricular programming. at is great
for them, the reviewer suggested, before skeptically wondering whether
most institutions can pull such a thing o. Honors programs should
Introduction
take this skepticism as both a challenge and inspiration. If a traditional
FYS aims to adequately orient students—an understandable goal, to be
sure—the pedagogical practices and models represented here tend to
be intensively reorienting and, at times, even disorienting as they lean
into the radical novelty of the rst year.
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Introduction
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1
Richard Badenhausen
Westminster University
Founded in 1875, Westminster University, formerly Westminster
College, is a comprehensive, private, four-year liberal arts insti-
tution in Salt Lake City, Utah. Westminster has a student body
of 1,287, including 319 graduate students; roughly 51% of the
student body comes from outside of Utah. Approximately 30% of
students identify as U.S. students of color and 63% as female. In
addition to over 40 clubs and organizations, the university spon-
sors 17 intercollegiate NCAA Division II teams. Westminster
employs approximately 111 full-time faculty and 185 full-time
sta and boasts an intimate learning experience with an 8:1 stu-
dent/faculty ratio and an average class size of 12.
THE HONORS COLLEGE AT WESTMINSTER UNIVERSITY
T
he Westminster University Honors Program was founded in 1986
to oer motivated students interested in interdisciplinarity and
2
Badenhausen
conversation-based classrooms an alternative pathway through the col-
lege’s general education requirements. e program transitioned to an
honors college in 2017 and is supported by more than $6 million in
endowment funds. Led by an honors dean, the college oers students
two routes by which to join: as rst-year students who apply during
their senior year of high school and as transfer students through the
lateral entry option. Students may complete the honors certicate by
taking six of the four-credit-hour core seminars from a menu of nine or
the honors degree by satisfying the certicate requirements plus eight
additional hours of honors seminar work, third-level prociency in a
world language, thesis/capstone work in the major, and a one-credit
hour Capstone Conversation course for all honors students doing the-
sis work that term.
e honors college houses Westminster’s Oce of Fellowship
Advising, which is staed by the Kim T. Adamson chair, one of the
few endowed honors professorships in the country. e honors col-
lege stas its classes via two full-time faculty lines, three faculty lines
shared equally with other departments, and approximately two dozen
other faculty with departmental aliations who regularly teach hon-
ors seminars. e full-time sta includes an assistant dean overseeing
co-curricular programming and a full-time administrative assistant.
Approximately 200 students are in the honors college. Cohorts of
40–50 students join the honors college each fall through the traditional
entry pathway as rst-year students, while cohorts of approximately
10–12 students join annually through the transfer lateral entry option.
WELCOME TO THINKING
First-year students take the four-credit-hour Welcome to inking
honors seminar, recently renamed Foundational Conversations (HON
201/202), during both their rst and second semesters at Westminster
for a total of eight hours, while lateral entry students take a compressed
four-credit-hour version of the rst-year seminar (FYS) each fall.
Oered in three dierent sections each term and in a fourth section
for transfer students during the fall term, the class meets two times a
week and is team-taught by two professors from dierent disciplines.
Each writing-intensive seminar scaolds a reading list of primary texts
around a dierent theme, such as happiness, apocalypse, friendship,
3
Westminster University
borderlands, or memory, that changes each year. e in-class mode
of instruction is conversation-based, and seminars are capped at 16
students.
While taking HONS 201 in the fall, rst-year students attend
weekly evening seminars called “Tuesday Conversations,” the one
opportunity for the entire cohort to come together regularly. Topics
of discussion range from How to rive in College to An Introduc-
tion to the Biochemical Science of Beer Brewing, although half of each
session is devoted to students practicing one of three mindfulness strat-
egies led by an outside practitioner with expertise in meditation, yoga,
or reective writing. e goal is to equip students with tools to help
them cultivate their wellness. e discussions are hosted by peer men-
tors—upper-class honors students selected by application, who work
with the rst-year students throughout the year starting at the August
honors orientation.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Westminster’s honors FYS has numerous goals: build community
among members of the incoming cohort; ease the transition from high
school to college; introduce students to the learning environment in
the honors college, which is marked by conversation about primary
texts across disciplines; and establish a foundation for productive aca-
demic and personal habits of mind that will transfer to subsequent
honors seminars and the rest of their university classes.
e FYS was started with the founding of the honors program in
1986 as a yearlong class called “Humanities.” As its name implied, the
seminar focused on Western texts in philosophy, history, and litera-
ture, usually employing a rigid chronological structure beginning with
the Ancient Greeks. As faculty in subsequent years began employing
non-Western texts from a range of dierent disciplines outside the
humanities, arranging the course in more creative ways beyond chro-
nology, and scaolding those texts around a semester-long theme, the
Honors Council approved a new, more expansive format for the course
during program-wide curriculum reform in 2015.
e general education program taken by non-honors students at
Westminster is called WCore. It consists of classes across three disci-
plinary groups: Fine Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM.
4
Badenhausen
It also requires skills-based courses in writing, diversity, research,
quantitative literacy, and global engagement. e honors college curric-
ulum serves as an alternative pathway through Westminster’s general
education requirements.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
Welcome to inking uses an intentional conversation-based peda-
gogy in which students drawn from all the college’s majors engage in
interdisciplinary discussion of primary texts guided by two teaching
partners from dierent disciplines. Students use papers (“prompts”)
written every two weeks to reect on their reading, practice using evi-
dence in support of arguments, and cultivate their voice as writers.
Both faculty members provide written comments on these biweekly
prompts (rather than assigning them a grade) so as to engage in a year-
long dialogue with the students about their writing. Students receive
full credit for submitting the prompts to reduce grade consciousness
and to encourage them to focus on faculty comments. Students also
revise three of those completed prompts for a letter grade based on a
rubric, thus learning how to apply feedback on written work. In the
second semester of Welcome to inking, students write two longer
prompts during the semester that put two texts from dierent dis-
ciplines in dialogue with each other. e class also employs many
low-stakes writing exercises and peer editing opportunities.
Student conversation rests at the center of the classroom expe-
rience, and it, too, is evaluated according to a rubric that identies
ve productive features of discussion: questioning, listening, initiative,
preparation, and analysis. Students receive a non-binding evaluation
of their Seminar Preparation and Engagement at midterm and a bind-
ing grade at the end of the semester. A culminating een-minute
discussion occurs between each student and the two professors—the
“Comprehensive Conversation”—at the conclusion of the term, when
the three participants have a free-owing discussion, without notes
or prepared questions, of any of the works and ideas from the class.
5
Richard Badenhausen
Westminster university
I
n Elif Batuman’s charming 2017 novel The Idiot, a daughter of
Turkish immigrants describes her exasperation with the ineective
learning environment of her nineteenth-century novel class at Harvard
University. First-year student Selin Karadağ focuses on the unproduc-
tive conversational exchanges between students and the professor in
the seminar. In fact, the “worst part” of the class occurs when the fac-
ulty member tries to answer questions, for he misunderstands what
students are asking, ignores the content of the questions in favor of top-
ics that interest him more, becomes annoyed at students who attempt
to reframe the original question in the hope of a better result, and then
nally capitulates by suggesting “the discussion be continued during
his oce hours.” For Batuman’s young narrator, eager to learn during
her rst semester of college, “[t]his breakdown of communication was
very depressing” (17). Unfortunately, for many college students, this
6
Badenhausen
environment will seem all too familiar. e question is, why is that so?
Why is conversation in the classroom so dicult?
Political scientist Janet Flammang oers some answers in a chapter
from her ne book on the relationship between food and democracy.
Flammang explores the role of what she calls “genuine conversation”
(80) in civil society, pointing out that conversation derives from a Latin
verb meaning “to keep company with” (79), suggesting that we grow as
individuals and citizens only through our engagement with others. For
Flammang, specic conditions must be met for this optimal conversa-
tion to take place; for example, all participants “must listen carefully
for an intimate interchange to take place. Otherwise, the give-and-take
is in bad faith” (80). Discussants, she notes, must be interested in what
others have to say, be willing to occupy an intimate space, and try to
use language that advances the conversation rather than thwarting
communication (80). Flammang warns us about the way poor dialogic
exchange can create hierarchies through expressions of power—both
at the dinner table and in governmental institutions—and also serve as
tools for authoritarian leaders, whether they be dictators or parents or
professors. Yet when employed properly and with dexterity, conversa-
tion can serve as a “democratic practice” that tightens bonds within and
outside households, a skill that we can improve over time and which
can, under the best circumstances, reduce partisanship and enhance
civil society (85). For Flammang, “conversations are the most respectful
form of human communication” for they can provide a “safe context
[where] the free expression of ideas can ourish” (82).
Stephen D. Brookeld and Stephen Preskill, both scholars of edu-
cation, line up with Flammang in arguing that nothing less than our
democratic institutions are at stake because
a commitment to discussion and an honoring of the democratic
experience are inseparable. . . . [T]he respectful engagement with
others that lies at the heart of discussion encapsulates a form of
living and association that we regard as a model for civil society.
. . . Discussion is a way of talking that emphasizes the inclusion
of the broadest variety of perspectives and a self-critical willing-
ness to change what we believe if convinced by the arguments
of others. (xvii)
7
Keeping Company
ey ultimately conclude that given the current political climate in the
United States, such conversation-centric learning spaces “may be one
of the few arenas in which students can reasonably experience how
democratic conversation feels” (xvii). Indeed, this analysis describes
the environment most Westminster University Honors College fac-
ulty hope to cultivate in their classrooms. It is fair to say, however,
that recent debates about free speech in higher education have made
Brookeld and Preskill’s claim from two decades ago seem perhaps
more stubbornly aspirational.
Nevertheless, at Westminster University, the honors college uses
“genuine conversation” of the sort described by Flammang as a peda-
gogical tool in its rst-year seminars to create community, advance
learning outcomes, transition students from a high school to college
mindset, and lay the foundation for modes of behavior that ensure
students are successful in their subsequent honors seminars. Likewise,
we hope that when students leave us, they will be better equipped to
participate fully in our democracy. e key qualities that establish the
conditions for “genuine conversation”—listening, intimacy, equality—
set a foundation for productive dialogic exchange between students
and professors and facilitate productive peer-to-peer discussion. is
essay, then, explores the role of conversation in a yearlong FYS enti-
tled “Welcome to inking,” highlights what that practice looks like
when executed in multiple sections of the class, and unpacks the chal-
lenges and collateral benets across the entire honors curriculum and
co-curricular programming, all the while situating these local issues
within the scholarly literature on rst-year experiences, innovative
curriculum and pedagogy, and honors education. Given the currently
charged atmosphere around public political discourse, the increasing
demand for outcomes-based learning that allows students to see the
actual value of attending college, and the less frequent opportunity
students have for practicing Flammang’s “genuine conversation” in a
world dominated by smartphones and viral social media blow-ups,
such an approach has never been more timely.
COURSE DESIGN AND PEDAGOGY
Welcome to inking is designed as a foundational experience that is
the primary focal point for an honors college student’s transition from
8
Badenhausen
high school to college; as such, the class and aliated programming
focus strongly on high-impact practices long-advocated by organi-
zations like the American Association of Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U). One cogent summary of such practices and their eect on
rst-year students by two educational researchers at Indiana University,
Malika Tukibayeva and Robert M. Gonyea, captures the core features
that make up the FYS program at Westminster University:
First, [high-impact practices] require a substantial amount of
time and eort directed toward a challenging educational goal.
Second, high-impact practices are not typically pursued in isola-
tion, but involve shared intellectual experiences with faculty and
peers. Interactions with others who have shared interests provide
more opportunities for personal and intellectual growth, and
ultimately, student success. ird, students step outside of their
routine environments and settings, and are exposed to a diver-
sity of novel ideas, worldviews, and practices. Fourth, students in
these activities generally receive frequent and continuous feed-
back about their performance, which is instrumental for growth
and improvement. Programs that create conditions for frequent
feedback help students stay engaged and focused on learning
and achievement. Fih, high-impact activities provide opportu-
nities for students to apply what they learn in the classroom in
dierent settings, experiencing rsthand how to approach real-
world problems and situations. Finally, they create conditions
conducive to deep learning, where students synthesize ideas and
concepts that cumulatively make a noticeable change in students’
worldviews and self-awareness. (19–20)
Although how these characteristics apply to a fully developed honors
experience might be obvious, it is nevertheless important to highlight
their centrality to our approach, one that turns on students challenging
themselves when they self-select into the honors college via an addi-
tional application process. e consequences of taking this step are
profound: they choose a cohort of like-minded students who share an
eagerness for that challenge; engage in discourse with peers from all
dierent majors; grapple with intense, weekly feedback on their work
from two faculty members in each class; pursue opportunities to apply
9
Keeping Company
their learning in settings outside the classroom through undergraduate
research, service learning, and leadership development; and embrace a
learner-centered classroom environment that asks students to regularly
interrogate their views of dicult questions, issues, and texts.
Most important for the purposes of this essay, research on the FYS
as a high-impact practice by Jennifer R. Keup and Dallin George Young
at the University of South Carolina’s National Resource Center for e
First-Year Experience and Students in Transition shows that “engag-
ing pedagogy . . . [is] the fundamental element of success in rst-year
seminars and a foundational aspect of their ability to fulll nearly all
of the criteria of high-impact practices” (119). At Westminster Uni-
versity, we have chosen to use genuine conversation as a focal point of
that mode of engagement, believing it helps students make connections
across dierences and advances the honors college mission, which is to
“invite students into a challenging journey of developing their voices,
sharing those voices, and learning to hear the voices of others” (“About
the Honors College”). is pedagogical emphasis also sits at the heart
of our vision: “cultivate a community of diverse voices through genuine
curiosity, intentional reection, authentic conversation, and interdis-
ciplinary inquiry to engage the challenges of a complex world with
courage, creativity, and compassion” (“About the Honors College”).
Welcome to inking is oered in three sections each semester
to serve entering honors college cohorts of 40–50 students; although
unlike traditional academic seminars with generally uniform content
across multiple sections, this class varies content while employ-
ing consistent learning outcomes, course design, and pedagogical
approaches—approaches that make conversation the focal point of
the student experience. All honors college seminars at Westminster
are team-taught with faculty from dierent disciplines. In the distant
past, individual sections adopted discrete themes, but in recent years,
the FYSs have adopted a common theme around which to scaold
texts: happiness, error, memory, or work and play, to cite four recent
examples. Granting some deviation, all seminars use Flammang’s text
as a frame for how we understand verbal exchange in the class, how we
conduct those conversations, and how we ultimately assess student and
faculty participation. Indeed, students read and discuss Flammang’s
chapter in their rst week at Westminster because they are asked to
prepare the reading before the class’s opening session. e discussion
10
Badenhausen
oen focuses on denitional matters: what do we mean when we use
the word “conversation,” and what outcomes are we striving for when
we engage in the practice? Because that opening class has been pre-
ceded by dedicated honors orientation sessions a few days earlier
featuring a peer-led conversation about a summer common read and
a student shbowl discussing honors learning, new students quickly
come to see the centrality of this activity to their honors experience.
While students read Flammang to understand the theoretical
underpinnings of our focus on conversation, they also receive training
in how to conduct “genuine conversations” via a template by scholars of
writing pedagogy Gerald Gra and Cathy Birkenstein in a chapter from
their excellent volume “ey Say / I Say”: e Moves that Matter in Aca-
demic Writing, a second short text that students prepare for the rst day
of class. While beginning with a reading devoted almost exclusively
to academic writing to launch students into productive conversation
might seem odd, the authors frame writing successfully in terms of
“entering into conversation with others” (xvi), and their enormously
useful twelh chapter oers students an outline for “Entering Class
Discussions” (163). eir systematic process of “disciplined moves and
practices,” essentially a template for how to conduct constructive con-
versations, helps students avoid a mere “series of discrete, disconnected
monologues” (163), which is oen what passes for “discussion” in high
school and college classes, as dramatized in Batuman’s novel. FYSs are
designed to help students transition from high school to college, and
so one explicit goal of our approach is to ween students from previous
practices that primarily rewarded the frequency and volume of class
participation rather than the quality of content and the student’s ability
to make coherent connections to other students’ comments. Likewise,
because so many of our honors college students have backgrounds in
competitive debate, moving them away from verbal approaches that
emphasize competition—the agon or verbal jousting that makes up
most of these contests—is paramount if the goal of the seminar is to
cultivate one of our key program-wide learning goals associated with
this course: the ability to engage in genuine conversation.
e connection between writing and conversation established by
Gra and Birkenstein is also reinforced through biweekly short papers
containing arguments about course readings. Because both profes-
sors carefully review and comment on these papers, they establish an
11
Keeping Company
intimate and ongoing dialogue between the student and co-instruc-
tors about their ideas and writing. Called “prompts” because they are
prompted by a probing question tied to a reading, these essays also
contain a cover sheet asking students to assess their work, encouraging
writers to assume responsibility for their education. Because students
are urged to reference the ideas in their prompts during class discus-
sions, they come to see how these reective practices can set them
up for productive conversation. is integration of reading, writing,
and discussion underscores Gra and Birkenstein’s notion that “read-
ing is a way of entering a conversation” (xvii). Instead of receiving
formal grades, prompts receive full credit when turned in to encour-
age students to focus on the professors’ comments. e absence of
grades also has the corollary benet of reducing the incentive to cheat
through platforms like ChatGPT. Later in the term, students do revise
three of these prompts for a letter grade, which continues students’
reection on their writing and dialoguing with faculty. is structure
highlights writing as a process and tries to nudge students away from
giving teachers “what they want” in favor of taking more ownership
of their writer’s voice. Such approaches also attempt to reset how stu-
dents understand the stakes around their writing because they see that
activity has implications for the larger class community, especially in
terms of positioning students to wade into conversation equipped with
specic ideas about the texts in question.
We use longtime journalist and writing teacher Roy Peter Clark’s
Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer as the central text
to frame how we approach writing because it, too, encourages greater
autonomy in students. In employing a clever extended metaphor of
writing “tools,” Clark encourages students not to become paralyzed by
writing rules and instead live “inside the land of cause and eect” (6).
In other words, he directs readers not to fret about whether writing
in the rst person or passive voice is acceptable—two o-forbidden
strategies in high school, according to students—and instead to focus
more on the outcomes that result from adopting those tools. Just as a
hammer can bring about many consequences other than a nail driven
into a piece of wood, a particular level of diction can generate various
outcomes in our writing: if that is the eect we desire, according to
Clark, then we should go for it. e goal is to free young writers from
the incapacitating anxiety associated with following rules, just as our
12
Badenhausen
framework around conversation in the classroom attempts to move
students beyond “right answer” thinking. As our syllabus points out in
the seminar preparation and engagement section: “Notice that there’s
no penalty for ‘being wrong’ in class discussion.”
Like the method of assessment tied to writing, the manner of
evaluating a student’s contribution to in-class conversation is made
as explicit as possible, although perhaps in a more expansive format
than is typically seen in most classrooms. e traditional “class par-
ticipation” portion of the grade in this FYS is reframed as “Seminar
Preparation and Engagement Evaluation,” and its corresponding rubric
identies ve categories of assessable activity: questioning, listening,
initiative, preparation, and analysis. Students provide self-assessments
via this rubric at midterm, receive feedback from professors informally
during class discussions and in a non-binding written evaluation eight
weeks into the semester, and then earn a nal, binding preparation/
engagement grade once class concludes. Two goals of this method are
to deepen what it means to be a productive member of this yearlong
conversation and to open up class discussion to those students who
might self-identify as introverts. Faculty, too, come to be trained in
this practice through discussions at an annual retreat, visits to hon-
ors classrooms where conversation is well-developed, and intentional
pairings of experienced teaching partners with faculty new to honors.
Folding skills like listening and questioning into the mix of the
seminar engagement evaluation process explicitly signals to students
that the honors classroom environment is not one that rewards talking
simply for its own sake or without an awareness of the larger commu-
nity’s needs; instead, the goal is to live up to the spirit of Flammang’s
observation that “[p]articipants in genuine conversations have to be
mature enough to put their own needs in the context of the needs of
the group” (80), which is sometimes a high bar for honors college
students accustomed to standing out from the pack instead of situat-
ing themselves within it, especially when the prize for distinguishing
oneself in class participation has so oen been a top grade. e con-
versation rubric emphasizes preparation, engagement, reection,
synthesis, and spurring of discussion—in eect, behaviors that help
the group move forward together instead of advancing individual agen-
das. Students also practice those habits of engagement outside of the
classroom through “Discussion Questions and Response” exercises
13
Keeping Company
(DQRs), required postings to our online learning management sys-
tem tied to each day’s reading: students must post both a question
prompted by a specic passage and respond to a question posed by a
classmate. Equipping students with the skills that allow them to enter
what Flammang calls, in a nod to Hume, “the conversible world” (85)
has incredible signicance individually. e honors college core values
statement, however, juxtaposes values tied to the individual (academic
and personal growth, curiosity and dedication, and student empower-
ment) with values concerned with the collective (connections across
dierences, compassion and empathy, and support and mentorship).
is juxtaposition reminds students that there are larger stakes to their
academic project than personal achievement and that their develop-
ment occurs within the community.
e fall and spring FYSs culminate in the “Comprehensive Con-
versation,” a een-minute conversation between the two instructors
and each student in the Welcome to inking class about any text
discussed during the term. No notes, no texts to consult, no prepara-
tory questions in advance—simply a culminating conversation among
three individuals occupying a shared space all term that has focused
on discussing a single theme taken up by texts from across cultures,
periods, genres, and disciplines. e rubric employed for assessing
the quality of the student’s work in that conversation emphasizes the
skills that have been practiced throughout the year in both writing and
class discussion: making arguments, using evidence, performing analy-
sis, listening to others, and demonstrating engagement with the texts
and ideas at hand. e point here is that conversation and writing do
not stand alone as discrete activities: they reinforce each other when
students approach the project with authenticity, desire, and shared pur-
pose. While students are understandably nervous about the prospect
of having an extended conversation about fourteen weeks of reading
material with two accomplished professors, faculty seek to lower that
anxiety by running an abbreviated sample conversation in class with
a volunteer and by reminding students that they have been essentially
preparing for the conversation all term through the academic practices
associated with Welcome to inking. Rather than reecting a brief
period of study, the Comprehensive Conversation indicates what kind
of eort students have put into their learning for an entire semester.
Interestingly, students usually conclude the culminating conversation
14
Badenhausen
surprised by how quickly the een minutes passed. ey are gener-
ally pleased with how well they held up their end of the discussion and
more condent about the exercise in its second iteration in spring.
Another way that students learn how to engage in constructive
discussion is through the faculty from dierent disciplines model-
ing productive conversation across differences. Like Welcome to
inking, the other seven core honors seminars are team-taught by
professors from various elds, so faculty show students how to ask
interesting questions—an explicit learning outcome—and how to do
so respectfully. When a neuroscientist asks a social scientist how her
eld understands what motivates human behavior, that professor is
demonstrating curiosity about matters within another discipline. And
because the answer to that question will dier signicantly across those
two elds, students are exposed to the idea that there are multiple
ways to approach a question and numerous answers that can be “right,”
oen a primary concern of honors students. Teaching partners also
model for students the value of reading outside one’s eld and mak-
ing connections across disciplines—key strategies for our students
because they come from all the dierent majors at the college and
are sometimes confused by the way Welcome to inking cuts across
various elds, periods, genres, and theories. One of the most powerful
features of such interdisciplinary arrangements is that they encour-
age students and faculty alike to interrogate the disciplinary lenses,
vocabularies, and paradigms that oen inform so much of the work
in discipline-specic classes. Engaging in genuine conversation allows
this diverse group to witness how these dierent disciplinary mod-
els can bump into each other or even operate in conict. Given such
potential conicts, that faculty work in concert to create a safe space
for this dialogue to occur is essential; the minute students sense a ten-
sion between the two faculty members leading a conversation across
disciplines is the moment that students will retreat from what they are
willing to share publicly because they risk being wrong. Finally, faculty
discussing texts from outside their elds can model for students what
it looks like to come upon unfamiliar material and demonstrate the
awesome power of saying “I don’t know,” perhaps the most dreaded
phrase in the vocabulary of honors students, at least when they start
college. While we regularly engage in professional development around
having productive and inclusive conversations, on rare occasions when
15
Keeping Company
faculty members have struggled to adapt to the format, they typically
have been counseled out of teaching in honors aer one or two tries.
In addition to rst-year students benetting from faculty modeling
genuine conversation, they also participate in a vibrant peer mentor-
ing program in which experienced honors college students guide them
through the transition to college, most oen in conversational set-
tings. at contact starts during honors orientation activities where
peer mentors run a discussion of a summer common read and engage
in other informal conversations. Sending a shared text over the sum-
mer to students from around the country and across the world who
have little in common other than the fact that they will be joining one
another in the honors college in August signals to students that we take
Flammang’s notion of “keep[ing] company with” each other seriously
(79). Sitting down in small circles for a discussion of a common read
with strangers highlights for the students the centrality of conversa-
tion to the honors experience, introduces them to experienced students
who have learned how to excel at that activity, and starts the process of
helping students make connections with each other even before they
start class. is feature of honors is grounded in the robust literature
demonstrating the power of such peer-to-peer programming. Accord-
ing to research conducted by sta in the Department of Psychology
at Rice University and headed up by Chen Zuo, “a peer culture that
emphasizes academic pursuits can facilitate a successful academic tran-
sition” (69). And, that eect is especially powerful for rst-generation
college students in helping to provide them with “feelings of social con-
nectedness, a sense of belonging, and validation of their legitimacy in
the college environment” (69).
e peer mentors follow these common read discussions with
informal meetings throughout the year and more formal gatherings
during weekly Tuesday Conversation programming when the entire
cohort of rst-year students comes together on Tuesday evenings to
have a ninety-minute conversation about targeted issues related to
their development as rst-year students, such as diversity and leader-
ship, choosing a major, social capital, wellness, and setting oneself up
for post-graduate opportunities. e Tuesday Conversation is the one
opportunity students from all the sections of Welcome to inking
have to gather as a cohort; thus, it emphasizes the learning community
elements of this shared experience, especially since peer mentors host
16
Badenhausen
and facilitate the weekly event. Our rst-year programming draws on
“stress inoculation theory,” described by Industrial-Organizational Psy-
chologists Vahe Permzadian and Marcus Credé in a literature review of
FYS eectiveness as the “attempt to reduce the entry stress of rst-year
students and thereby facilitate their adjustment by providing realistic
information and increasing coping resources” (282). An experienced
peer mentor kicks o each Tuesday’s session by sharing a “mentoring
moment,” a story or insight drawn from personal experience to guide
rst-year students, reduce their stress, and oer examples of what ask-
ing for help looks like. Tuesday Conversation puts students in touch
with campus resources, readjusts their sense of appropriate behavior,
and reminds them of the value of having conversations outside of for
-
mal academic settings, even though the bigger group size changes the
nature of the discussion. Students are encouraged to adopt the same
productive habits of conversation in the evening program that they
employ in their smaller Welcome to inking classes, an important
signal linking students’ academic experience to other realms where
they are adjusting, including social, personal, and emotional areas. As
Permzadian and Credé remind us, the fact that “adjustment to college
is a multidimensional construct” (282) suggests that FYSs are more
eective when designed in concert with other programming outside
the classroom that reinforces some of those academic lessons.
e other key feature of Tuesday Conversation is a 45-minute
portion of the weekly meeting devoted to cultivating one of three
mindfulness practices: yoga, meditation, or reective writing. Aer
students wrap up the rst half of the evening session, they break into
one of three small groups to work with mindfulness practitioners
hired for the semester to help students build out their wellness tool-
box through repeated practice of the strategies. Students rank their
interest in the three practices, and virtually everyone is guaranteed to
spend some time on their top choice since they switch from their rst
practice to the second at midterm. e goal is to give students some
specic strategies they can call on when the pressures of academic life
start to overwhelm them. Added to the fall programming in 2020, this
new wrinkle was a response to increased student mental health chal-
lenges during the previous few years and an opportunity that came
about via a successful Giving Day eort that raised $50,000 to launch
the program.
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Keeping Company
First-year faculty in Welcome to inking classes also add to the
syllabus a dedicated text that raises wellness issues to normalize discus-
sions of mental health in academic settings and bridge co-curricular
and curricular programming. Considering mental health issues in
the classroom also encourages students to see faculty as allies in their
wellness journeys. is additional focus on combatting stress through
intentional interventions was especially fortuitous during the COVID-
19 pandemic, and rst-year retention gures suggest the program has
been successful. For example, aer the initial year of this programming,
rst-year retention improved from 75% to 90% the following year, and
retention for the fall 2022 class was 88% (12 points higher than the
university’s overall rate), suggesting the positive eect is enduring.
Westminster’s accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and
Universities, also recognized this wellness programming with the 2022
Beacon Award for Excellence in Student Achievement and Success
(Badenhausen, “Mindfulness”).
e honors college’s focus on conversation reappears at various
other points beyond the rst-year seminar and Tuesday Conversa-
tion, including in discussion events throughout the year sponsored
by the Student Honors Council, in an advising program that turns
on intimate conversations with students, through individual training
of peer mentors that helps them discover their strengths as learners
and leaders, and in a culminating semester-long conversation with
seniors completing an honors degree, which is the most advanced
academic pathway in the honors college. at so-called “Capstone
Conversation” is a one-credit hour course in which honors students
doing thesis or capstone work in the major gather together to have
cross-disciplinary conversations about their research, in the belief that
a student majoring in public health actually has quite a bit to say to a
student completing a project in justice studies and vice versa. While
there are formal assignments and discussions on such topics as framing
a research problem, using evidence, shaping an extended argument,
and presenting work in a conference setting, some of the most valuable
insights occur during unscripted conversations where the students are
driving the connections. Not only does this setting reinforce the inter-
disciplinary underpinnings of the Westminster Honors College, but it
also allows members of the entering cohort from three years earlier to
reconvene during their nal year and reestablish some of these strong
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Badenhausen
relationships built up via the intense Welcome to inking experience.
Because honors college students come from all dierent majors across
the university, genuine conversation can serve as an orienting tool that
creates a framework for intellectual exchanges across elds.
at students have other settings beyond Welcome to inking
to exercise their conversational muscles is essential because excelling
at this kind of civil discourse takes sustained practice, as political sci-
entist Susan Herbst reminds us in her study Rude Democracy: Civility
and Incivility in American Politics. One must work at it over time and
model for students what productive conversation looks like in various
settings to reinforce the lesson. For Herbst, the solution lies in cre-
ating what she calls a “culture of argument,” where citizens practice
the “nuts-and-bolts techniques well known to many educators,” like
listening and critiquing on their way to overcoming fears of having
impassioned exchanges about challenging issues (126). us, when
we run an honors seminar called “Presidential Elections: Strategy and
Substance,” we make sure to sta it with Democrat and Republican
teaching partners. e professors demonstrate for students how to
take positions that are in conict but set those arguments against each
other civilly and with respect. Likewise, the honors college has hosted
an annual statewide essay contest for high school students since 2017
to promote the importance of civility in public discourse about chal-
lenging issues, a competition whose $2,000 rst prize is sponsored by
WCF Insurance and some of whose judges are honors college alums
who started their academic careers in Welcome to inking. In the last
three years of the contest, an average of 215 students from 54 dierent
high schools across Utah have participated annually, suggesting young
people are hungry to engage in meaningful debates about important
topics. In conjunction with the inaugural essay competition, we hosted
a mediated conversation entitled “Civility in Politics and Public Life”
between a high-prole Democrat and Republican—U.S. Congressman
Ben McAdams and Josh Romney, son of U.S. Senator Mitt Romney—
which drew participants from across the political divide.
IMPLICATIONS AND BENEFITS
A conversational approach in the honors FYS gives rise to various
benets that accrue for the student, faculty, college, and even society.
19
Keeping Company
Students, for example, eventually own this pedagogy and even practice
it in other classes because they come to understand the tactic as truly
student-centered and empowering. It becomes an opportunity for stu-
dents to “claim their education,” to adapt slightly the title of Adrienne
Rich’s 1977 convocation speech to the students at Douglass College, a
text we have studied in Welcome to inking. In that inspirational talk,
Rich challenges students to reframe how they understand their role in
the classroom, to move from passive vessels bowing to the authority
of (oen male) instructors to active agents who have a literal say in
what happens in the hopes of avoiding the stultifying learning environ-
ment of the sort described in Batuman’s novel. “It means,” says Rich,
“assuming your share of responsibility for what happens in the class-
room” (235), and so recentering class activities on student discourse
leaves learners little choice but to situate themselves within that space
of accountability.
At Westminster, some honors college students become so cap-
tivated by the conversational approach that they have occasionally
shared the Gra and Birkenstein reading on conversation with instruc-
tors in non-honors classes where “discrete comments” sometimes
become the norm for discussion. Frustrated over the wheel-spinning,
these students attempt to recreate the powerful environment of the
honors seminar, a “spillover eect” that demonstrates how honors can
have liing power for the rest of the institution. Data from annual
exit surveys of graduating honors college seniors suggest students feel
especially condent in their abilities as communicators by the end of
their time with us; of the seven honors college program-wide learn-
ing goals on which students are asked to reect, the strengthening of
written and oral communication skills is typically rated highest. For
example, in a 2019 exit survey, 94.4% of graduates “strongly agreed”
that they had improved those prociencies. A 2022 graduating senior
spoke eloquently in a year-end reection about developing these skills
in this environment:
I learned so much beyond the classroom in these classes. How
to be respectful of everyone’s opinions, truly listening to people’s
point of view, empathizing with others, and being able to have
a constructive conversation. I see many people I know without
these skills going through life and it is painful to watch their
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Badenhausen
frustration because no one will listen to their thoughts, when
in reality if they simply listened to others, they might be heard.
A second benet for students is that the approach reinforces Gra
and Birkenstein’s reminder to learners that they are explicitly entering
an ongoing academic conversation in which claims have been con-
structed over a long period of time, and through their written and
spoken work, they are positioning themselves among some of those
claims. e hope is that students respond to written work, as Gra and
Birkenstein observe, “not in a vacuum, but in conversation with other
readers and critics” (xiii), and that becoming “active participants in the
important conversations of the academic world and the wider public
sphere” (xvii) will demystify for students the procedures around those
discussions. As Gra and Birkenstein remind us: it is crucial to return
academic writing “to its social and conversational roots” (xxvi).
at framing context helps students make connections between
their work and the scholarly agendas of faculty and brings alive the
academic project by situating it within a genealogy, a lineage that
has an actual history and will continue long aer their contributions
have ended. For example, students can see how contemporary femi-
nist Sara Ahmed’s theorizing about happiness from her position as a
queer woman of color is in conversation with Aristotle’s ethics and
thus resituates his work in a contemporary framework that has seri-
ous implications for weighty issues: how students might organize their
lives; who in our society gets access to happiness; and how special
classes of people like immigrants might be experiencing colonial pres-
sures even in how they are supposed to understand what constitutes
success in society. For Ahmed, happiness is not an abstract good that
denes human striving but a complicated construct that expresses posi-
tions of power and bias. “e face of happiness,” according to Ahmed,
“looks rather like the face of privilege . . . [because] claims to happi-
ness make certain forms of personhood valuable” (11). Such dialogues
serve as powerful reminders to students in Welcome to inking that
their entrance into a centuries-old conversation positions them as not
“just” taking a required class but engaging in an activity whose stakes
are quite high. By the way, such opportunities become much more dif-
cult, I believe, in so-called Great Books FYSs because those historical
and typically Western voices that dominate such curricula are oen
21
Keeping Company
not situated among contemporary discussions of these crucial issues.
In this environment, they connect less readily with the lived experi-
ences of our students and understandably make students question if
such classes can live up to Gra and Birkenstein’s aspirational model
of a centuries-long conversation that is still vibrant and relevant today.
Rich’s 1977 talk introduces a related diculty with such approaches:
“When you read or hear about ‘great issues,’ ‘major texts,’ ‘the main-
stream of Western thought,’” she reminds us, “you are hearing about
what men, above all white men, in their male subjectivity, have decided
is important” (232).
A third benet of our conversational approach is the community
established among members of the FYS who come to know one another
deeply because of shared conversations about challenging texts and dif-
cult ideas. Research by Keup and Young has shown that “rst-year
seminars are a critical vehicle for facilitating meaningful interaction
among students and creating a sense of community”; in fact, helping
students connect with each other tends to be one of the most preva-
lent goals for FYS programming when institutions are surveyed on this
question (105, 101). ose intimate exchanges also “provide oppor-
tunities for students to have experiences with people from dierent
backgrounds” (101). ese moments help students develop the inter-
cultural competencies necessary for being productive and sensitive
members of a diverse society.
Given that some research has shown that living-learning com-
munities (LLCs) have generated mixed results in achieving learning
outcomes, pairing a conversational approach with LLCs might increase
the possibility of community emerging. As one study conducted by
Tukibayeva and Gonyea revealed, “living-learning programs did not
associate with gains in critical thinking, diversity appreciation, a sense
of civic engagement, application of knowledge abilities, and growth in
cognitive complexity” (22). At Westminster University, we have chosen
explicitly not to segregate honors students from the rest of the student
population in honors residence halls: it does not t our larger campus
culture of egalitarian community, and the students themselves feel like
the environment in Welcome to inking is intense enough that tak-
ing breaks from each other periodically is healthy. (ose interested in
this topic may consult my earlier discussion, “Honors Housing: Castle
or Prison?”) But the experience in the honors FYS seminar is “sticky”
22
Badenhausen
enough to have a marked eect on rst-year retention in the honors
college, a gure that typically runs at least 10 percentage points higher
than that for the entire rst-year class at Westminster. is positive
eect lines up with ndings reported in Permzadian and Credé’s lit-
erature review that indicate a comprehensive FYE program can have a
pronounced inuence on rst-year retention if coursework has various
features overlaid on top of it, specically intentional programming that
reduces stressors associated with the transition to college and enhances
skill sets tied to engaging in productive learning behaviors: resetting
expectations, learning coping skills, understanding goal setting, and
cultivating motivation (285). At Westminster, all these qualities are
folded into Tuesday Conversation programming and reinforced by
conversations in both Welcome to inking and outside the class with
peer mentors.
Like students, instructors benet in myriad ways from the conver-
sation-based format in the honors classroom. For example, some carry
these strategies back to their non-honors classes, a dynamic that enacts
one of the key precepts of the “NCHC Shared Principles and Practices
of Honors Education”: the idea that honors serves “the overall aims of
the institution” (1) rather than simply looking aer its own interests. As
one Westminster instructor said of how he applied some lessons from
his honors team teaching to the math classroom: “I’ve found myself
talking less and listening more in all of my classes” (Wellman 9). is
seemingly oand comment oers a radical repositioning of the rela
-
tionship between students and faculty, akin to that described in poet
and writing teacher Donald L. Finkel’s provocative Teaching with Your
Mouth Shut, where he calls on us to “consider freshly what that activ-
ity we call teaching actually entails” (9) and advocates a learning space
in which student discussion comes to the forefront. We seem to have
reached a tipping point in our culture around the apparent impoverish-
ment of listening skills, a moment signaled by the arrival of journalist
Kate Murphy’s 2019 book You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing
and Why it Matters. While Murphy laments that “as a culture we seem
to be losing our listening mojo” (3) and frets that colleges “seldom, if
ever, [oer] classes or activities that teach careful listening” (2), we
have taken up the challenge to put the development of that skill at the
center of a conversation-based classroom.
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Keeping Company
Because Westminster’s rst-year honors seminar is so intentional
and well-developed, the FYS plays a vital role in our recruitment and
admissions process and benets the larger institution and its enroll-
ment eorts. Admission to the honors college is based on grades and
a separate application essay, but a student’s interest in and suitability
for this learning environment also play a key role. For that reason,
students are asked on their honors application what specic program
features attract them, and we strongly encourage prospective students
to visit a two-hour class to witness how this conversational pedagogy
plays out. Visitors are told to observe quietly because they have typi-
cally not prepared the reading for that day. Yet numerous students over
the years have decided aer spending time in the class that honors is
not a good t for them, a positive result in my mind because we admit
students based on whether they see value in the learning environment
and can be successful. Our experience at Westminster conrms the
ndings of a broad survey of honors FYSs and their role in the admis-
sions process. In his work with other collaborators on a national survey
about rst-year honors seminars, Anton Vander Zee, the co-editor of
this current volume, notes:
recruitment came up as a recurring theme…. Given how anxious
high school seniors are about their momentous college transi-
tion, a well-dened and exciting FYS might ease some of their
concerns about college and serve as a draw in some cases. e
emphasis on curricular relevance and a sense of community also
serve as recruitment tools. ey embody the honors experience:
a tailored and rigorous education in a supportive community of
scholar-citizens. (136)
In fact, community building starts even before prospective honors stu-
dents have arrived on Westminster’s campus because current students
in the FYS will oen reach out to visiting prospects during class break
or aer the class to talk enthusiastically about their honors experience
and even share contact information in case the incoming student has
additional questions about honors. Of course, COVID made that infor-
mal networking more dicult. e power of peer-to-peer connections
suggests that if programs are using their FYS for recruiting purposes,
they should intentionally build in moments of downtime that allow
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Badenhausen
current students to interact casually with visitors and in a manner that
is unmediated by faculty or administrators.
e benets of our conversational approach extend beyond the
boundaries of our campus: we are at a moment in our nation’s history
where training students to have productive conversations has never
been more important. Visiting speakers are now regularly shouted
down on college campuses, uncivil exchanges dominate the media,
and political leaders tweet the most oensive messages. As Flammang
notes, such a climate serves the interest of totalitarian impulses; in
contrast, conversations can act as a “democratic equalizer” (88) that
keeps us from sliding into destructive “chatter, banter, insults, quarrels,
posturing, scoring points, lording over others, ashing verbal pyrotech-
nics, and silencing with authoritative or o-putting language” (87). In
light of this context, a conversation-based classroom advances the aims
of the university identied by John Henry Newman, who conceded
that if “a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it
is that of training good members of society” (156) and “cultivating the
public mind” (157). e ubiquity of technology also presents problems
for today’s students. Sherry Turkle, an MIT psychology professor and
expert in human interactions with technology, has written a powerful
and alarming book called Reclaiming Conversation: e Power of Talk
in a Digital Age, which laments the “ight from conversation” (19) by
young people because of the centrality of technology in their lives, a
condition that stunts development of empathy, impedes professional
success, and threatens democracy, among other consequences. “It’s
time,” writes Turkle, “to put technology in its place and reclaim con-
versation” (25). While we did not design Westminster’s FYS program
in response to such circumstances, the focus on helping young people
develop these skills is especially timely. Although there are many ways
to structure an FYS program that aligns well with honors approaches,
incorporating a conversational component seems especially relevant
and potent at this time.
CHALLENGES
is pedagogy takes some getting used to for students who have
spent so many years being trained in environments dominated by
“right answer” thinking where the goal of the class is oen to guess
25
Keeping Company
the teacher’s view of the text and then mirror that interpretation back
in written and spoken forms. In some respects, honors students can
nd themselves excelling in high school because they are especially
skilled at this mimicry, which is a hard habit to break, although the
presence of two honors college faculty from dierent disciplines in
the FYS makes such an approach virtually impossible or at least enor-
mously frustrating. While former Yale instructor William Deresiewicz’s
critique of high-achieving students as “excellent sheep”—purposeless
automatons conditioned to follow authoritarian gures mindlessly and
obsessed with shallow goals like achieving a “[r]eturn on investment”
(77) and advancing toward a life of “thoughtless labor” (80)—seems a
bit overblown and rmly in the long tradition of middle-aged adults
complaining about young people, there is no doubt that students and
their families now see education in more instrumentalist terms. is
trend shows up nowhere more starkly than in UCLA’s annual e
American Freshman: National Norms survey data reecting the views
of more than 95,000 rst-year college students. e 2018 report shows
that the most common “very important” reason for attending college
was “to be able to get a better job,” a rationale cited by 85.1% of all
respondents (Stolzenberg et al. 41); 83.5% of the 2019 cohort gave that
reason (Stolzenberg et al. 42). A corrective to this rather narrow way
of understanding the value of higher education seems very much like
what one nds in an honors FYS: an intentional structure that helps
students “think with rigor” (81), “live more alertly” (82), and “build a
self” (83), a project akin to John Keats’s “Soul-making,” at least in Dere-
siewicz’s eyes. Ultimately, college should help “to furnish the tools with
which to undertake that work of self-discovery” (84), and the most
powerful way to move that project forward is to test one’s ideas in con-
versation with others whose backgrounds, experiences, and identities
are dierent. Of course, on a more practical level, today’s employers
regularly cite critical thinking skills, the ability to communicate, and
the capacity to collaborate with others as some of the most desirable
traits they look for in college graduates, and these are the very pro-
ciencies students are developing in the conversation-based classroom.
is radical shi toward assuming greater responsibility for one’s
learning can be disorienting or even frightening. In some cases, it can
force students to ask dicult questions about their motivations or
disrupt the success narrative they have spent years constructing. For
26
Badenhausen
example, aer reading Adrienne Rich’s essay at the start of the 2018
spring semester’s version of Welcome to inking, one of my rst-
year students, who had an academically stellar fall term, packed their
belongings into a car and drove home because they felt they were not
ready to live up to Rich’s call of truly assuming full responsibility for
their education. Students who take these issues to heart may sometimes
nd surprising answers await them at the end of their self-reections.
Other diculties for some students involve the tendency to speak for
the sake of speaking since honors students have oen come up through
the school system being praised for having something to say in class
and feeling as if there are points to be had for simply blurting out
comments, especially when so many other classmates are content to
sit quietly. A related problem is that some students struggle to live up
to the explicit goal of listening carefully to peers and thus have a hard
time connecting their remarks to those of other students. I have found
that a productive exercise for such students is to ask them specically
to spend a week of class discussions not saying anything but instead
trying to discern moments in the conversation that are most produc-
tive and taking notes describing peers’ productive moves that advance
the conversation. A subsequent discussion with the faculty member
about what the student noticed typically sets that student up for greater
success down the road.
Faculty, too, need some time to adapt to this pedagogy, espe-
cially because most have not had much experience in team-teaching
arrangements or working outside their disciplines where half the read-
ing consists of material drawn from other elds. In the rare case of an
honors seminar containing a faculty member who does not deliver on
the promise of a student-centered, conversation-based learning envi-
ronment, students will typically call out that discrepancy on course
evaluations at the end of the term. When that has happened in the past,
faculty have been redirected by teaching partners to clear out more
space for students’ voices or have addressed such feedback on their
own. In our 2019 annual honors college faculty retreat, for example,
a student shbowl participant emphasized the importance of honor-
ing student voices in the classroom, a comment one faculty member
took to heart by pledging to do better in their own seminar. When I
visited a subsequent class session, I was struck by the degree to which
that faculty member actively invited dierent student voices into the
27
Keeping Company
conversation through various intentional, disciplined moves. Another
challenge for faculty involves giving up authority in the classroom,
one of the ultimate goals of this conversational pedagogy. bell hooks
has written powerfully about her suspicion of faculty asserting their
authority when they suggest “that the classroom belongs more to the
professor than to the students” (83). Her endorsement of liberatory
learning grows from her experience as a student with professors who
“seemed enthralled by the exercise of power and authority within their
mini-kingdom, the classroom” (17). Taking a starkly dierent approach
as a teacher, hooks declares that her “voice is not the only account of
what happens in the classroom,” a strategy that “allows students to
assume responsibility for their choices” (20, 19). at hooks and Rich
end up similarly tying the opening up of the classroom to a wider
diversity of voices to greater agency on the part of students is no coin-
cidence. In asking students to step forward to speak, we are oering
them the opportunity to own their education to a greater degree.
It is important to distinguish the conversational classroom envi-
ronment from a traditional seminar where students are making discrete
comments. at commentary is routed through the authoritative g-
ure of the professor, the paternalistic gure at the head of the table.
at dynamic bothers Flammang because order is enforced through
punitive threats, producing an environment that is not conducive to
genuine conversation (81). e sort of keeping company described by
Flammang involves a sharing of authority and an exchange of ideas
where participants “reveal their intimate thoughts and observations
and . . . subject them to the scrutiny of others in a safe context” (82).
For longtime writing instructor and advocate for peer learning Ken-
neth A. Bruee, conversation serves as an antidote to the insidious
eects of a faculty member’s authority hanging over students’ heads.
He prefers an environment where “professors and students alike con-
struct and maintain knowledge in continual conversation with their
peers” (xi). According to Bruee, nothing less than the way we con-
struct knowledge is at stake when he calls for us to “revise longstanding
assumptions about the nature and authority of knowledge and about
classroom authority. To accomplish this . . . both college students and
their professors must learn collaboratively” (xii).
Structured exercises that involve small group work, debates, or
student-led discussion where faculty remain quiet can facilitate the
28
Badenhausen
move away from routing all discussion through the instructor. In fact,
students sometimes acknowledge that skill of connecting their con-
versation to peers’ ideas as the “most important thing they learned”
during the semester, especially because it is a practice that does not
necessarily surface in other classes, as one anonymous remark sug-
gested in an annual end-of-year student reection in a spring 2017
section of Welcome to inking: “Learning how to have a conversation
through building o others’ ideas in a connected route while remain-
ing grounded in the text was very important to my success in Welcome
to inking, as well as other classes where that skill is not as highly
prioritized or sought out” (“Welcome”). Other more exaggerated activi-
ties can press this point even harder: the one-minute commentary, for
example, is an overly formal exercise in which each student speaks (or
not) about a text or question for a single minute (timed to the second)
without any editorializing by fellow students or faculty. e articial-
ity of a cellphone timer lends a kind of discipline to student comments
that focuses their observations and nudges them away from speaking
for and to the teacher. Frequent low-stakes and ungraded in-class writ-
ing exercises also help students collect their thoughts and provide them
with notes to refer to when entering the conversation.
It is worth making a nal comment about how decentering the
classroom necessarily gives faculty less control over that space. is
position is underscored by the fact that our honors college classes are
team-taught. is recentering of authority creates an environment that
is potentially messier and more unpredictable, especially when con-
ict arises around issues of race, class, and gender. As Brookeld and
Preskill point out, discussion can sometimes “silence certain groups
and bolster cultural divisions” (129). “One of the great challenges,” they
observe, “of cross-cultural communication is learning to say what we
mean in a way that is not disrespectful or demeaning to those who hear
our words” (142). It is crucial, then, for faculty to be on the lookout
for dominant voices silencing those students who occupy less privi-
leged positions while also resisting the urge to route the conversation
through the teacher. Training students to understand how normative
views might crowd out other perspectives and encouraging them to
call out those moments are principal features of this approach, espe-
cially since the risks for those holding minoritized identities when they
participate in discussion are much greater. us, much care must be
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Keeping Company
paid to supporting these voices. When we, as Brookeld and Preskill
suggest, “consider divergent viewpoints and sympathetically . . . pursue
commonalities, with a clear-eyed understanding that agreement and
common ground may be illusory,” we are demonstrating the courage
to “ponder the fragility of our own identities and our ideals” (18, 20).
Having the faculty team teach our honors courses offers the
opportunity to pair experienced faculty with professors new to the
pedagogy, which we do intentionally. But faculty also need to receive
professional development opportunities so they are attuned to the rela-
tionship between privilege and conversation. Our incredibly talented
honors college faculty at Westminster have participated in workshops
on leading dicult conversations around race, class, and gender and
employing inclusive teaching pedagogies. ere is no doubt that cur-
rent ideological and political climates have made such conversations
across dierences more dicult, a phenomenon philosopher C. i
Nguyen attributes to the challenging, cult-like properties of the vari-
ous echo chambers we all inhabit, which are “social structure[s] from
which other relevant voices have been actively discredited.” For Nguyen,
the solution turns on building trust through goodwill with those who
do not share our views, resulting in a “social reboot,” thus reminding
us that leading community-building exercises in our academic classes
is time well spent.
Despite the challenges of a conversational approach to the FYS,
the pedagogy has become engrained enough in the gateway seminar
to the Westminster University Honors College that it would be hard to
imagine adopting another strategy. Faculty tend to improve over time
at leading such classrooms and regularly focus on the conversation-
based features of their classes in their end-of-term self-reections, as
two teaching partners did in the following comments about the honors
core course Global Welfare and Justice: “e strength of the class was
the group dynamic and constellation of voices. It was an incredibly
engaged class. Students challenged and built on each other’s comments
in ways that led to rich analysis” (Etter and Weston). Alums, too, regu
-
larly return to campus, reporting the communication skills developed
in Welcome to inking and other honors seminars as particularly
formative and valuable. Even students considering the program under-
stand the centering of student voices as fundamental; it always appears
as one of the top ve reasons prospective students apply to the honors
30
Badenhausen
college. For the fall 2018 and 2020 cohorts, the conversation-based
pedagogy appeared as the second reason, and for the fall 2019, 2021,
and 2022 cohorts it came in third. In fact, prospective students who
visit Welcome to inking are most oen struck by the apparent ease
with which students engage in conversations about dicult texts and
the inclusiveness of those discussions. We usually remind such visitors,
however, that those condent displays reect months of hard practice.
Ultimately, this conversation-based approach asks students to
embrace “a life lived actively” (Rich 234) because that is the only way
to fulll our potential as individuals and as a society. As universities
struggle to convince an increasingly skeptical public of the value of
higher education, they might make more headway by demonstrating
their ability to produce citizens skilled in making connections across
dierences and community building. If the next generation does not
possess such competencies, we will most likely encounter, as Flam-
mang warns us, a continued erosion of democracy and the emergence
of even more authoritarian forms of government.
REFERENCES
“About the Honors College.” Westminster University, westminsteru.edu/
academics/honors-college/about-the-honors-college.html.
Ahmed, Sara. e Promise of Happiness. Duke UP, 2010.
Badenhausen, Richard. “Honors Housing: Castle or Prison?” Housing Honors,
edited by Linda Frost, et al., National Collegiate Honors Council, 2015, pp.
183–91. NCHC Monograph Series.
---. “Mindfulness Practices Support Student Wellness in Westminster’s Honors
College.” Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, 29 Mar.
2023, nwccu.org/news/v5i3-beacon-award-winner-westminster-college.
Batuman, Elif. e Idiot. Penguin, 2017.
Brookeld, Stephen D., and Stephen Preskill. Discussion as a Way of Teaching:
Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms. 2nd ed., Jossey-Bass, 2005.
Bruee, Kenneth A. Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence,
and the Authority of Knowledge. 2nd ed., Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.
Clark, Roy Peter. Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. Little
Brown, 2008.
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Deresiewicz, William. Excellent Sheep: e Miseducation of the American Elite
and the Way to a Meaningful Life. Free Press, 2014.
Etter, Connie, and J. Kael Weston. “End-of-Term Faculty Self-Reection: Global
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Herbst, Susan. Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics.
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33
Christopher J. Syrnyk
Oregon Institute of Technology
Located in southern Oregon, the Oregon Institute of Technol-
ogy (Oregon Tech) was founded in 1947 and is Oregon’s public
polytechnic university. Its main residential campus is in Klamath
Falls, OR; its other locations include an urban campus in Wil-
sonville, OR; an online campus; and additional sites in Salem,
OR, and Seattle, WA. Oregon Tech’s mission is to provide profes-
sionally focused applied degrees. It oers forty-nine bachelor’s
degrees, eight master’s degree programs, one doctoral program,
and several certicates. As of fall 2023, 1,976 students were
enrolled at the main campus in Klamath Falls: 51% were male,
and 49% were female. Approximately 35% of students are minor
-
ity students. Oregonians make up 70% of students who attend
Oregon Tech. e university has an average class size of seven-
teen students, and about 36% live on campus in the Klamath
Falls residence halls. Oregon Tech has a 14:1 student-to-faculty
34
Syrnyk
ratio, and 93.9% of faculty are full-time; 76.6% of full-time fac-
ulty are tenured or on a tenure track.
THE OREGON TECH HONORS PROGRAM
T
he Oregon Tech Honors Program was founded in 2012 and cel-
ebrated its tenth anniversary in the fall of 2022. e current
enrollment in the college is between 50–60 students, with a total pro-
gram enrollment goal of approximately 65 students. Annually, the
honors program seeks to enroll 20–25 rst-year students. Although
most students apply when starting their rst year at Oregon Tech,
3–5 transfer or sophomore-level students also apply each year, and
all participate in a comprehensive and community-focused rst-year
experience. e Oregon Tech Honors Program has revised its three-
year curriculum to oer students a cohesive program from term to
term that will make the program more coherent from year to year.
We require 30 total credits, which include honors-option or contract
courses as well as our new Honors ought Projects. e honors
program has one executive director, one assistant director, and approxi-
mately four Honors Program Core Faculty whose appointments are in
various departments outside of honors, and there is also an Honors
Program Advisory Committee.
HUM 251: THE HONORS IDEA SEMINAR
All rst-year honors students are required to enroll in the one-credit
First-Year Seminar (FYS), the Honors Ideas Seminar, each term dur-
ing their rst year in the program. is interdisciplinary academic
seminar focuses on critical thinking and the humanities; other orien-
tation or academic enrichment opportunities occur primarily outside
the seminar. Since Oregon universities are on a quarter system, by the
end of the academic year, all honors FYS students will earn a total of
three credits for the Idea Seminars. is one-credit seminar model is
continued in the second and third years of the honors program; the
Second-Year Seminar is SYS: the Honors Question Seminar and the
ird-Year Seminar is TYS: the Honors Answer Seminar. e execu-
tive director teaches the seminar sequences, supplemented by guest
teaching opportunities from the assistant director and Honors Program
35
Oregon Institute of Technology
Core Faculty. We oer one section per term of the FYS, SYS, and TYS,
each with an enrollment of 25–30 students per seminar.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Oregon Tech recognized the strategic value of providing students
with an honors program experience, especially in a state where other
public universities oered well-established honors colleges and pro-
grams. Before the development of the honors program, Oregon Tech
had previously attempted to develop a First-Year Experience program
for the greater student population, but these attempts were met with
varying degrees of success. An Honors Program Exploratory Commit-
tee was formed to research how best to create an honors program to
complement the STEM-focused degrees oered at Oregon Tech. e
Exploratory Committee decided upon a leadership focus for the FYS,
arguing it would best suit the students at Oregon’s polytechnic uni-
versity. And in 2012, the rst cohort of students was presented with
the honors program and the FYS Honors Leadership Seminar. Along
with the FYS, the honors program oered other traditional features
like a service component and an Honors Senior Project. As part of
the leadership purpose of this initial Honors Leadership Seminar, the
rst director of the honors program brought in various community
leaders and business leaders to oer regular presentations to hon-
ors students. Because of various program requirements, the Honors
Program Committee and faculty revised the Senior Project and the
honors curriculum, and they also determined that the honors program
would better serve its students by emphasizing academics rather than
continuing to focus on leadership. e new director, along with the
Core Faculty and honors program students, worked for several years
to devise a curriculum that would provide a complementary educa
-
tion that connects more purposefully with the nature of the degrees
oered by Oregon Tech.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e Honors Idea Seminar serves as the rst sequence in the honors
seminar series and is a vital complement to all degrees oered at Ore-
gon Tech. Our honors program slogan—“fostering the person in the
36
Syrnyk
future professional”—guides the work of each student’s seminar expe-
rience, which begins in the FYS. In the Oregon Tech Honors Program,
we dene a person as someone who knows ideas, asks questions, and
seeks answers. Utilizing a variety of pedagogical approaches from
collaborative group work to Socratic Seminars, eld trips, lms, and
fun community-building traditions, each highly interactive seminar
revolves around teaching and learning the knowledge and skills to
develop one of three fundamental aspects of an honors program edu-
cation: ideas, questions, and answers. At the start of their three years in
the honors program, students also work to develop a Narrative Tran-
script in the Idea Seminar that is dedicated to the feedback, criticism,
and progress of their individual learning experience. is project will
follow them aer graduation and serve as a meaningful countermea-
sure to the traditional GPA transcript.
Fundamentally, the course learning objectives for the FYS exist
in three categories based on how the sections conceptualize ideas as
objects of study (e.g., the material culture around an idea); ideas as
part of a world of lived human experience (e.g., the context and setting
that surround an idea, or how ideas inuence our choices and the ways
we may live in the world); and ideas as phenomena experienced over
and shaped by time (e.g., we speculate on the future nature of ideas).
e outcomes related to these objectives likewise instill in students an
intellectual rigor and work ethic that hone their ability to pursue and
evaluate knowledge accurately.
Students themselves play an active role in teaching and learning
in each FYS class, whether participating in a group discussion or as
discussion leaders for a certain class period, serving on an interac-
tive panel of experts, or collaborating on a problematic question or
wicked problem. Each FYS is devoted to a unique idea or theme that
is the focus for study the entire year. Likewise, in the FYS, the hon-
ors program students are introduced to “e 10 Essential Lessons for
the Honors Program.” ese essential lessons consist of ten two-word
mantras, plus amplications, that highlight the intellectual and social
values we instill in our honors students. To illustrate, the rst three les-
sons are “Know thyself,” “Practice (critical) thinking,” and “Be curious.”
ese ten lessons serve as a guiding document for how to grow as a
positive and productive person. Each year, honors students also work
through a traditional series of standard readings. As a result of this
37
Oregon Institute of Technology
FYS, they become more accurate and compelling at communication
by working through a rigorous set of three extensive written midterm
experiences, three intensive oral nal exams each year, and the year-
long Honors Idea Project. At the time of writing this chapter, we have
been developing a high-impact practice (HIP) for the honors program
of peer-to-peer mentoring. Lastly, FYS students attend a yearly Honors
Listening Session dedicated to that year’s theme. is event conrms
that they will have begun their journey to realizing what it means to
pursue a career in the context of a connected life through a relation-
ship-rich education founded on the appreciation and application of
knowledge and the skills made possible by this knowledge.
39
Christopher J. Syrnyk
Oregon Institute of Technology
I
n the waning hours of the twentieth century, world-renowned physi-
cist Stephen Hawking lent his unique perspective and unforgettable
voice to an ad for British Telecom in which he praises the human
capacity for talking and listening to share the power of ideas:
For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. en
something happened which unleashed the power of our imagi-
nation. We learned to talk, and we learned to listen. Speech has
allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings
to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest
achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest fail-
ures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest
hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology
at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to
do is make sure we keep talking. (British)
For Hawking, thinking for oneself promotes expression, which allows
for the exchange of ideas and for ideas to become reality. is argument
40
Syrnyk
aptly describes the educational goals we set out to accomplish in the
First-Year Seminar (FYS) of the Oregon Institute of Technology (Ore-
gon Tech) Honors Program as we seek to bring the idea of ideas to life.
Bringing ideas to life through a developed capacity for thinking about
and discussing them means honors students can claim to know an idea
and understand what work is involved in knowing ideas.
In our FYS, which we call the “Honors Idea Seminars,” we approach
this goal through rigorous discussion and dialog-driven class activities
promoting student engagement and requiring students to articulate
their hard-thought perspectives on ideas with each other over time.
For only by talking and listening may we cultivate enriching conver-
sations about ideas that allow us to know something about them and
how they aect our place in the world. Once developed in the FYS,
this set of intellectual and practical critical thinking skills continues
to inform our students’ academic, personal, and professional lives at
Oregon Tech and beyond.
e typical students who arrive at Oregon Tech, however, are not
known for being adept at conversation. Although Oregon Tech has
historically required more communication courses than the other
public universities in the state, Oregon Tech students do not pres-
ent as a group prone to socializing. ey can readily converse with
colleagues in their major, but talking with other people in dierent
majors, although a cliched concern about STEM majors, accurately
reects one of their more profound challenges as students: the ability
to engage with others across disciplines and to express their thoughts
and themselves articulately. Our honors FYS aims to address these
challenges of social interaction and human engagement. Over three
consecutive terms of one-credit seminars that are taught in sequence
each academic year, all focusing on one unique idea situated in the
past, emerging in the present, and shaping the future, rst-year cohort
honors students learn to appreciate the complexity of how these Hon-
ors Idea Seminar conversations connect ideas to life. ey do this work
by learning to talk to each other across disciplines and dierences and
developing the capacity to express their own ideas.
Rather than one three-credit course in the fall, we approach the
Honors Idea Seminar as a sequence: three one-credit courses are
taught as a thematically linked sequence distributed across three aca-
demic quarters. Instead of an extended-orientation seminar, which
41
Idea of Ideas
typically involves a more practical introduction to college life and cam-
pus resources, we designed an approach in line with recent education
research on those factors that reinforce student success: promoting
engagement and self-ecacy to support a greater sense of connection
to one’s academic experience. Alexis A. Hauck and her colleagues dis-
cuss how the FYS can enhance engagement, academic self-ecacy,
and student achievement: “If engagement is understood to take place
when students are invested, attentive, and connected in the learning
process, then the motivating eects of high self-ecacy certainly con
-
tribute to a student’s ability to sustain such engagement eorts” (89).
In designing our FYS, we wanted the course to explore how these two
constructs—academic self-ecacy and engagement—contribute to
providing the learning and social environment necessary for academic
achievement and persistence among the rst-year honors cohort and
to building community by connecting students with other students
whose ideas may dier from their own. Current research on the dif-
ferent credit loads assigned to such courses allowed us to determine
that three credits, although distributed across three terms, would still
successfully promote engagement, academic self-ecacy, persistence,
community, and retention, as well as provide the students with an aca-
demically rigorous education. Starting with the Honors Idea Seminar,
students are introduced to the rigors of academic life in the honors
program and simultaneously provided with the means of support and
community to achieve their goals for the remaining two years of the
program.
THE CURRICULUM: IDEAS IN THEORY AND HISTORY
How did we develop the curriculum for the Honors Idea Seminar? And
what does a seminar dedicated to the study of ideas promise to oer
students at a STEM-focused public polytechnic university? rough-
out higher education history, university study has evolved from set
curricula in which all students participated in a predetermined set of
subjects to the rise of curricular disciplines and specializations wherein
students chose a major and its attendant curricula. us, curricula
evolved from the tradition of the original seven liberal arts of the triv
-
ium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and its complementing course of
study, the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music),
42
Syrnyk
to curricula that focused on the life of the mind (the professional
intellectual) and the working life (the career professional). In other
words, as life oered more opportunities for occupations and studies
to occupy one’s time, universities became more complex, and curri-
cula evolved to meet the changing demands of the universities and
industries for which they were educating students to participate in an
increasingly complex world.
In more modern times, universities have maintained some foun-
dational curricula for their students, typically expressed today as a
university’s general education requirements, regardless of the academic
course of study they pursue. In the 1930s, while a professor at the Uni
-
versity of Chicago, Mortimer J. Adler and university president Robert
Maynard Hutchins established a then-controversial course of study
built upon “Great Books” and “Great Ideas.” Adler and Hutchins ulti-
mately arrived at a nite set of 103 Great Ideas, explained at length in
Adler’s How to ink About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of
Western Civilization, rst published in 1969. Some universities, con-
tinuing in this vein, established more innovative approaches to this
foundational curricular requirement by developing these courses as
part of curricula that focused more on ideas and foundational discov-
eries, philosophies, and beliefs. ese universities decided to pursue
more intellectually engaging forms of a general, albeit classical, edu-
cation curricula. Universities such as the University of California,
Berkeley; New York University; and the University of Iowa today
oer Big Ideas courses, all of which ostensibly provide students with
a shared foundational educational experience dedicated to the study
of ideas. ese courses have grown more inclusive, interdisciplinary,
and pedagogically innovative, oen involving team-teaching models.
Each curricular approach provides an educational aspect or construct
worthy of consideration in today’s honors curricula.
Two other early-twentieth-century curricular approaches, more
than any other, however, have informed Oregon Tech’s honors FYS
curriculum: the history of ideas and intellectual history. Peter E. Gor-
don, the Amabel B. James Professor of History and Harvard College
Professor, in an unpublished essay titled “What is Intellectual His-
tory? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood
Field” (cited with author’s permission) oers a helpful overview of the
diculty in describing what dierentiates the history of ideas from
43
Idea of Ideas
intellectual history. Gordon argues that even though these two terms
are oen used interchangeably, a dierence exists: “e ‘history of
ideas’ is a discipline which looks at large-scale concepts as they appear
and transform over the course of history.” He continues: “An historian
of ideas will tend to organize the historical narrative around one major
idea and will then follow the development or metamorphosis of that
idea as it manifests in dierent contexts and times” (1–2). Gordon
explains what he sees as a limitation of this discipline in that the ideas
as such tend to be “recognizably the same thing despite all of its con-
textual variations” (2). Gordon then dierentiates intellectual history
from the history of ideas:
Intellectual history resists the Platonist expectation that an idea
can be dened in the absence of the world, and it tends instead
to regard ideas as historically conditioned features of the world
which are best understood within some larger context, whether
it be the context of social struggle and institutional change,
intellectual biography (individual or collective), or some larger
context of cultural or linguistic dispositions (now oen called
‘discourses’). (2)
In other words, the history of ideas tends to approach ideas as less
mutable and more stable over time, as seemingly more set apart from
the world. In contrast, intellectual history tends to approach ideas as
more changeable entities that are inuenced by other ideas and the
pressures of various contexts in a complex and changing world.
e Honors Idea Seminar curriculum draws from both disciplines.
Most people are familiar with the originator of the history of ideas
discipline, Arthur O. Lovejoy, and his landmark text e Great Chain
of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. With its all-encompassing
focus on a particular idea, this work and all that can be discovered in
the study of said idea inform our approach each year in spirit because
we select texts that will allow students to engage meaningfully with an
idea throughout the year. Lovejoy’s book oers up what he termed a
“unit idea” of “e Great Chain of Being,” the understanding that there
has preexisted a stable order to the world from God to other heavenly
creatures, to the lowliest animals of the world, down to the inanimate
matter of this world. To further illustrate, Mark Bevir, in his review
of Donald R. Kelley’s e Descent of Ideas: e History of Intellectual
44
Syrnyk
History, provides a succinct description of Lovejoy’s contributions:
“Lovejoy himself conceived of intellectual history as the study of unit
ideas that had an essential sameness, such that one could take them
as the objects of historical inquiry, even though they changed in their
outer form and their relationship to one another over time” (107).
rough this unique disciplinary approach, students can learn to rec-
ognize more constituent ideas, those larger idea-constructs that retain
some sense of sameness over time, and, although perhaps not alto-
gether unchanging, how they are worth considering for their potential
to evolve or transmute. Learning how to identify ideas for their reliable
behaviors in our world’s changing narratives is also valuable. Lovejoy’s
approach has been experiencing a renewed interest; other scholars,
such as Darrin M. McMahon, have begun reexamining Lovejoy’s con-
tributions. For our honors program curriculum, however, the ability
to appreciate an idea, as well as its nuances, varying nature, and com-
plexities that challenge us to identify it as such, represents a valuable
aspect of how we study ideas in the Honors Idea Seminar.
e study of intellectual history, as expressed by Gordon, oers
students the practice of working with an idea by focusing on the con-
texts surrounding it and the many potential forces acting upon it that
can cause it to change over time. In “History of Ideas: Precept and
Practice,” Anthony Graon discusses how context, a term of particu-
lar importance in intellectual history, needs to be approached with
a new attention not only for intellectual history but in understand-
ing the history of ideas: “Fundamental, frequently used concepts like
‘context’—a term, in the end, for information somehow distilled from
the same sorts of text that it is usually invoked to explicate—require
far more formal analysis than they have had” (31). In the Idea Seminar,
we combine the knowledge from the disciplines of the history of ideas
and intellectual history in the pursuit of knowing ideas and how ideas
may be known in the pursuit of knowledge. Students are asked to study
an idea in and of itself as something to know, but also to know ideas
for how they are aected and inuenced by a variety of other factors
over time, like motivation, material culture, conditions of production,
and context. In this approach to the Honors Idea Seminar, then, rather
than policing dicult to maintain disciplinary boundaries, we apply
our eorts to focus more on the dierent ways students may study,
investigate, and know an idea.
45
Idea of Ideas
For every Honors Idea Seminar, a new idea or idea theme is chosen
each year. We only study each idea once, and choosing this idea is a
communal eort. By involving a group of dierent people to choose a
new idea theme each year, students and faculty enact learning together
and teaching each other; in the end, both groups are involved in the
production of knowledge for that year. One anchor text is selected for
each term for a total of three main texts each year. Ensuring a variety
of disciplines and genres constitutes the guiding selection principle
for each term’s anchor texts. We have developed a reliable formula: a
history text, a popular science or philosophy text, and a literature text
(traditionally a novel). Each year, we assemble three dierent ways of
approaching the idea for that year’s seminar, all while attending to the
context and historical perspective of our topic. Although quite chal-
lenging in any year, if we achieve a textual trifecta, all the books will
ultimately complement each other. erefore, in our research for the
year’s anchor texts, we conscientiously seek texts that address some
sense of the idea in the past, present, and future. Our studies of these
texts instill a sense of the sustained, focused work it takes to know an
idea from an appreciable diversity of perspectives.
Yearly, students, sta, faculty, friends of the honors program, and
alums are solicited for ideas to serve as the next year’s idea theme.
Once a year’s idea is selected, students, friends, and colleagues from
across campus come forth with suggestions for all manner of texts. In
the 2021/2022 academic year, for example, the Honors Idea Seminar
theme was, in fact, the idea of the future. In the fall, we read a historical
survey by Peter J. Bowler: A History of the Future: Prophets of Prog-
ress from H. G. Wells to Isaac Asimov, which looked at how societies
in the past conceived of the future. In the winter term, we turned to
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, a novel in which the titular char-
acter and narrator is an expression of AI, but in this novel, the robot
gures are known as an AF, an “Articial Friend.” us, for that idea
and year, we sought to move from a historical survey, with its atten-
tion on the forces and eects of living at a particular time and on how
it aects one’s understanding of an idea, to a work of ction that makes
it possible to explore more abstract life questions, like how to under-
stand machines that attempt to empathize with people, albeit in a world
grounded in a recognizable present. In the spring term, we completed
the academic year with Martin Rees’s general science book on the future
46
Syrnyk
role of science and knowledge. In On the Future: Prospects for Human-
ity, Rees, a British cosmologist and the Astronomer Royal, advances
his argument for the importance of humanity’s connection to science
in the future if we wish to overcome our existential threats, to solve the
world’s problems with optimism, and to have a future.
Moving intentionally through this yearlong series of three one-
credit seminars, students not only study one idea for the entire year
through these anchor texts, but they also encounter the theme through
dierent activities, from movies to music. We have a lively set of lm
series—“Films with the Faculty” and “Documentaries with the Direc-
tor”—and students are encouraged to lead movie nights with lms that
nurture their interests related to the year’s theme. We also celebrate a
special musical event each year: e Honors Listening Session. We
dedicate an evening to listening to music connected to or inspired
by the year’s idea theme; from classical, to jazz, to rock, any genre
may be featured during this activity. At the end of a year of curricular
and extracurricular engagement, students can claim, albeit with some
humility, that they know something about an idea. Another eect of
the honors program is that they know more about learning and how
to apply their intellectual eorts. Perhaps most importantly, they know
something more about themselves, the world, and each other. One
senior honors program student explains:
My time in the Honors Idea Seminar, and the honors pro-
gram in general, has greatly challenged my way of thinking
and approaching ideas; the topic during my rst year seminar
was ‘bees,’ and it was fascinating to discover how such a small
creature played a large role in ancient Egyptian culture and in
rehabilitating wounded soldiers aer World War I. Everything
we come into contact with has a story and a history, one we
may not even realize exists should we not contemplate how the
elements of our world t together—the Honors Idea Seminar
inspired me to consider the world in a new light.
In the end, the FYS does not merely oer an insular program for
further academic study but instead exposes students to various edu-
cational experiences with real-world applications. Students experience
ideas in the world, sometimes outdoors in the university’s wild spaces
47
Idea of Ideas
(for example, we keep bees near our arboretum), as well as a myriad
of text-oriented, on-screen, extracurricular, and multimodal ways of
learning about ideas.
In pursuing this diversity-driven curricular approach, we endeavor
to live up to an important educational argument of William Cronon,
who was an environmental historian and the Frederick Jackson Turner
and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmen-
tal Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Cronon describes
the ten qualities of a liberally educated person in “‘Only Connect…’
e Goals of a Liberal Education,” a perennially assigned reading and
favorite among honors program students. Cronon describes liberally
educated students as people who exhibit a particular set of “personal
qualities.” Cronon expresses how students educated in this way can,
for example, “listen and … hear,” “talk with anyone,” and “solve a wide
variety of puzzles and problems” (75–76). Cronon’s list of ten qualities
ends with the one he considers most important: “ey follow E. M.
Forster’s injunction from Howards End: ‘Only connect. . . .’” Cronon
exhorts: “More than anything else, being an educated person means
being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world
and act within it in creative ways. Every one of the qualities I have
described here—listening, reading, talking, writing, puzzle solving,
truth seeking, seeing through other people’s eyes, leading, working in
a community—is nally about connecting. A liberal education is about
gaining the power and the wisdom, the generosity and the freedom
to connect” (79). Reecting on his education in the honors program,
and the Honors Idea Seminar in particular, a recent graduate expresses
what he valued:
I see myself as a more innovative thinker who can formulate
ideas (questions and answers, too) that are critical to under-
standing and problem-solving in this ever-changing world. is
is all thanks to the Honors Idea Seminar that shied how we
think and learn. Homing in on an idea—the idea of natural/
unnatural disasters for our cohort year—taught us that ideas
are a means of connecting with the world and with the people
around us, which is a truly human way of thinking at a time
when we need it most.
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Each year, I appreciate that our students willingly accept our oer of a
more challenging educational experience in the honors program. e
two honors program students quoted above speak for their classmates
when they express how this transformative approach of bringing the
idea of ideas to life has changed their lives. is FYS provides an edu-
cation that fosters their growth as people who learn to appreciate how
living in a world of ideas may best be experienced through connecting
to others in this world.
THE CURRICULUM: IDEAS IN PRACTICE AND THE GIFT
Each Honors Idea Seminar, regardless of that year’s theme, begins with
a common book: e Usefulness of Useless Knowledge. e book title
comes from—and contains—Abraham Flexner’s 1939 classic essay of
the same name. anks to generous support from the Oregon Tech
Foundation Board, we provide this book as a gi to the honors pro-
gram students. e book, published by Princeton University Press,
also includes a companion essay that provides historical context for
understanding Flexner’s essay and underscores its continued impor-
tance today. e essay “e World of Tomorrow” by Robbert Dijkgraaf,
the past director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, encap-
sulates why we require students at Oregon Tech to start their studies
in the honors program with this book. Writing about the Institute for
Advanced Study, which was Flexner’s creation, Dijkgraaf explains in his
essay how the Institute was set up in a way that “allowed its academic
stars to fully concentrate on deep thoughts, as far removed as possible
from everyday matters and practical applications. It embodied Flexner’s
vision of the ‘unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge,’ which would
only show its use over many decades, if at all” (5). Many Oregon Tech
students, studying at Oregon’s only public polytechnic university,
approach ideas and knowledge as tools that typically possess value
if they can be demonstrated to have an application. Although such a
practical approach to the knowledge from one’s studies is functional,
these students are rarely able to pursue knowledge for its unknown,
curiosity-inspired ends. Our unique identity as a polytechnic university
may reect a trend that universities are placing more value on practical
means-ends education, making our university’s focus less of an outlier
and more predictive of future trends. Of course, caution is warranted.
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Idea of Ideas
If such a trend leads to a foregone conclusion, to an expectation of a
university where, as Mark Slouka projects, “math and science rule the
school” (32), then we may nd ourselves in a culture of people, of stu-
dents as future professionals, who do not understand the purpose of
life and that learning is something determined beyond the return on
investment (ROI) from a life of work. us, Flexner’s essay lays out a
critical perspective regarding curiosity-driven research in pursuit of
knowledge not predestined for a particular purpose; this book conse-
quently supplies an important intellectual starting point for the honors
students embarking on their education at our university. Flexner
teaches students the dual nature of knowledge’s value, that it may be
both applied and theoretical, and by analogy to Flexner’s description,
practical and impractical, “useful” and “useless.” e further benet of
our honors students’ experience is that they can appreciate knowledge
as something that may be received, but that knowledge (ideas, ques-
tions, and ultimately answers) is also something that can be created,
discovered, and constructed.
is intellectual understanding—that their education can provide
them with the abilities to learn, use, and create knowledge for which
there may be no direct, immediate use—is an integral part of what we
cultivate in the Oregon Tech Honors Program. By placing the honors
students in an environment that encourages curricular conversations
that uctuate between useful and useless knowledge and by valuing
this shared collaboration among people, we instill in these students an
understanding of the many uses for knowledge, its many capacities, its
potential and limitless nature, and the ways it will help them to grow as
people and evolve as professionals. Our slogan expresses the goal of the
honors program best because it supplements the university’s broader
mission with a deeper sense of purpose and professional and personal
development: “Fostering the person in the future professional.”
At the heart of this mission lies a core collaborative skill: the abil-
ity to converse. We teach students how to talk about their ideas and
the ideas of others and, as such, how to partake in conversations about
ideas with their peers, how to clarify their views, how to have acquain-
tance and to keep company with ideas, and how to engage and test
one’s contributions. Although a challenging meta-move, this skill-
development work supports our students’ ability to engage with ideas,
representing an essential element in their education. Ideas change,
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ideas form, and ideas fall by the wayside of our culture. But the abil-
ity to communicate such ideas—to consider and converse about these
ideas—is essential for one to innovate, to learn in a new setting, to
learn in the face of change, to wallow in complexity, and to appreci-
ate the hidden force of ideas in our world. By dedicating time to focus
on these matters, we teach students that such skills are essential for
actively engaging in and contributing to myriad conversations and
discussions, whether they are set in a place of work or the broader
democratic public sphere. Students learn that many of these conversa-
tions about ideas have transpired for ages, and so they must overcome
the daunting challenge of how to participate in and add their voices,
their views and ideas, and their contributions to these longstanding
historical conversations. Conversely, many other conversations involve
new ideas and new voices, emerging and challenging ideas for the stu-
dents, ideas that can and will shape their futures. We impress upon
them the collaborative nature of all these conversations, new and old,
and how ideas do not gain traction in a vacuum but through their cir-
culation. We devote considerable time to discussing what it means to
enter into conversations with others beyond one’s programmatic peers
and to talking about ideas and perspectives with people whose views
on these ideas may dier from their own.
Kenneth A. Bruffee’s “Collaborative Learning and ‘The Con-
versation of Mankind’” oers an important insight into this kind of
interactive intellectual work. Bruee quotes an explanation of the
enduring value of conversation from an essay in philosopher and polit-
ical theorist Michael Oakeshott’s 1962 collection of essays, Rationalism
and Politics:
We are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and
the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but
of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended
and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a
conversation which goes on both in public and within each of
ourselves. . . . Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into
the skill and partnership of this conversation in which we learn
to recognize the voices, to distinguish the proper occasions of
utterance, and in which we acquire the intellectual and moral
habits appropriate to conversation. And it is this conversation
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Idea of Ideas
which, in the end, gives place and character to every human
activity and utterance. (qtd. in Bruee 638–39)
Here, we see the importance of interacting with others and how conver-
sation symbolizes education’s great undertaking, its great interpersonal
thought work. Conversation informs what it means to interact with
others for the purpose of education, for thinking about ideas together;
conversation establishes that we are called to engage others and their
ideas through that invitation to a special form of talking: conversation
itself. us, in this FYS, we dedicate much eort and set high expecta-
tions for establishing collaborative conversations to share knowledge
and explore its construction.
How do we teach students to engage in conversations, to use
conversation as a means for discussion, community building, and
knowledge construction? We teach this increasingly lost art of engaged
conversation by cultivating many skills, such as critical reading and
commenting. ese skills involve the individual in various roles and
require interacting with the class, and they are part intellectual eti-
quette and part conversational preparedness. Students, for example, are
required to prepare material as well as themselves in advance of each
seminar session to promote conversation. To class, they bring “Notes
& Quotes”: their prepared questions, observations, and quotations,
passages where they seek clarication or that they wish to share, and
they note keywords, themes, and new terms they encounter. We expect
them to know page numbers so they can eciently direct their peers
to the specic passage being examined. We teach students to develop
their own discussion prompts for a particular day’s reading or to sim-
ply experiment with a means for leading a day’s discussion, perhaps
by asking students to prepare a quotation from a text that addresses
an idea or term related to an idea, or by identifying a set of passages to
explore. During our class conversations, we actively take time to con-
template the day’s work. We also ask students to take further notes and
reect critically on what we discussed that day. Aer all, students do
not only learn by doing; they also learn by thinking about what they
have done. And they talk, too.
We teach students to practice collaboration in the classroom: to
direct their conversation to each other and to think about what others
say during class. We promote peer-centered expectations; instead of
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waiting for the professor to intervene or respond, designated discussion
leaders practice redirecting students to consider what their peers have
asked or expressed. Students, likewise, are expected to invite their peers
into their conversations: no one is allowed to sit out an activity, from
a Socratic Dialogue (or Socratic Circle) to a whole-class conversation.
Students are asked to talk: to seek clarication for an interpretation
from their peers, employing conversation as an evolving collaborative
problem-solving technique. Sometimes, students form peer groups to
converse in smaller groups before sharing their discoveries or addi-
tional questions with the larger class.
Students come to Oregon Tech from various backgrounds in terms
of classroom expectations. Many students are used to passively absorb-
ing a lecture or working by themselves; however, in the Honors Idea
Seminar, they learn how to learn about ideas over the course of the year
and through creative discussion activities. Starting with the study of
Flexner’s call to value “the usefulness of useless knowledge,” students
are taught how conversations promote understanding, collective val-
ues, and comprehension: how conversations bring the idea of ideas to
life. All this somewhat abstract work prepares students for the core
assignment sequence of this FYS, which helps students explore these
ideals through a series of concrete projects.
THE CORE ASSIGNMENT SEQUENCE OF THE HONORS IDEA
In addition to a written at-home midterm and a bracing in-person oral
nal exam at the end of each term, students produce a signicant cul-
minating assignment. In the rst term of the FYS, this assignment is
titled “e Idea Inventory.” In this assignment, students must provide
an initial account of what they know about the year’s idea theme, which
is how they begin their Notes & Quotes for the year. e purpose of
this less-structured inventorying assignment is for students to relate
what they know, attempting to account for it fully, as well as to identify
potential gaps in their knowledge and to express what aspects of the
idea they would like to better understand. ey struggle with claiming
what they know about this idea versus what they think they know about
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Idea of Ideas
an idea, and they struggle with explaining the items on this inventory.
Students are also asked to consider how they know anything about the
idea: Did they learn it in school? From direct or indirect life experi-
ence? Or did they learn about this idea theme when reading about some
unrelated topic? Taking an inventory represents a traditional rhetorical
starting point for understanding an idea theme because it requires stu-
dents to reect on and give an account of their knowledge of the year’s
idea before they can develop an argument that addresses their own
understanding of this idea at the end of the FYS sequence.
From a rhetorical perspective, inventory is needed for invention;
to productively talk and think about ideas and to create new ideas,
students need to determine what they know. In a previously unpub-
lished essay from 1959 titled “On Creativity: How Do People Get New
Ideas?” Isaac Asimov explored this way of thinking about ideas. For
Asimov, having this inventory or background in a eld of knowledge
was not enough. To create new ideas, people need to see the possibility
of connecting ideas in situations where many others would not have
the capacity to see possible connections (12). According to Asimov,
however, idea-generating is best pursued individually. Sometimes, he
notes, “creation is embarrassing,” but he also admits that collaboration
has a purpose, especially when comparing one’s inventory of an idea
with another’s: “No two people exactly duplicate each other’s mental
stores of items” (12). By sharing these inventories with one another,
students gain a valuable understanding of their own thinking through
connecting their idea work with their fellow honors students.
Inventory and invention share the same etymological root
(inventio), and numerous sources explicate the nature, philosophies,
disagreements, and theories surrounding this rst of the ve elements
of the classical rhetorical canon. In his lively piece on the popular
site oughtCo., Professor Emeritus of English and Rhetoric Richard
Nordquist provides a particularly thoughtful and cogent discussion of
invention while oering a ne survey of its salient features. All of the
entries Nordquist surveys for invention, however, dene something
of the dual nature of this concept, its objective and subjective nature.
When determining a list of known entities (an inventory), one must
then determine what can be done with these entities. us, as one of
their main assignments in the rst term, we ask honors students to
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produce such an inventory, grapple with the issues that will naturally
arise when trying to understand an idea, and then gure out what can
be done with such an understanding.
us, the Idea Inventory promotes authentic engagement with the
course theme. It is one matter for students to say or claim that they
know something about an idea. rough this initial assignment, how-
ever, they begin to learn the dierences between received knowledge,
as in knowledge that is presented as static and stable in its simplicity,
and the complexity of what it means to make a claim, to construct
knowledge, to say they know something about the course’s theme, and
to be able to discuss this idea in a meaningful way that appreciates its
dynamic complexity. us, to go from inventory to understanding,
from knowledge that can be received to knowledge that can be created:
this is also one of the goals of the Honors Idea Seminar, and it starts
with this inventorying of what each student knows about a chosen idea.
In the second term of the Honors Idea Seminar, having made an
initial foray into the year’s idea in the fall term, students produce a
second assignment, known as “e Idea Schema,” that becomes more
systematic and analytical in its focus by bringing structure to the work
of inventory production. is assignment teaches the students the dif-
ference between accounting for what they know about a given idea and
analyzing what can be claimed about an idea in a structured manner.
ey move from the shambolic to the methodical, and in so doing, they
learn that any idea can be approached in a precise, objective, organized,
and methodical manner. In all Honors Idea Seminars, it is worth not-
ing, students are held to the same set of ten learning objectives and
ve outcomes that are scaolded across the entire seminar sequence.
e objectives include intellectual tasks such as studying “the material
culture in evidence around an idea of study” to learn how the material
culture necessarily determines the limits of human understanding in
any given historical time period. Other objectives concern learning
about “how ideas inuence our way of living in the world” or learning
how “to appreciate ideas in greater intellectual depth and complex-
ity.” e learning outcomes describe what a student should know and
be able to do (like demonstrating various kinds of critical thinking
and more advanced expressions of communication). Still, the objec-
tives provide the broader direction for the course. For this assignment,
which students may approach as a formal report or piece of technical
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Idea of Ideas
writing, the students are asked to make the intellectual move from
the presumably less-structured Idea Inventory, which accumulates the
knowledge in a student’s notes, to the more taxonomical Idea Schema,
which lends itself to an analytical application of their understanding
of this idea. e central intellectual task of this middle assignment in
the Idea Seminar sequence requires students to intentionally schema-
tize their knowledge of the year’s theme based on the course’s learning
objectives. We arrange the learning objectives into three categories
based on how students (1) conceptualize ideas as objects of study, (2)
encounter ideas as part of a world of lived human experience, and (3)
appreciate ideas as phenomena experienced over time.
A schema presents people with a plan, an organizational process
or structure, to think expediently and precisely about what they know
or want to know regarding an idea. Students are likely to modify their
schemas as they learn more about the idea, but as an assignment, the
Idea Schema provides students with a challenging means to process
the course’s idea, or any idea, in a productive and rigorous manner.
Again, since the genre is more technical than essayistic or expository,
students are asked to approach this assignment as a type of report. Stu-
dents are encouraged to work in a multimodal approach, producing
graphic diagrams, tables, charts, or other visual representations of data
to accompany the writing, which explains the dierent categorial ways
of knowing and taxonomizing this idea. When approaching an idea,
however, with the intention to order it, we must also carefully consider
how such a process can limit a person’s understanding. We need to note
those aspects that defy ordering, the outlier and the anomaly, and we
need to develop an awareness of the potential problematic aspects that
are lost, suppressed, or otherwise concealed when attempting to over-
lay an order on an idea. We strive through this assignment, therefore,
to also acknowledge the limits of what we have claimed to know about
an idea and, in so doing, make counterarguments part of our regular
practice of understanding ideas.
ese ten learning objectives guide each year’s Honors Idea Semi-
nar, regardless of the chosen idea, by providing students with a rigorous
means for learning about, accounting for, and examining the course’s
content. ey also provide direction for the students as they explore
and research the world of these ideas in the Idea Schema paper. As
expressed earlier, these objectives, clustered in three categories—ideas
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as analyzed objects; ideas as lived experience; and ideas as known over
time—allow students to approach them systematically. At the same
time, students recognize the diverse ways we may think about an idea
in the world, which may also prompt them to consider how ideas are
given life through an improved understanding of how they function
or exist in the world. us, students undertake a structured analysis
of the year’s idea theme in the technical format they deem appropriate
for the Idea Schema. e students are only limited in their production
of the Idea Schema by their ability to reect, in a concrete way, the
learning objectives as they relate to an idea’s materiality and context;
its mutable nature and connection with other ideas; and its complex
past, dynamic present, and possible futures.
By the end of the yearlong FYS sequence in the spring term, stu-
dents should be able to narrate an idea. is exercise entails oering
an intellectually detailed story of what they know about it and how
they learned about and understand it based on rigorous and curiosity-
driven conversing, thinking, and writing. ey must also demonstrate
how they understand the inherent complexity of this idea as some-
thing relevant in the world. Humans, according to philosopher Martha
C. Nussbaum, are creatures of what she calls narrative imagination:
people use this capacity for sympathetic imagination to empathize
with and understand other human beings. Our students reect on
the importance of narrative through an assignment entitled “e Idea
Nar r at i v e .”
Since the students in our honors program, like all Oregon Tech
students, study applied majors, the ability to express their work and
interests to people outside their discipline will presumably make them
more successful professionally and more capable generally to engage
with others in the world over ideas. Writing about science communica-
tion, Michael F. Dahlstrom argues for the increasing need for students
to learn how to construct meaningful narratives to communicate with
audiences outside of their disciplines. Because people are prone to
storytelling, narratives allow students to produce a culminating assign-
ment: the story of their understanding of an idea and how it once
looked and may look in the future. Manageable within the term but
certainly aer a long year of study, this narrative, which is based on
critical thinking, is a primary learning outcome for this FYS assign-
ment sequence.
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Idea of Ideas
As this essay makes clear, the professor and students think together
in the Honors Idea Seminar sequence about an idea’s development
over time. ey study, talk, and write about it in the close community
of this FYS, and over the course of many conversations, the students
ultimately produce their own narratives of this idea. e intellectual
benets for students are profound and various. is seminar course
sequence also oers the professor, in a small cohort classroom of hon-
ors students, an opportunity to model good intellectual habits in the
classroom, what William M. Chace, Professor Emeritus of English at
Stanford University, calls the practical behavior of how to be a thought-
ful human who can “think hard about thinking” (38). In “What I Have
Taught—and Learned,” Chace explores what is possibly the greatest les-
son he has taught to his students in his y-year career as a professor:
through practiced human engagement, he has striven to participate
in a meaningful exchange of the power of learning with his students.
e student, for Chace, if fortunate, “becomes aware of the potential
strength of his or her own mind and thus how capable a human mind
is of creating further insights, recognitions, and perceptions” (41). is
storytelling capacity, we may argue, is also the benet and bounty of
the narrative imagination: the Idea Narrative revolves around what it
means for students to claim that they know an idea and can tell the
story of what it means to live in a world informed by the meaning and
understanding of that idea.
Such a specialized seminar course, with its imperative to teach
a new idea every year, necessarily presents a challenge. Jon Volkmer
expresses what this challenge potentially means to achieving suc-
cess in “Big-Ideas Courses Are Lessons in Humility”: “I have come
to accept the challenge of setting the bar way higher than I or my
students could ever reach, with all the frustration and failure that
entails. I embrace falling short” (4). In the Honors Idea Seminar, then,
students can experience what happens when exploring an idea goes
awry or when the challenge to learn as much as possible about an idea
does not quite yield all students hoped for by way of knowledge. If we
let them, students live and learn through falling short. But even so,
through these challenges, they experience a growth in understand-
ing, increased cognitive exibility, and a tolerance for ambiguity. ey
are the beneciaries of the process that Barry Schwartz describes in
“What ‘Learning How to ink’ Really Means.” In this special seminar
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experience, students experience the honesty of their intellectual eorts
as well as the humility; they will learn perseverance and perhaps even
practical wisdom (phronesis). Even so, at the end of this long seminar
sequence, the students will have been privileged to participate in a
unique FYS, one of enduring value to their education as future profes-
sionals, as citizens of the city and the world of ideas, and as thoughtful,
empathetic people to their fellow human beings.
To think about ideas requires one to practice increasingly rigorous
forms of thinking. One must strive to become critically aware, capable
of problematizing, and, above all, more empathetic and understanding
of how ideas connect to other ideas and how they connect people to the
world. In thinking about ideas and their interconnectedness, students
learn how ideas inform other ideas across cultures, across time, and
across understanding. In this FYS, honors students form a fuller pic-
ture of human history as a history replete with ideas shaping it. When
we examine how people related to an idea, we learn something about
what life looked like in a past time and place, and we learn something
about how people understood their lives at that time. If we are fortu-
nate, we can connect that past understanding to appreciate more fully
the present moment, and we can then speculate what life will look like
relative to future iterations of this idea, even if this means the extinc-
tion of this idea.
Producing the Idea Narrative as the nal assignment, therefore,
encourages students to provide an account of human understand-
ing, to situate an idea over time through a series of events and causal
chains, and to explore a multitude of perspectives needed to know
the idea. Creating the narrative also requires students to know them-
selves, which is one of the oldest pieces of wisdom in the Western
world (gnothi seauton), and the rst of the “10 Essential Lessons for
the Honors Program.” Performing this task teaches honors students to
become aware of both the limits and the potential of human knowl-
edge, which is also their knowledge, through time. Narrative, as its
Latin root gnarus (knowing) reveals, allows one to develop a means
of knowing and communicating that knowledge—knowing an idea,
oneself, and this world—to others.
us, the intention of this FYS is not necessarily to inspire students
to pursue a life of scholarship based on one of the course themes. e
hope is that they will develop a vital curiosity and nuanced approach
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Idea of Ideas
for appreciating ideas, especially in a world where, as future career
professionals in predominantly STEM elds, knowing ideas will bet-
ter enable them to cultivate an understanding of a career in context:
a career both susceptible to the ebb and ow of ideas and their inu-
ence and a career made more meaningful through an understanding of
one’s greater place in the world. ey will learn how to treat ideas, how
to talk about them, and how to innovate with them. ey will be able
to claim an understanding of how such ideas have formed as complex
constructs and how they, as people, have something to say about what
it means to be a human in this complex world. Being able to narrate
ideas with these goals in mind allows students to claim an understand-
ing of what it means to know ideas and also to reect on how ideas
inform the many ways we choose to live in the world.
A NOTE ON THE SYS AND TYS
Aer the FYS, students in the second year of the honors program take
the Second-Year Seminar (SYS) sequence: e Honors Question Semi-
nar. e SYS sequence, like the FYS, oers students three one-credit
seminars that are eligible for Humanities or Social Sciences credit,
again, with the intention of not adding to the student’s credit load. In
the Question Seminar, students learn how to ask various questions
from across the disciplines and study various case studies and tech-
niques that explore the value and purpose of questions. In the fall
term, the students begin by reading Warren Berger’s A More Beauti-
ful Question and study well-known teachings on questions such as the
Right Question Institute’s Question Formulation Technique and Debo-
rah Meier’s Five Core Questions. We also traditionally study the ve
essential questions from James Ryan’s noteworthy book, Wait, What?:
And Life’s Other Essential Questions. In the winter term, we read one
anchor text from a curated selection of Penguin Classics, which could
be Magna Carta; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: e 1818 Text; or Plato’s
Republic; or Soetsu Yanagi’s e Beauty of Everyday ings. Anchor
texts such as these challenge students to focus on the practice of ask-
ing questions inspired, in part, by the previous year’s Idea eme and
the studies on questions from the second year’s fall term. Finally, in
the spring term, we read Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth,
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and Karen Dillon’s How Will You Measure Your Life? rough the
spring’s anchor text, students learn how to apply management theory
to a life and career of integrity. e major work during the second
year consists of the Midterm Gobbets and Final Tutorial (Synthesis)
Essays presented during one-to-one oral exams and the Honors Ques-
tion Project, which provides students with a yearlong inquiry-based
research opportunity to prepare them, term by term, for the third-year
Honors Answer Project. e students sometimes conduct sociological
research on how certain groups relate to asking questions, and they
regularly contribute to the further development of the Great Question
List, a running list of questions that can be answered every year. is
list encourages students to be curious and to engage with the world
through questions. Among the many questions on the Great Question
List are the following: Who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for the
year? What is the current time on the Doomsday Clock? What new
sites have recently been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List?
In the spring term, the students may be tasked with developing their
own Question Protocol, with the purpose of actively using questions
to support an aspect of their major or their future career.
Aer a year devoted to an idea and another year focused on ques-
tions, the logical next step for these students to conclude their time in
the honors program is learning what it takes to seek and appreciate
great answers. Like the two preceding it, the ird-Year Seminar (TYS)
consists of three one-credit seminars oered each term. In ultimately
developing the TYS, the students and faculty of the honors program
arrived at the core or pillars of the program itself, which may be sum-
marized as a programmatic arc in three words: ideas, questions, answers.
e main work of the third year is the Honors Answer Project: the stu-
dents answer the Faculty Question, which always revolves around the
relationship between ideas, questions, and answers. e students also
devise, research, and answer their own Student Question, which they
have studied and developed in the second year. e year culminates in
the Honors Answer Symposium, where the students present the answers
to their Student Questions. us, a graduate of the Oregon Tech Hon-
ors Program can be expected to know and understand ideas, ask and
consider questions, and seek and appreciate answers.
ese three terms of the Honors Answer Seminar feature anchor-
ing texts just as in the FYS and SYS. In thinking about answers for a
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Idea of Ideas
year, we divide this work into discovering Answer Observations (minor
aspects of answers) and Answer Insights (major, paradigm-shiing
aspects) based on these texts. is enterprise also oers students time
to devote to thinking in a sustained way about ideas, questions, and
answers, but these students also have the opportunity to contemplate
how these three foundational elements of the honors program learn-
ing experience and its cohesive system of seminars have contributed
to their becoming more well-rounded people. In the fall term of the
TYS, we begin each year with late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawk-
ing’s Brief Answers to the Big Questions, which provides his personal
answers to ten fundamental questions he was consistently asked over
the course of his life and career. In the winter term, among various
texts, we oen turn to Ross King’s National Bestseller, Brunelleschi’s
Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture. In the fall
and winter terms, as noted, students produce a series of Answer Insight
or Answer Observation papers that ask them to discern the qualities of
great answers, with possible headings such as “Answers Require Inge-
nuity,” “Answers Can Be Complex,” or “Answers Can Be About What
Is Not ere.” Lastly, we oen read Lindsey Fitzharris’s e Butchering
Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian
Medicine in the spring term. We also rotate other texts into the TYS,
but these texts oen reect the primary areas of our polytechnic uni-
versity’s academic disciplines. Assigning all three standard texts allows
us to expose students to various habits of mind and diverse disciplinary
expectations, all while learning to appreciate answers.
Lastly, as can be expected, the culminating work in the TYS,
which takes the entire academic year, is the Honors Answer Project
(HAP). e HAP consists of two questions: the Faculty Question and
the Student Question. e primary TYS work to be completed over
the academic year consists of students researching and writing their
answers. e Faculty Question always involves a synthesizing request
for the students to explain their understanding of the relationship
between ideas, questions, and answers. is rst question is assigned
at the beginning of the fall term, and students have the term to write
it, workshop it, and complete it by the midterm exam period of the
winter term. e Student Question, however, is primarily the student’s
responsibility, and students are allowed the winter and spring terms
to hypothesize it with faculty members or with other honors program
62
Syrnyk
students, research it, and work out their answer, which is due during
the midterm exam period of the spring term. e third-year students
will then present their student HAP answers in the Honors Answer
Symposium, and with this assignment, they will have completed all
three seminar sequences of the honors program.
It is important to acknowledge that the students and faculty col-
laborated over the past seven to ten years to devise this core seminar
sequence that comprises the honors program curriculum. Toward the
end of each academic year, a robust intellectual excitement permeates
the spring atmosphere. Faculty and students are always curious about
what the Idea eme will be for the next year’s incoming cohort of
honors program students. Students in their second year are charged
with devising a set of supplemental essay questions for the next cohort’s
admission essays. It always begins, however, with the First-Year Semi-
nar because every academic endeavor always starts with ideas. But
without people, there can be no ideas: this observation must be under-
stood as a fundamental truth. us, it is appropriate to acknowledge
the students and faculty in this endeavor, who all thoughtfully and with
great persistence devoted their time and knowledge to develop our
First-Year Seminar and Oregon Tech’s Honors Program. A profound
sense of gratitude is ultimately owed to all the faculty and students who
have contributed their great ideas, questions, and answers.
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Asimov, Isaac. “On Creativity: How Do People Get New Ideas?” MIT Technology
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Berger, Warren. A More Beautiful Question. Bloomsbury, 2016.
Bevir, Mark. “Ideas in History.” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 17, no. 1,
2004, pp. 107–13.
Bowler, Peter J. A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells to
Isaac Asimov. Cambridge UP, 2017.
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Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of
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Idea of Ideas
Chace, William M. “What I Have Taught—and Learned.” e American Scholar,
vol. 84, no. 1, 2015, pp. 38–47.
Christensen, Clayton M., et al. How Will You Measure Your Life? orsons, 2019.
Cronon, William. “‘Only Connect . . .’ e Goals of a Liberal Education.” e
American Scholar, vol. 67, no. 4, 1998, pp. 73–80.
Dahlstrom, Michael F. “Using Narratives and Storytelling to Communicate
Science with Nonexpert Audiences.” PNAS, vol. 111 (supp. 4), 2014, pp.
13614–20.
Dijkgraaf, Robbert, “The World of Tomorrow.” The Usefulness of Useless
Knowledge. Princeton UP, 2017, pp. 1–48.
Fitzharris, Lindsey. e Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the
Grisly World of Victorian Medicine. Scientic American/Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2017.
Flexner, Abraham. e Usefulness of Useless Knowledge. Princeton UP, 2017.
Gordon, Peter E. “What is Intellectual History? A Frankly Partisan Introduction
to a Frequently Misunderstood Field.” 2012, Harvard University.
Unpublished article.
Graon, Anthony. “History of Ideas: Precept and Practice.” Journal of the History
of Ideas, vol. 67, no. 1, 2006, pp. 1–32.
Hauck, Alexis A., et al. “Assessing First-Year Seminar Performance with College
Engagement, Academic Self-Ecacy, and Student Achievement.” Journal
of Higher Education eory and Practice, vol. 20, no. 4, 2020, pp. 88–101.
Hawking, Stephen. Brief Answers to the Big Questions. Bantam, 2018.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Klara and the Sun. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.
Kelley, Donald R. e Descent of Ideas: e History of Intellectual History.
Routledge, 2002.
King, Ross. Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented
Architecture. Penguin, 2000.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1936. e Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an
Idea. Harvard UP, 1964.
McMahon, Darrin M. “e Return of the History of Ideas?” Rethinking Modern
European Intellectual History, edited by Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel
Moyn, Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 13–31.
Newstok, Scott. How to ink Like Shakespeare. Princeton UP, 2020.
Nordquist, Richard. “Invention (Composition and Rhetoric).” oughtCo, 16
Feb. 2021, thoughtco.com/invention-composition-and-rhetoric-1691191.
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Nussbaum, Martha C. “e Narrative Imagination.” Cultivating Humanity: A
Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Harvard UP, 1997, pp.
85–112.
Rees, Martin. On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Princeton UP, 2018.
Ryan, James. Wait, What?: And Life’s Other Essential Questions. HarperOne,
2017.
Schwartz, Barry. “What ‘Learning How to ink’ Really Means.” e Chronicle
of Higher Education, vol. 61, no. 39, 26 June 2015, p. 11.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: e 1818 Text. Penguin, 2018.
Slouka, Mark. “Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School.”
Harper’s Magazine, 2009, pp. 32–40.
Vaughan, Angela L., Stephanie I. Pergantis, and Susannah M. Moore. “Assessing
the Dierence Between 1-, 2-, and 3-Credit First-Year Seminars on College
Student Achievement.” Journal of e First-Year Experience & Students in
Transition, vol. 31, no. 2, 2019, pp. 9–28.
Volkmer, Jon. “Big-Ideas Courses Are Lessons in Humility.” e Chronicle
of Higher Education, 15 Sept. 2014. chronicle.com/article/big-ideas-
courses-are-lessons-in-humility.
Yanagi, Soetsu. e Beauty of Everyday ings. Translated by Michael Brase,
Penguin, 2017.
65
Trisha H. Folds-Bennett
University of Virginia’s College at Wise
Jesslyn Collins-Frohlich
College of Charleston
Robert Maynor
Coastal Conservation League
Founded in 1770 and located in historic Charleston, South Caro-
lina, the College of Charleston (CofC) is a public comprehensive
university with a curriculum grounded in the liberal arts and
sciences. Academic oerings include 67 majors, 81 minors, 20
master’s degree programs, and 9 graduate-level certicate pro-
grams. e College of Charleston had 10,660 undergraduate
students enrolled in fall 2023, along with 1,069 graduate stu-
dents. Of those enrolled students, 68% identify as female, and
minority students comprise 19% of the student population.
Nearly a third of the undergraduates live on campus in residence
halls, and 53.2% of the students are SC residents. e college has
a 14.5:1 student-faculty ratio, and approximately 56.5% of the
faculty are full-time.
66
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON HONORS COLLEGE
T
he College of Charleston (CofC) Honors Program was founded
in 1967 and transitioned to an honors college led by an academic
dean in 2005. Total enrollment in the honors college is approximately
850 students, and it enrolls between 260–275 rst-year students each
year. While a few students each year transition into the honors college
as sophomores, most of the students apply separately to the honors
college and enroll as rst-year students supported by a living-learning
environment and a cohesive rst-year experience. e honors college
curriculum includes 25 credit hours in honors, including both disci
-
plinary and interdisciplinary coursework, a 9-hour internship/research
requirement, and a required rst-year seminar and academic writing
course. e CofC Honors College does not accept contract courses.
Two faculty fellows are assigned half-time to honors, but most of the
faculty teaching honors courses reside in other departments on campus.
All rst-semester honors students are required to enroll in a 1-credit
extended-orientation rst-year seminar (FYS) called “Beyond George
Street” (BGS). BGS is supported by a faculty team that includes the
dean, associate dean, assistant director of Student Success, as well as
the director and associate director of Student Engagement and 15–20
peer facilitators. Each BGS section enrolls approximately 30 students
assigned to 1 of 2 or 3 peer-facilitator-led groups of 15–18 students
each.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
e CofC Honors College introduced a one-credit FYS called “Inter-
disciplinary Creative Exchange” (ICE) in 2007 to create a compelling
cohort experience for rst-year students. At that time, the College of
Charleston was just introducing a broader-campus oering, which
made the development of an honors FYS particularly important. In
addition to building a sense of community, our original goals were to
create a course that would make clear what the honors college expects
of its students academically, personally, and professionally; to help
67
College of Charleston
honors students understand the opportunities uniquely available to
them; and to begin building mature, reective, and professional com-
petencies. While the driving motivation for the FYS and the central
role peer facilitators play have remained consistent, the curriculum
has evolved through the years from an emphasis on more abstract
reection on values and competencies to more practical workshops
and reective activities.
In the same period in which BGS was created, CofC implemented
a required campuswide FYS as part of a mandated Quality Enhance-
ment Plan. e broader-campus oering is a hybrid FYS that combines
a 3-credit academic seminar with varying content led by a faculty
member and a zero-credit synthesis seminar that is led by a peer facil-
itator and functions as an extended orientation. To preserve exibility
and encourage a sense of community for its students, the honors col-
lege decided to maintain its own FYS. e broader-campus oering
was too credit-intensive, and the varying content, while oen compel-
ling, lacked the curricular coherence that the honors college sought.
While the honors FYS is distinct from the broader-campus oer-
ings, we share certain resources. All FYS peer facilitators on campus
receive training through the Center for Excellence in Peer Education
(CEPE), and the campuswide rst-year experience (FYE) program sup-
ports 10 hours of graduate assistant labor. Some curricular features
have been shared although they have remained exible and subject
to change.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
BGS oers a practical introduction to life in the CofC Honors College
and is intended to build the rst-year students’ reective and profes-
sional capacities. Taught in classrooms in the honors residence hall
where many honors faculty and advisors also have their oces, the
seminar unfolds as a series of workshops led by the faculty team and
supported by peer facilitators. e workshops focus on various top-
ics, including professional development; academic advising; creating
a four-year professional, academic, and community engagement plan
called the PACE Navigator; undergraduate research opportunities;
nationally competitive awards; campus resources for both support and
success; leadership; and study abroad opportunities. BGS also serves
68
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
as the foundation for a yearlong community engagement experience
called “Honors Engaged,” which pairs each student with one of a dozen
community partners. Students in the class develop a professional port-
folio that includes a cover letter, a resume, their PACE Navigator, a
professor prole, an academic artifact from their rst semester, and a
proposal they develop concerning their community service placement.
Because students are required to use online and other resources to
prepare and learn about the topic for any given workshop (a “ipped
classroom” of sorts), the classes themselves involve active discussion,
collaboration, focused work, and interaction with faculty and peers.
At a few points during the semester, advanced honors students are
invited to talk about their experiences securing internships, compet
-
ing for nationally competitive awards, studying abroad, and engaging
in undergraduate research.
e role of the peer facilitators is crucial: they lead reection exer-
cises and discussion at the start of each class, meet individually with
their students in a series of consultations keyed to specic assignments,
and lead a discussion on a shared text during one week of sessions that
rst-year students across campus are asked to attend. Peer facilitators
also conduct a class based on a set of campus resources of their own
choosing that are not already covered in a standalone workshop, such
as the discussion of sexual misconduct and related resources. Common
resources that peer facilitators choose to feature include the Center for
Student Learning, counseling services, and diversity resources.
By the end of the course, students are empowered to view the
various elements of the honors curriculum in concert with the learn-
ing-living environment as inspiring and enabling interdisciplinary
connections even as they relate to non-academic activities, including
community engagement, professional development, and extracurricu-
lar involvement.
69
Trisha H. Folds-Bennett
University of Virginia’s College at Wise
Jesslyn Collins-Frohlich
College of Charleston
Robert Maynor
Coastal Conservation League
H
onors programs tend to be places of privilege. While some
programs have demographics, recruitment practices, and pro-
grammatic emphases that do not t this assumption, the perception
remains the central claim that philosopher and honors educator Aaron
Stoller makes in his contribution to the NCHC monograph Occupy
Honors Education. ere, he suggests that honors students are “meta-
phorically and literally the 1%,” a reference to the symbol of privilege
used by the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement (9). Honors students,
he notes, “are chosen (at least in part) based on their ability to excel
relative to the normative academic standards” (9). As graduates of
70
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
competitive high schools with honors, AP, or IB programs, honors
students come to their college experiences with labels like gied and
talented. ey are bright, inquisitive, and eager to please. ey have a
laser focus on academic goals centered on traditional metrics: grades,
leadership, and academic awards. ese students have demonstrated
their ability to adapt and achieve during high school, and they are
rewarded by an honors program that—oen with separate admis-
sions, curriculum, and living quarters—ensconces them in an attentive
network of supporters determined to ensure they will achieve their
dreams. As soon as they step foot on campus, honors students discover
they are surrounded by faculty and sta who have created inspiring
and formative opportunities for them and a group of peers who share
their academic and demographic proles.
In such a setting, logic suggests a predictable trajectory dened by
the continued narrative of privilege and giedness these students have
experienced throughout high school. In other words, honors students
are expected to excel academically, to situate themselves as leaders on
campus, and to embrace opportunities to serve the broader community
throughout their college careers. Most achieve these goals, which sug-
gests for Stoller that “honors becomes the way in which colleges and
universities recruit and retain top candidates, an academic showpiece
reduced to the tangible benets aorded to select candidates at the
university” (10). As part of this showpiece, honors students enjoy the
continued support of the campus community and extensive resources
that oen lead to impressive achievements during college as well as
prestigious graduate school and lucrative employment opportunities
aer graduation.
Although honors students complete their college education with all
the traditional markers of success, the question for educators is whether
the curriculum opens the door to a transformational experience or
merely reinforces the narratives of elitism that likely earned students
their honors admission. In many ways, entering honors students exude
the condence one would expect, bolstered by their successful navi-
gation of the high school educational experience. But, according to
sociologist and honors educator Andrew J. Cognard-Black, these high-
achieving students are generally not academic risk-takers (6). Beneath
their public persona of condence and accomplishment oen lurks
a fear of failure and losing status as one of the top students in their
71
Disrupting Privilege
class. is fear may manifest in the classroom as a need for armation
and a reticence to engage in self-examination. Cognard-Black suggests
that their fear of failure may prevent honors students from “thinking
creatively, making inductive leaps, or expressing ideas that they con-
sider too unorthodox, too revolutionary, or too doubtful of professorial
authority” (8). Because of this academic tentativeness and despite pro
-
grammatic goals that proclaim a dedication to fostering deep learning,
creativity, and self-exploration, Stoller cautions that honors students
are more likely “to see the world and knowledge as something to be
digested in obedience to a teacher for whom they are made to perform”
(16). Honors students too oen fail to see knowledge as something to
be gained through intellectual and experiential risk-taking, thus limit-
ing the very transformation that honors educators encourage.
In the opening essay for an issue of JNCHC focused on this ques-
tion of risk-taking in honors, Cognard-Black posits that the problem
of students’ apparent rejection of risk may be the structure of hon-
ors programs themselves. He challenges honors educators to consider
how the structure of their programs perpetuates an elitism that causes
honors students to maintain their focus on status and external reward,
which are potential barriers to deeper and more critical engagement
with ideas (6). In this chapter, we take up Cognard-Black’s challenge
and use our experiences creating the rst-year seminar at the College
of Charleston to argue that rst-year programs—by employing a devel-
opmental approach and service learning opportunities to harness the
disruptive power of the students’ transition into college—can create
transformational learning experiences that break down existing struc-
tures of privilege and push students to examine deeply held beliefs.
DEVELOPMENT AND DISRUPTION
In her work on cognitive and moral development in emerging adults,
psychologist Patricia King argues that college faculty and program
directors should attend to the intricate developmental processes
occurring during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood.
Development, she asserts, understood as comprising “increasingly
complex and adaptive forms of seeing, knowing, and caring” can
eectively inform the way educators structure programs and curri-
cula (599). “Educators who aspire to promote development as well as
72
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
content mastery,” she notes, “help students understand the basis for
their decisions, explore alternative bases and approaches, and consider
the criteria used to compare the quality of alternative explanations”
(599). is process begins by understanding the psychological impor-
tance of the rst year for students’ identity development.
Students begin their college experience at a particularly vulnerable
time developmentally. Most are leaving home for the rst time, many
are beginning to navigate the journey from the dependency of youth to
the independence of adulthood, and all are thrust into a novel context
where they need to nd their footing. In fact, Jerey Arnett, a psy-
chologist who has devoted his career to understanding the transition
from adolescence to adulthood, identied this period as a critical stage
of development, labeling it “emerging adulthood” (469). During this
time of transition, Arnett argues, individuals “explore a variety of pos-
sible life directions in love, work, and worldviews” that have “enduring
ramications” (469). More importantly, the individual’s sense of self
and identity undergo signicant reorganization as the beliefs and val-
ues that undergird the thinking of youth are challenged and reoriented.
Psychologists have long argued that identity consolidation, self-
concept clarication, and self-other orientation are the primary foci
of development during the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Elisabetta Crocetti and her colleagues suggest that changes occurring
during adolescence “stimulate young people to think intensively about
themselves, the kind of person they want to become, and the place
they want to obtain in the society” (“Interplay” 594). In a 2008 study,
Crocetti and her research team found that during the transition from
early adolescence to mid-adolescence, individuals might experience a
lack of self-concept clarity as they explore new identities and relation-
ships, shed longstanding habits, and reconsider priorities (“Capturing”
220). Building on that work, Crocetti and her colleagues published a
longitudinal study in 2016 of Dutch youth between 13 and 23 years of
age. ey found that the uidity of self-concept during the transition
from adolescence to adulthood makes individuals more receptive to
evaluating their identities and shiing toward new assumptions about
core values and competencies, particularly if they are in social contexts
that provide constructive feedback.
More broadly, the results from the longitudinal study revealed
that self-concept clarity and prosociality, which Crocetti et al. dene
73
Disrupting Privilege
as the “tendency to perform voluntary behaviours regarded as ben-
ecial to others,” are positively related such that “self-certainty can
predict the likelihood of giving attention to others, caring about their
needs, and being prosocial” (“Interplay” 596). In turn, the researchers
argue, “prosociality can increase young people’s engagement in behav-
iours that oer opportunities to increase self-reection on personal
characteristics and values that guide their actions” (“Interplay” 602).
Encouraging empathy through contact with others, the authors sug
-
gest, fosters a deeper understanding of self. ese ndings conrmed
the earlier work of psychologists Brent Roberts and colleagues, whose
2005 meta-analysis found that experience with new social roles and the
expectations associated with them contributes to increases in matura-
tion and self-concept clarication (179). For honors programs, these
ndings mean that the rst year presents a unique opportunity to pro-
vide students with experiences and stimuli that encourage them to
explore new social roles, question their beliefs and values, and even-
tually clarify their sense of self in relation to others.
SERVICE LEARNING AS CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
is exploration of social roles and identities must be supported by a
critical pedagogy that values risk-taking and critical reection rather
than high levels of performance and external rewards. Stoller’s work
suggests that any curriculum designed to break systems of elitism
in honors must be characterized by an “approach to education that
analyzes and actively challenges systems of domination, including
empowering students to become critically conscious about the cul-
turally and historically conditioned beliefs, practices, and systems
that oppress and restrict their thoughts, choices, and actions” (14).
Stoller further claims that transformation is only achieved if educa-
tion is “grounded in reective, intelligent action in the world” (25). To
facilitate this grounded reection and action, we suggest that honors
programs use service learning in the rst year to create curricular and
co-curricular structures that intentionally place students in new and
complex situations that challenge their expectations.
Educational researcher Arthur W. Chickering suggests that service
learning, along with other forms of experiential learning, pushes indi-
viduals to reect on core values and beliefs and to question how actions
74
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
shape and reect those beliefs. He contends that experiential learning
“can contribute to more complex kinds of intellectual development
and to more pervasive dimensions of human development required
for eective citizenship” and “help students cope with shiing devel-
opmental tasks imposed by the life cycle and rapid social change” (86).
For honors students, service learning has the potential to ground their
experience and encourage them to consider their own identities and
the systems of access that inuence their privilege. By forcing students
to reect not only on their position on campus but on their role in the
local and global community as well, service learning helps them iden-
tify the narrative of privilege that has informed their development and
gives them the tools for negotiating a new, more mature self-concept.
Yet, eectively integrating service learning into the rst-year experi-
ence is dicult. In the following sections, we will use our experiences
building the rst-year program at the College of Charleston to explore
the potential and the challenges of using service learning to create cur-
ricular and co-curricular structures that question systems of privilege
in the honors college and broader community.
FIRST YEAR AT COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON HONORS:
BEYOND GEORGE STREET
In the College of Charleston Honors College, our goal, starting in the
rst semester, has been to disrupt the narrative of privilege by creat-
ing a curriculum that acknowledges the self-concept confusion felt
by students and uses service learning to create spaces in which they
are encouraged to evaluate deeply held beliefs about their place in the
world and the systems of access that have established it. e process of
developing a rst-year experience that achieves these ambitious goals
has been a long one during which we, as faculty and sta, had to learn
to listen with intention to our students and community partners, make
critical reection a key feature of the student experience, and ultimately
cede much of our control of the process.
e development of our rst-year experience began over a decade
ago with the creation of a rst-year seminar that orchestrated con-
nections among our students and faculty, provided a common
understanding of opportunities available through the honors college,
and set the stage for the type of intellectual rigor the students would
75
Disrupting Privilege
encounter throughout their time on campus. e one-credit seminar
titled “Beyond George Street” (BGS)—a reference to the main street
that runs through campus—met once a week. Each section of BGS
was composed of 30–35 students arranged in smaller groupings of
10–12, each led by a peer facilitator. e seminar blended elements of
an extended-orientation seminar with some academic content interwo-
ven via readings and discussion on the philosophy of mind, the roots of
the artes liberales, and current topics relevant to informed citizenship.
Akin to the extended-orientation-type seminar that exists in universi-
ties nationwide, our goal was to provide a curricular anchor that would
ground the array of academic and social programming that students
encounter in college.
For several years, we tweaked assignments and tried a few new
ones, but the fundamental approach did not evolve. We were meeting
some basic orientation goals, but we were not pushing our students to
dig deeply into their beliefs, values, and sense of identity. Initially, our
course revision focused on a more rational approach to its structure
and a more precise articulation of the learning outcomes. We created
units focused on equipping, connecting, and engaging; core faculty
in the honors college facilitated each section according to the faculty
member’s primary responsibility in honors. is structure resulted in,
for example, units on academic advising, undergraduate research, and
professionalization; however, we realized that we were only margin-
ally improving the students’ professional skills and barely challenging
their belief systems. Of more concern was a fear that the very structure
was, as Cognard-Black warns, reinforcing narratives of elitism as we
highlighted for our students the numerous special opportunities and
privileges that were available only to them.
Our strategy was to turn to the potential of service learning to
disrupt rather than entrench this sense of elitism. Understanding that
rst-year students are, developmentally, particularly receptive to eval-
uating new identities, we saw service learning as an opportunity to
develop more mature self-other concepts because of its ability to pro-
vide what Michelle Dunlap and colleagues describe as “triggering”
events through which students gain awareness of their own privilege by
working with community partners (20). Initially, the service learning
component was structured as a short-term community-based project
called the “Literacy Outreach Initiative,” which required students to
76
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
spend a few hours at a local Title-I elementary school leading a literacy
exercise developed by faculty in our School of Education. Following
Dunlap’s recommendation that service learning must be supported by
“a regular or consistent critical reection process to provide students
with the support their cognitive or emotional grapplings may need”
(27), we incorporated reection. e prompts, however, were super-
cial and predictable (e.g., “How did your opinions about literacy change
as a result of your work in the elementary school?”) and did not push
students to confront their own privilege. In fact, we grew concerned
that, rather than providing the types of critical, reective engagement
that leads to self-evaluation or a better understanding of the systemic
inequalities present in the community, we were strengthening some
students’ sense of privilege by facilitating a self-versus-other mentality
through the “one-o” way our project was structured.
Supercial student responses to reective assignments on the ser-
vice learning component of BGS conrmed many of our suspicions
that would be more fully exposed by the introduction of several sec-
tions of a four-credit required rst-year writing course entitled “Honors
Academic Writing.” e course focused specically on community
engagement and used the structures of an academic writing course to
provide students the opportunity for more sustained reection as well
as critical analysis of community issues and the organizations they
partnered with through BGS. rough the intensive conversations
about service and privilege that unfolded in Honors Academic Writ-
ing and its reective assignments, the subset of students enrolled in the
course oen admitted to seeing the service component of BGS and its
accompanying reections as a task to complete rather than an opportu-
nity to engage the community. Reection journal entries and analytical
essays composed for the Honors Academic Writing class also revealed
that many students had indeed experienced moments that exposed
their own privilege and a corresponding cognitive disequilibrium in
what Dunlap describes as “a discomfort or confusion brought about
by new information that must be either assimilated or accommodated
into [their] cognitive structure[s]” (20). Service learning had indeed
created the opening for harnessing this disruptive moment in students’
psychological development. Still, for every student who was willing
to grapple with questions of their own privilege, there was another
student who was content to assimilate their service experience into
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Disrupting Privilege
existing narratives about community engagement and privilege. As a
result, we began to think more intentionally about the developmental
framework for the course and how we could further embrace the uid
nature of the transition to college and push students to fully reckon
with their identities, privilege, and sense of giedness as they moved
from the dependency-orientation of childhood and adolescence to
the independency needs of adulthood. Drawing upon the successes of
the academic writing course, we realized that a redesign of BGS with
increased emphasis on the service learning component could directly
inuence this transition if it oered students a more sustained service
experience, more meaningful opportunities for reection, and more
opportunities to see the whole endeavor, as Stoller would describe it,
as something “more than a generic act of cognition having nothing to
do with inquiry, transformation, or change” (17).
MATURATION OF THE LITERACY OUTREACH INITIATIVE
THROUGH THE BIRTH OF HONORS ENGAGED
Creating an extended service experience and meaningful reection
while minimizing students’ impulses to perform rather than contem-
plate complex community issues and ideas of self required a structure
that shied from faculty-led initiatives to community-led ones. Struc-
tural changes were driven by the belief that an eectively designed
service experience oered a context in which students could develop a
more complex but coherent sense of self by encountering and working
through the emotional and psychological ambiguity or disequilibrium
caused by encountering others who were not aorded the same access
to resources that our students had. Such experience would, in turn,
provide a platform for deeper engagement with the community and for
organized and intentional choices regarding long-term goals and prior-
ities. Not only did we see such a program as crucial to the psychological
development of our students, but we also believed that a program with
these components would encourage the integration of our students
into civil society through the stimulation of empathy and deepen-
ing self-awareness. Furthermore, it satised a program-level goal of
being more sensitive and attentive to the broader community’s needs.
erefore, rather than continue engaging the community through a
weeklong project in schools as we had done with the Literacy Outreach
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Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
Initiative, we decided to partner more sustainably with community-
based organizations (CBOs) that were working in the community
and already had clearly established missions and objectives. is new
form of engagement was named “Honors Engaged.” In its rst iteration,
Honors Engaged was a semester-long service experience supported by
discussions, reections, and critical readings in the BGS course.
Ultimately, Honors Engaged evolved from a one-semester assign
-
ment into a full-year project. In its current iteration, each student
works with one of several CBOs to perform direct service activities.
e CBOs are diverse in their missions, ranging from literacy-focused
work in Title-I schools to support for aer-school and mentor pro-
grams, and the engagement of our students varies widely according
to the organization in which they are placed. In the fall, the engage-
ment is associated with Beyond George Street and, in some cases, the
service learning Honors Academic Writing course. During the spring
semester, the engagement is not associated with any courses. Instead,
students continue their service semi-independently, guided by upper-
level honors students who serve as liaisons between the honors college
and the CBOs.
In many ways, the structure of the service project challenges
students’ beliefs about volunteerism or service by emphasizing com-
munity needs and devaluing the performative, personal aspects that
may have characterized their previous experiences with service. To be
specic, it is not governed by an hours requirement. e experiences
across the cohort are not uniform, and students are not intention-
ally reinforced by grades for their inherently good, charitable work.
Instead, students are asked to commit to a weekly responsibility that
is integral to the goals of the organization in which they are placed
rather than to their own academic or personal goals. Students begin
the yearlong engagement by interrogating ideas of community engage-
ment and citizenship in the BGS course and in discussions with BGS
peer facilitators. Aer some research on their organization and the
issues it addresses, students prepare an application that identies the
organization with which they would like to partner and frames the
type of engagement they will have and the level of commitment they
will make. roughout the year, students are asked to submit periodic
progress reports, and at year’s end, they dra a nal report on their
work with their assigned CBO. At each turn, students are provided the
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Disrupting Privilege
space to grapple with the ambiguity of service through a series of group
and individual reections that ask them to ponder their experiences
in the community, the root causes of the issues addressed by the CBO,
what it means to be an engaged citizen, and interventions or changes
they might contribute as individuals. is structure has allowed us to
shi the focus away from counting hours or completing service merely
for the purpose of a grade by placing much of the negotiation of the
terms of engagement on the student and the needs of their commu-
nity partner. Revising the content of BGS to frame more directly the
Honors Engaged experience has allowed us to provide students with
the sustained reection necessary for helping them confront their own
privilege and establish a new role in the community. By harnessing the
transitional nature of the moment, we believe we have created a more
powerful rst-year experience that enables students to develop their
identities through academic and community-based interactions.
Nonetheless, Honors Engaged still encounters some of the same
challenges of a more traditionally structured service learning project,
especially when it comes to balancing community need and direc-
tion with the realities of an academic framework that necessitates a
performative aspect and involves the hierarchical structure of honors
faculty and sta as well as peer liaisons who lead the project. Aer all,
students still write their proposals and reection materials for honors
faculty and sta to evaluate, and they receive guidance from those
same authority gures in BGS. ey enter these organizations as out-
siders with the goal of solving a problem or addressing an issue. In this
sense, they are using their implied “expertise” and “experience” to help
individuals who, they may incorrectly presume, have little capability
of helping themselves. us, more than any other aspect of the Hon-
ors Engaged project, we have wrestled with the concern that we have
created a structure that does not do enough to push the boundaries
of identity development or dispel students’ supercial ideas of service
as helping those who need to be helped or perhaps cannot help them-
selves rather than an investment in solving long-term problems. ese
very features that invite students to challenge privilege and confront
the ambiguity caused by encountering new people and ideas also hold
the potential to reinforce privilege when they allow students, as well as
faculty and sta, to erect barriers between themselves and the commu-
nity or retreat to the comfort of familiar roles and identities. erefore,
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Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
as we continue to revise the Honors Engaged experience to better har-
ness the disruptive power of the rst year, we have also had to nd ways
to decrease our own presence as authority gures and move into the
ambiguous role of facilitators who present opportunities rather than
control the terms of engagement.
DISMANTLING POWER AND REDISTRIBUTING AUTHORITY
Perhaps the most impactful way that we have dismantled power
and redistributed authority is to make better use of the established
structures of the CBOs and our student leaders to create the type of
reciprocal relationships that push students toward deeper engagement
with the community as well as the development of new roles within
and beyond the honors college. With a rst-year class of approximately
250 students who are partnered with 15 CBOs, relying solely on BGS
instructors to manage the day-to-day concerns of Honors Engaged and
communicate the goals of each organization to students proved both
untenable and undesirable for the ways that it reinforced established
power structures that placed the honors college rather than CBOs
at the center of the community engagement. One part of the solu-
tion to this problem was to transfer the articulation of goals and the
management of students’ work with the CBOs to the sta of those orga-
nizations who could better integrate students by utilizing the structures
they already had in place for recruiting and training volunteers. e
second and most consequential part of the solution was to introduce
peer liaisons as the conduit between honors faculty and CBOs. By com-
bining these two pieces, we were able to create more ambiguous roles
for honors faculty and model what egalitarian partnerships look like.
In Honors Engaged, peer liaisons are upper-level honors students
with prior experience partnering with a CBO, typically gained through
Honors Engaged in their rst year. e peer liaisons are selected for
the position based on the successful navigation of their own service
experience. ese students enroll in a yearlong independent study/
internship course that enhances their professional communication and
leadership skills while also providing them with background infor-
mation on the social and political issues related to their projects and
service. Within Honors Engaged, peer liaisons are each assigned to a
specic CBO and use the leadership and communication skills they
81
Disrupting Privilege
learn in the internship course to facilitate the interactions between the
community partner and students assigned to it for their service expe-
rience. Liaisons meet with their students at various points throughout
the placement process in the fall to help students settle into their proj-
ects, and they gather monthly during the spring semester to answer
questions about the project and oer training tips and advice. e peer
liaisons also track whether students are adhering to their weekly com-
mitments and engage in regular electronic communication about the
student’s responsibilities.
Beyond helping with the logistics of tracking student progress,
liaisons also contribute to student development by assisting in the
structured reection process established in the BGS course. Dunlap
and her colleagues suggest that guided reection is vital to successful
service learning models because “service-learner emotions may vary
from sadness, guilt, shock, fear, anxiety, anger, and relief to gratitude
for their own more privileged living situations” (23). rough reec-
tion and discussion, students may begin to diminish the disequilibrium
between their past and present experiences and begin self-concept
clarication. As Crocetti and her colleagues note, such clarication is
essential to personality development (“Interplay” 601). Peer liaisons are
particularly well-suited for this type of mentorship role because they
have recent experience in the project and are identied by instructors
for excelling throughout that process. ey can also easily relate to
the diculties of being a rst-year college student adjusting to a new
community, a new social sphere, and a new academic culture. Student
feedback gathered from course evaluations and nal written reec-
tions on the rst year indicate that most students (74%) found that
the reective discussions with peer liaisons were benecial. An even
larger percentage (88%) reported that a positive relationship with their
liaison was vital to understanding their role in Honors Engaged. is
feedback suggests that our peer liaisons address the critical needs of
students and do so in a way that makes the goals and expertise of the
CBOs central to the service experience.
From the perspective of our community partners, peer liaisons
provide an eective communication channel that is oen lacking
in other service learning models. Sociologists David D. Blouin and
M. Evelyn Perry found that eective communication with instruc-
tors, project organizers, and students is imperative for a successful
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Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
partnership. In their study, they interviewed CBO representatives and
found that these professionals had little communication with instruc-
tors in service learning arrangements. Blouin and Perry suggest, in fact,
that “many of the challenges service learning poses to CBOs are tied to
the instructor’s inaccurate assumptions or lack of information about
an organization’s culture, basic operation, or needs” (130). Assigning
each CBO a peer liaison in Honors Engaged has mitigated many of
these concerns because each peer liaison has prior experience with
the CBO and thus has a better understanding of the project’s mis-
sion and day-to-day operations than an instructor with little to no
experience working with partner organizations and limited time to
communicate with CBOs. Liaisons’ experiences with the organization
also make them particularly eective in helping students reect criti-
cally on the missions, goals, rhetoric of the organizations, and how that
might impact their ability to establish genuinely reciprocal relation-
ships with their CBO.
e ability of peer liaisons to eectively communicate the goals of
the CBO and help students establish relationships with the commu-
nity partner also allows our rst-year program to foster the types of
mutually benecial relationships that help community organizations
recognize the full potential of integrating students into their work. In
a 2006 study by Marie Sandy and Barbara A. Holland for which 99
community partners on service learning projects were interviewed,
the authors found that representatives reported that students enrich
the very fabric of their organizations by asking pertinent questions,
pushing partners to reect on organizational goals and practices, and
sharing new information from their academic studies (36). In mutually
benecial service learning models, community partners see themselves
as co-educators even when the partnership oers few immediate gains
for the partner organization (34). When service learning partnerships
mutually benet service learners and organizations, CBOs begin to
value service learning beyond its practicality as an ecient labor pool.
Students, in turn, benet from a more engaging experience that allows
them to challenge assumptions and understand connections to a new
group of people—all important parts of identity formation.
Because of the work done through the years by peer liaisons and
our programmatic commitment to centering CBOs in the curriculum,
the organizations with which we work have come to see themselves as
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Disrupting Privilege
partners in our eorts to spur student development. ey have created
enriching training programs, mentored students rather than simply
managed them as volunteers, and helped students maintain account-
ability for goals they set at the beginning of the academic year. We also
increasingly hear how impactful students are to CBOs by increasing
their capacity and becoming organizational leaders. Our community
partners also report that their aliation with Honors Engaged helps
them network with other organizations that they had not worked with
before and share ideas and resources with like-minded entities.
By pushing faculty to the periphery and bringing CBOs and peer
liaisons into full partnership in Honors Engaged, our rst-year expe-
rience blurs the traditional lines of education. Rather than passively
receiving knowledge created and distributed by credentialed faculty,
students come to rely on multiple individuals with varied cultural
markers of authority—fellow students, sta, faculty, CBO representa-
tives, and community members—to contribute to their education and
their overall success. Learning from so many dierent gures also helps
students recognize the multiple facets of scholar-citizenship, where
community engagement deepens and challenges academic learning.
Most critically, our students mature in their perceptions of how sys-
tems of power and privilege oen perpetuate the very challenges they
are trying to address.
DIGGING DEEPER: LINKING HONORS ENGAGED TO
ACADEMIC WRITING
Much of our work in creating the rst-year experience has focused on
developing the service learning component and a suite of curricular
tools to support it. We have also been mindful that students need the
opportunity to reect upon and analyze their interactions with CBOs
and experiences with the larger Honors Engaged apparatus in a sub-
stantive manner. To that end, we have established a space for reection
beyond BGS itself. We found that pairing Honors Engaged more closely
with 2–3 sections of a service learning version of Honors Academic
Writing provided the ideal context for students to explore the com-
plexity of the Honors Engaged experience. e writing course oers
students the theoretical grounding needed to reconcile some contra-
dictory messages and cognitive disequilibrium they might encounter
84
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
in their service learning project. It also helps students become more
self-aware and thoughtful in their work with CBOs.
As a four-credit-hour rst-year writing course, Honors Academic
Writing focuses in a more sustained manner than the one-credit BGS
course aords on the interconnectedness of the rhetoric of identity,
service, and privilege as experienced and constructed by both stu-
dents and CBOs. Reective journal entries and group discussions
allow students to consider their experiences within larger social jus-
tice frameworks and engaged citizenship. Formal paper assignments
that ask students to utilize critical theories from prominent rhetori-
cians and linguists make their service the subject of extended analysis.
Early in the semester, students examine their past service experiences
using Deborah Brandt’s theory of literacy sponsorship. Later in the
semester, they use linguist John Swales’s concept of a discourse com-
munity to identify and analyze the mechanisms CBOs use to recruit
members and reach their goals. Students write and think about the
relationships among service, privilege, and identity from the rst day
of the semester to the last.
Concentrating on service complexities encourages students to ana-
lyze their work with the CBOs more closely. Because of this, the course
also deals more critically with the challenges to students’ emotional,
intellectual, and social identities posed by sustained community service
and partnerships. Drawing on the research ndings of Crocetti and her
colleagues that the social context is critical as students work through
self-concept confusion (“Interplay” 596), we created a course peda
-
gogy that furthers the goals of fostering positive identity development,
prosociality, and productive community service that acknowledges dis-
comfort and resistance as valid and productive responses to novel and
challenging experiences.
Working with our students as they navigate these experiences, we
have observed that student discomfort is driven by two primary reac
-
tions: recognizing privilege in their own lives and acknowledging its
role in community service. erefore, course readings focus on the
nature of service and delve into specic community issues. Discussions
and writing assignments, in turn, address the self and the commu-
nity as interwoven pieces of larger narratives of service, privilege, and
social change. Building on rst-year writing pedagogies that encourage
instructors to start where the students are by rst examining personal
85
Disrupting Privilege
experiences or knowledge, Honors Academic Writing focuses initially
on the self and the process of recognizing forms of privilege in daily
life and service. Many students nd this task challenging because the
academic endeavors of self-reection with which students are most
familiar, such as the traditional personal narrative, personal statements,
and college entrance essays, encourage a narrative of self that presents
a cohesive identity aligned with a set of socially desired traits.
Using Deborah Brandt’s concept of literacy sponsors, students con-
struct a narrative that analyzes a key moment in their lives when a
sponsor or advisor shaped their understanding of service. For Brandt,
individuals are taught to value particular literacies and methods of
interacting with the world by more powerful entities that act as spon-
sors (166). e service narrative that we assign provides the rst of
many opportunities for students to reect upon their own experiences
with privilege and service in potentially uncomfortable and unfamil-
iar ways. Initially, students view the task of applying a denition to
their own experience as a straightforward, familiar exercise; however,
Brandt’s denition of literacy sponsors—“any agents, local or distant,
concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as
recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by
it in some way” (166)—invites more ambiguity than answers. Students
wrestle with this relationship throughout the project. By identifying a
key sponsor and reecting on their own experience through Brandt’s
framework, students view their own experiences as a subject of criti-
cal study, especially when they focus on narrative details that reveal
the more ambiguous nature of sponsorship. In their narratives, stu-
dents also oen relate the ways that their past experiences with service
promoted by high schools, religious organizations, or honor societies—
all common sponsors of service for our students—have been shaped
by very particular narratives of obligation, duty, or personal growth
that are rooted in privilege. When students are willing to engage the
concept of a literacy sponsor fully, they begin to see themselves as
inuenced by, but not necessarily beholden to, popular narratives about
service and privilege. ey acknowledge their own limitations and use
the ability to recognize problematic structures as a tool for avoiding
them in current and future community service and for reconsidering
their own identities. For example, at the end of her literacy narrative
about a particularly negative sponsor, one student reasons: “Service
86
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
sponsors are going to be whatever they chose to and sometimes their
impact can completely derail an entire project. at said, what happens
aer is completely up to me, and good work and meaningful service
were and still are able to arise out of my negative experience because
I—at least now—have a realistic view of service and a strong grip on
the importance of intentions” (Student Essay 1). Just as oen, though,
students respond to the emotional confusion and discomfort caused
by recognition of their own privilege with denials and resistance to
course content that are rooted in a need to assimilate new experiences
into existing narratives.
One of the most prevalent forms of resistance relates to how stu-
dents struggle to see how privilege impacts their perception of those
they serve. For example, a student writing about a service trip to a for-
eign country characterized the community members she encountered
by pointing out the dierences between their economic status and hers.
e people she is serving live in a space that is “nothing more than a
slum,” which in her estimation means that they “felt very special that
people they didn’t even know had come to see them” (Student Essay
2). e further assertion that “even though I could barely commu-
nicate with them, I could tell the eort alone made them feel loved”
reinforces the ways privilege is used to create distance and misappre-
hend the actions of those served (Student Essay 2). Even students who
are more inclined to be self-critical and self-aware frequently resort
to narratives that inadvertently reinforce their own privilege and a
problematic self-other dynamic when asked to consider how privilege
impacts service. One student working with a Charleston foodbank rea-
soned that “privilege serves as a blindfold to what the organization is
trying to do because they can’t really know what it’s like to be in a lower
position of society. Despite the negative aspects of the privilege, it must
exist. ose without privilege are rarely capable of helping raise other
underprivileged people into privilege” (Student Reection 1). In this
way, the student acknowledges the negative side of privilege but also
claims a positive position for himself and his own privilege in direct
opposition to those he helps.
Another frequently emerging response is a form of moral equiva-
lence in which students determine their service must be benecial
because it provides something the community cannot obtain on its
own. When their ideas of service and their motives are questioned,
87
Disrupting Privilege
students are quick to reason that if someone receives a service or item
they need, the intentions and systems of privilege that underpin these
experiences do not matter. Inherent in these responses is a struggle to
see service as a complicated series of interactions that cannot be eas-
ily labeled good or bad or reduced to a single, measurable outcome.
Students also fear that acknowledging the complexity of service means
exposing aws in both the service activity and their response to it. For
honors students who have been repeatedly praised for their identity as
high achievers and community-minded individuals capable of chang-
ing the world, these new ideas may threaten both their sense of self and
their understanding of their role in a community, especially when they
are asked to consider that their achievements might be predicated on
manifestations of economic and social privilege or that their outreach
might exploit the very individuals it is meant to serve.
Whereas the point of our service learning course is to disrupt cer-
tain narratives and push students into uncomfortable spaces, it must
do so without becoming detrimental to students’ self-development.
erefore, the exploration of personal identity and privilege is bal-
anced with assignments that ask them to consider their identity and
narratives of privilege within the framework of CBO goals, the people
they serve, and the larger community. When students can contextualize
the functions of privilege and identity, they become both a powerful
pedagogical tool as well as a practical coping skill for those entering
their Honors Engaged service. Students’ rst introduction to a CBO
and its goals is most frequently a website or other piece of promotional
literature that extols the virtues of the organization and the benets
of involvement. As students learn more about the organization, how-
ever, they nd that its mission oen becomes far more complicated
than depicted.
ese complications multiply once they begin their service expe-
rience. As they attend training sessions with their organizations and
begin interacting with those they serve, many students are surprised
to learn that, initially, their partner organization and/or community
members might see them as little more than a source of labor. Stu-
dents are also troubled to learn that their organization might not see
them or their work as particularly unique. ey are one of many vol-
unteers who must conform to the organization. For example, a student
who was thrilled to be paired with a local literacy organization that
88
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
provided one-on-one reading tutoring to elementary students was
especially excited about the personal connection he might forge with
his tutee and the impact he could have on that individual’s literacy
skills. Aware of the complications of service and his own privilege as a
white male, he was primed to seek exactly the type of service experi-
ence we, as an honors college, hoped our students would have. Aer
a few weeks of service, the student expressed confusion and anger
about his experience. He was furious about the organization’s focus on
scripted sessions, discipline, and teaching to the test, as well as the lack
of an individualized relationship with a single tutee. In long conversa-
tions held during oce hours, he struggled to reconcile expectations
and the reality of service. e frustration felt was not merely that of
experiences not going to plan: it was a recognition of the function of
privilege. Based on his own educational experience, he expected to
be valued and to see the student treated as an individual with specic
needs and interests. To nd that the race and socioeconomic status of
the students meant that they were not conferred the same opportuni-
ties or respect he had received rst as an elementary school child and
now as a volunteer with the organization was hard. He was further
troubled by the realization that the organization’s recruitment strat-
egy relied heavily on using socioeconomic status and race to make
the largely white volunteer pool feel sympathy for the predominantly
brown and black population it served. As a result of his experiences
as a volunteer and new awareness of the function of privilege, the stu
-
dent doubted the legitimacy of an organization that, as he saw it, was
using inequalities to garner volunteers and then perpetuating the same
problems in the services it oered.
In light of such complexities, the discussions, reections, and
essays in which students in this course engage must help them work
through their experiences and nd a way to reconcile, where pos-
sible, their expectations with the realities of service. As challenging
as this process can be, the course also oers unique opportunities to
reduce students’ feelings of isolation or guilt over not having the per-
fect service experience. Furthermore, it engages them more deeply
in questions about the tricky dynamics of service by drawing their
attention to the overt and subtle ways that others, including their
community partners, use privilege in their public-facing documents,
training sessions, and one-on-one interactions with volunteers and
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Disrupting Privilege
those they serve. Recognizing the prevalence of privilege in CBOs and
other community endeavors also disrupts narratives about good deeds
and good intentions that undergird the self-other identities promoted
in the CBO’s promotional and informational materials.
In practice, however, it can be dicult to achieve genuine criti-
cal reection on the complex nature of service without also inviting
a certain disillusionment about the concept of service or encourag-
ing students to revert to simpler narratives of privilege and self. One
assignment that proves central to helping students navigate this dif-
culty is a formal, researched analysis that asks students to place their
personal experiences alongside a critical examination of the rheto-
ric partner organizations employ to describe themselves. Students use
the concept of a “discourse community” to analyze texts produced by
their organization and conduct secondary research to examine how
their CBO uses rhetoric to achieve its goals. As described by linguist
John Swales, a discourse community is a group of people who create
discourse (texts) and share six key characteristics, including shared
public goals; mechanisms of intercommunication between members;
participatory mechanisms for giving feedback; ownership of genres;
specialized language; and a threshold for membership (471–73). To
understand the ways their CBO functions as a discourse community,
students must dig deeper to understand the details of the social issues
the organization addresses and identify the assumptions about audi-
ence and privilege that inform rhetorical choices, even those made
when recruiting volunteers. For many students, the process reveals
how organizations addressing problems within particular systems of
power or privilege also, oen unintentionally, reinforce problematic
narratives. Recognizing the rhetorical patterns of an organization and
how these patterns reinforce or break down certain narratives gives
students a clear set of analytical and academic skills while also helping
them better understand their own experiences. It also creates the criti-
cal distance necessary for negotiating new narratives of identity and
service, even if those narratives emerge from conict and discomfort.
e question of identity and privilege seems especially challeng-
ing for students of color who, based on their physical characteristics,
frequently nd themselves in the awkward position of having leaders
of partner organizations and those they serve project onto them narra-
tives of decit. As one woman of color explained in course discussions
90
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
and reections, her interactions with the leaders of her organization
indicated that one of her especially helpful traits was that, as a person
of color, she could be a model for how to overcome struggles to become
a college student because the leaders of the organizations assumed
she was of a lower socioeconomic status and had experienced some of
the same problems they projected onto the lives of the students they
served. rough her research and analysis of the organization’s rheto-
ric, she identied a persistent pattern of using racially coded language
to paint the population served by the organization as decient and
confer privilege to the predominantly white volunteers the organiza-
tion hoped to attract. In one of her reections, she shared that their
college preparation course “actually reinforces some of the common
negative stereotypes about African Americans” and determined that if
the program is to be truly successful, the organization must “confront
the nuances of balancing such an important decision-making process
with their own perceived limitations of the people they strive to help”
(Student Reection 2). Like this individual, most students, regardless
of race, encounter at least one moment during the semester when the
theories discussed in Honors Academic Writing and the concept of
meaningful service they develop with their peer liaisons are challenged
by their partner organization’s reliance on concepts of privilege as a
tool for reaching goals. In this moment, students learn that their narra-
tives are distinctly intertwined with those of their organization in ways
that are neither immediately obvious nor clearly positive or negative.
Rather, they are merely part of a larger, interconnected whole—the
complicated web of relationships, discourses, emotions, and motives
that make up the service experience.
On the one hand, students gain a fuller understanding of their
role in the larger network of CBOs, community members, and the
honors college itself because making service an object of study opens
a wide range of new avenues for academic and personal exploration.
On the other hand, students can feel uncertainty about their service
experience, and they may express concerns about how to reconcile the
critical questions they must tackle as part of their service experience
with their other roles as college students, which oen emphasize and
reward privilege in various forms. At the end of the rst year, most
students—even those who successfully complete their service projects,
engage deeply, and form relationships with CBOs that last well into
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Disrupting Privilege
their college career—nd themselves struggling to resolve what Dun-
lap and her colleagues describe as “a conict between the intellectual
and experiential self” as they “further grapple to make meaning of the
situation(s)” they encounter (20). But this ambiguity is the point as
we launch students into a substantive exploration of their personality
development during emerging adulthood: it is the ultimate indicator
of a successful rst-year program.
AMBIGUITY AS OUTCOME
By combining a developmental approach with service learning oppor-
tunities and designing a suite of curricular and co-curricular elements
that consistently push students and CBOs to the center, we have created
a rst-year program that not only breaks down systems of privilege but
also asks faculty and students alike to embrace disruption and ambi-
guity as useful tools for navigating complex systems of narratives and
actions that cannot easily be classied as good or bad. Leaning on the
pedagogy of both the BGS and Honors Academic Writing courses,
students are taught that ambiguity is acceptable. is observation is
reinforced by repeated reection in classes and conversations with each
organization’s peer liaisons. In fact, reection in various contexts is
consistently presented as a vital part of moving forward in service and
identity development. Students are also reminded through continual
reection that understanding complex dynamics takes time and that
they have both the academic skills and scaolded support structure,
including faculty, sta, peers, and community members, to navigate
such complex situations.
As faculty, we also found it necessary to engage in our own
reection and take seriously the fact that service work demands we
acknowledge to ourselves and our students that our sense of self, par-
ticular motivations, and roles in larger systems of privilege, despite our
best eorts, shape the ways we structure course components and the
power dynamics we establish within BGS, Honors Engaged, Honors
Academic Writing, and the honors college at large. Faculty have had
to grapple with the uncomfortable position of questioning whether
the ideas presented in courses designed to support Honors Engaged
might contribute to negative service experiences by giving students
an excuse to write o organizations or projects that do not instantly
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Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
meet their expectations. In short, we, too, must dwell in the disrup-
tive nature of service and seek answers alongside our students. Once
we acknowledged that our students were not the only agents of devel-
opment in our rst-year experience and that service is transformative
for an honors college for the very same reasons it is for our students,
the depth of our approach increased signicantly. rough confront-
ing our own narratives of privilege, college identity, and motives, we,
too, as an honors college, have discovered the potential to form a more
cohesive and impactful identity in our community and to engage in
increasingly prosocial activities at an organizational level.
As the habits of reection and evaluation have become more deeply
integrated into our eorts, the rst-year experience we have created
continues to evolve. Our students have also changed: they arrive on
campus more socio-politically aware and anxious about events in the
world than in the past. Many of them nd direct service a troublesome
and sometimes ineective method of community engagement because
of its limited impact on the structural inequalities that undergird the
issues organizations address. ey strongly desire to engage in broader
action on a structural level. Obviously, we want to empower students
to do this; however, as a program, we have been dedicated to the direct
service model to expand the classroom, disrupt narratives of privilege,
and impact our community. e question the honors college faces is
how to support students’ desire to expand their impact while still har-
nessing the immense developmental potential of service learning.
For the honors college, that means, once again, broadening our
scope while sticking to our principles. Rather than having all students
working in direct service capacities, we have begun to explore a new
model in which students focus on one critical social issue and engage
it in various ways. For example, students may attend panel discus-
sions of advocacy groups in the community, observe local government
meetings, or sit in on CBO board meetings. We believe this broader
engagement will help students gain perspective on the various struc-
tural mechanisms that aid or complicate community development.
Implementing this change will undoubtedly be challenging, both logis-
tically and conceptually. It means we relinquish more power. Rather
than have all students participate in structured direct service positions,
we are sending them out to engage more organically. We must prepare
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Disrupting Privilege
peer mentors to manage a completely new project. We must change
the parameters of the BGS course and Honors Academic Writing to
include this new method of engagement. We think this move is neces-
sary. As our community changes locally, nationally, and globally, so do
our students’ perceptions of self and other. If we strive to inspire and
support students’ development, we must also be willing to change as
a program. We may fail, but as we tell our students, sometimes failure
is the most eective way to learn.
REFERENCES
Arnett, Jerey. “Emerging Adulthood: A eory of Development from the Late
Teens rough the Twenties.” American Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 5, 2000,
pp. 469–80.
Blouin, David D., and M. Evelyn Perry. “Whom Does Service Learning
Really Serve? Community-Based Organizations’ Perspectives on Service
Learning.” Teaching Sociology, vol. 37, no. 2, 2009, pp. 120–35.
Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communi-
cation, vol. 49, no. 2, 1998, pp. 165–85.
Chickering, Arthur W. Experience and Learning: An Introduction to Experiential
Learning. Change Magazine Press, 1977.
Cognard-Black, Andrew J. “Risky Honors.” Journal of the National Collegiate
Honors Council, vol. 20, no. 2, 2019, pp. 3–8.
Crocetti, Elisabetta, Silvia Moscatelli, et al. “e Interplay of Self-Certainty
and Prosocial Development in the Transition from Late Adolescence to
Emerging Adulthood.” European Journal of Personality, vol. 30, no. 6, 2016,
pp. 594–607.
Crocetti, Elisabetta, Monica Rubini, and Wim Meeus. “Capturing the Dynamics
of Identity Formation in Various Ethnic Groups: Development and
Validation of a ree-Dimensional Model.” Journal of Adolescence, vol. 31,
2008, pp. 207–22.
Dunlap, Michelle, et al. “White Students’ Experiences of Privilege and
Socioeconomic Disparities: Toward a eoretical Model.” Michigan Journal
of Community Service Learning, vol. 13, no. 2, 2007, pp. 19–30.
King, Patricia. “Principles of Development and Developmental Change
Underlying eories of Cognitive and Moral Development.” Journal of
College Student Development, vol. 50, no. 6, 2009, pp. 597–620.
94
Folds-Bennett, Collins-Frohlich, and Maynor
Roberts, Brent, et al. “Evaluating Five-Factor eory and Social Investment
Perspectives on Personality Trait Development.” Journal of Research in
Personality, vol. 39, no. 1, 2005, pp. 166–84.
Sandy, Marie, and Barbara A. Holland. “Dierent Worlds and Common Ground:
Community Partner Perspectives on Campus-Community Partnerships.”
Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, vol. 13, no. 1, 2006, pp.
30–43.
Stoller, Aaron. “eory and Resistance in Honors Education.” Occupy Honors
Education, edited by Lisa L. Coleman, Jonathan D. Kotinek, and Alan
Y. Oda, National Collegiate Honors Council, 2017, pp. 3–32. NCHC
Monograph Series.
Swales, John. “e Concept of a Discourse Community.” Writing about Writing:
A College Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, 3rd ed.,
Bedford St. Martins, 2011, pp. 466–78.
95
Christy Tyndall and Jacqueline Smith-Mason
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is an urban, pub-
lic research university located in Richmond, Virginia. VCU is
among only eighty-four R1 universities with a Carnegie Com-
munity Engagement classification, which is a testament to
VCU’s strong commitment to integrating community engage-
ment through teaching, research, and service to address societal
challenges and improve the quality of life for all. e univer-
sity enrolls more than 28,000 students, representing over one
hundred countries. Eighty-ve percent of students are Virginia
residents, and more than half of all students represent ethni-
cally diverse populations. irty-seven percent of all fall 2024
freshmen were rst-generation college students. More than two
hundred degree programs are oered, including top-ranked pro-
grams in the health sciences, arts, and social work.
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Tyndall and Smith-Mason
VCU HONORS COLLEGE
T
he Virginia Commonwealth University Honors Program began
in 1983, and the Board of Visitors established the VCU Honors
College under the leadership of an academic dean in 2006. Students
must complete twenty-one to twenty-four honors credits, maintain a
3.5 cumulative grade point average, and actively engage in the hon-
ors community and beyond. e honors college is a community of
over 1,100 students. Key features of the honors college include guaran-
teed admission to several professional programs, including medicine,
dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing. A dedicated honors residence hall,
peer mentoring, and opportunities to engage in high-impact learning
practices, such as undergraduate research, study abroad, and intern-
ships, are hallmarks of the honors experience. e rst-year experience
includes the following courses: Research Writing; Writing in Cultural
Conversation; Humans of RVA & VCU; and our rst-year seminar
entitled “Flourishing: e Applied Science of Wellbeing.” During
years two and three, students engage in various courses in the arts,
humanities, and sciences. e curriculum culminates with a capstone
experience addressing social problems, such as food deserts, health dis-
parities, housing insecurity, and protecting the environment. rough
an experiential learning-centered curriculum, the honors college
equips students to be problem solvers, critical thinkers, and leaders
who will address big questions and strengthen communities.
FLOURISHING: THE APPLIED SCIENCE OF WELLBEING
Flourishing is a one-credit course required of all rst-year honors col-
lege students. Enrollment is limited to twenty students in each section,
allowing for small group activities, discussions, and opportunities to
make social connections. e class meets for seventy-ve minutes once
a week. Multiple time slots on dierent days allow students several
options to t it within their schedules. An educational psychologist with
expertise in college student motivation and counseling developed the
initial curriculum and served as the lead instructor and coordinator of
the course. Initially, the course was taught by a team of instructors com-
prised of psychology doctoral students and experienced mindfulness
coaches. In 2018, a full-time, non-tenure track Assistant Professor and
Coordinator of Wellbeing position was created to teach the Flourishing
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Virginia Commonwealth University
course and oversee extracurricular programming to support student
wellbeing. We currently provide fourteen course sections, with seven
sections oered during the fall semester and seven in the spring. Mov-
ing forward, adjunct faculty will teach several sections each semester.
Expertise in psychology, counseling, mindfulness, and college student
development are important qualications for Flourishing instructors.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
In the spring of 2015, experts from VCU Psychology, Psychiatry, and
the College Behavioral and Emotional Health Institute collaborated to
launch a three-credit course entitled “e Science of Happiness,” which
was based on positive psychology and oered through the University
College. e course was designed to share evidence-based principles of
the biopsychosocial underpinnings of wellbeing. It was well-received
by students and the university, and it attracted the attention of the
honors college leadership. e three-credit version was determined to
be too intensive to add to the already overloaded schedules of honors
college students. As a result, leaders of the honors college developed a
one-credit version for honors students. Flourishing was rst introduced
in fall 2016 as a one-credit course adapted from the three-credit course.
Additional course topics and unique activities tailored to address the
needs of high-achieving rst-year students were designed by an edu-
cational psychologist with expertise in high-achieving college student
motivation and counseling, who also taught all sections of the course
during its inaugural semester in the fall of 2016 as one of the corner-
stones of the rst-year curriculum.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e underlying goal of Flourishing is to teach honors students strate-
gies to promote personal growth and subjective wellbeing in ways that
help them to achieve their goals successfully and experience a sense
of satisfaction with life. is is achieved by minimizing time spent on
content delivery and prioritizing active engagement with the content
through self-reection and interactive exercises.
Learning also extends beyond the classroom in several ways. First,
in preparation for class each week, students are assigned readings
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focused on the week’s topic. Readings include primary research articles
authored by leading researchers in positive psychology. Students also
complete an exercise related to the topic and submit a written reection
posted on an online discussion board shared by the class. Readings,
exercises, and reections are completed before the class meeting so
that students are primed for the topic and prepared to engage actively
in discussions and activities.
Each class session begins with the same sequence of events. First,
students spend the rst two minutes of class in guided meditation. is
is followed by each student sharing something that went well in the
past week. e goals of this activity are twofold: cognitive reframing
and community building. Next, the topic of the week is introduced via
a brief lecture in which students learn about the research behind the
practice/topic. Eleven wellbeing-based topics are covered throughout
the semester. Topics include biological bases of ourishing/wellbeing,
physical health and self-care, emotional health, healthy relationships,
engagement and meaning, personal strengths, coping with challenges,
and setting goals. e remainder of the class is devoted to activities and
small group discussions.
In addition to promoting wellbeing and mindfulness, another goal
of the course is to inform and connect rst-year students with campus
wellbeing support services. As such, the campus Wellness Resource
Center is an important partner of the class. A representative from the
Wellness Resource Center visits each class as a guest speaker to share
with students information about programming oered by the Center
throughout the semester.
By the end of the course, students will 1) have a basic understand-
ing of the factors related to behavioral and emotional health, which
include genetic and environmental risk factors on both mental health
challenges and positive outcomes; 2) have a deeper understanding
of their own strengths and risk factors; 3) have an understanding of
the eld of positive psychology and the research behind factors that
promote wellbeing; 4) learn evidence-based practices that they can
employ in their own lives to address challenges they may experience
and promote their own wellbeing; 5) have an increased understanding
of services across the university that are available to support student
mental and behavioral health.
99
Christy Tyndall and Jacqueline Smith-Mason
Virginia Commonwealth University
A
my, a rst-year Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Hon-
ors College student, has had a stressful day. She just completed an
exam in organic chemistry and has a research paper due rst thing in
the morning, immediately followed by a three-hour lab session. Her
mind ips back and forth, ruminating about the exam and thinking she
failed, and then anxiously creating a to-do list to prepare for tomorrow
that will keep her working late into the night. It is just before 3:00 P.M.
on a Wednesday. Amy walks into the classroom for Flourishing: e
Applied Science of Wellbeing (HONR 150) and smiles. e song that
she emailed to Professor T. last night is playing over the room’s sound
system. Amy immediately feels a bit of tension drop from her shoul-
ders. She feels happy that Professor T. has selected her upbeat song as
the day’s soundtrack. She nds her seat and chats with her classmates
as the other students trickle in.
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Tyndall and Smith-Mason
At 3:00, Professor T. welcomes the class and announces the medi-
tation of the day: “Today’s meditation will be a body scan.” “Yes,” Amy
thinks, “that is one of my favorites.” Now familiar with the routine,
Amy assumes a comfortable position, places her feet on the oor, takes
a deep breath, closes her eyes, and listens to the words of the sooth-
ing meditation guiding her to systematically scan her body for places
of tension, to breathe, and to release the tension. Aer two brief min-
utes, she opens her eyes, feeling centered and more relaxed. Her mind
is no longer preoccupied by this morning’s exam or agonizing about
tomorrow’s workload: she is present in the current moment. “I wish
the meditations would last longer!” she thinks. Next, Professor T. asks,
“OK, what went well for you all this week?” Amy volunteers to talk
rst. She is excited to share that she had a friend from high school meet
her for lunch yesterday. Aer Amy, each student shares one thing that
went well for them this week. Some talk about academic successes,
some talk about social activities, and Jim receives applause when he
reports that he made it to all of his classes on time. Amy likes learn-
ing more about her classmates through this exercise and oen nds
herself actively thinking about positive things in her life outside of the
Flourishing class and looking forward to sharing with her classmates
on Wednesdays.
For the next few minutes, Professor T. talks about the topic of
the day: cultivating positive emotions. Amy enjoys the “minute-to-
win-it” style activities that get her thinking about emotions, and she
listens intently to learn about the roles of both negative and positive
emotions in promoting wellbeing. Professor T. explains the relation-
ship between automatic negative thoughts and emotions, providing
examples along the way. Amy feels a sense of recognition when she
describes the thinking pattern known as “catastrophizing” or perceiv-
ing minor negative events as disastrous. Just a few hours ago, aer her
organic chemistry exam, she doubted her performance and felt a rush
of panic that led her down a spiral of negative thoughts ending with
certain rejection and probable loss of scholarships. She did not even
notice the downward thought spiral at the time, but now she is learning
to be mindful of negative thought patterns and how they inuence her
emotions. In the small group discussion with Jim and Priya that follows
the informational talk, she engages in a lively conversation about nega-
tive thinking patterns, drawing on her homework and the discussion
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Wellbeing and Mindfulness
board post that she completed in preparation for today’s class. She also
talks about her exam experience earlier in the day. Jim and Priya share
similar experiences. Amy nds it comforting that she is not alone in
worrying about the eects of a bad grade and that she sometimes feels
frustrated with trying to earn an A in every class. ey brainstorm
ways to stop negative thought patterns, and Amy likes it when they
all come back together as a class and share their ideas. Professor T.
ends the lesson of the day with specic instructions on how to counter
negative thoughts by being mindful and by increasing positive emo-
tions. As an example, she talks about how gratitude can help to draw
our focus outward, breaking us out of a downward spiral of thoughts,
and helping to facilitate closeness with others. e homework for the
week is to write a letter of gratitude to someone in your life and share
it with that person. Amy already knows exactly to whom she will write
and looks forward to completing the assignment. As class is dismissed,
Amy gathers her belongings and heads o for a brief break between
classes; she feels relaxed and grounded.
WHY FLOURISHING
e above anecdote was inspired by students’ experiences in the VCU
Honors College’s rst-year seminar course, Flourishing: e Applied
Science of Wellbeing. Amy’s story was derived from classroom obser-
vations, student evaluations, and written reections. is required
rst-year seminar was designed to support honors students in their
transition to college, to promote awareness of mental health, and to
help students cultivate personally eective strategies for promoting
wellbeing. Finding new ways to promote student wellbeing is timely
and necessary for college programs. Rates of students entering college
with a diagnosed mental health disorder and those seeking treatment
for disorders at some point during their college careers have increased
in recent years. According to the 2023 Annual Report of the Center
for Collegiate Mental Health, of the 185,114 students seeking mental
health treatment at 195 U.S. college and university counseling centers
from 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023, 65.5% sought help for anxiety, mak-
ing this the top concern among students seeking treatment, 44.3% for
depression, and 46.9% for stress (21). Further, suicide rates among
young adults are on the rise nationwide, and 13.9% of college students
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seeking mental health treatment did so because of thoughts of self-
harm and/or suicide (21). For every student seeking mental health
treatment, there are certainly others experiencing similar issues in
varying degrees of severity who do not seek help. ese issues have
been amplied in recent years by pandemic-related illnesses, isolation,
loss, and stress. Beyond issues experienced by non-honors students,
honors college students may experience additional pressures. ese
pressures are related to multiple factors, in comparison to non-honors
college peers, including the perceived need to maintain exceptional
academic performance, personal and parental expectations, perfec-
tionism, and concern over mistakes. Tessa E. Wimberley and Michael
J. Stasio’s work explores these pressures in detail. ey found that rst-
year high-achieving honors students frequently held themselves to
higher personal academic standards and were hypercritical in their
self-evaluations compared to rst-year students not enrolled in hon-
ors. Further, tendencies toward maladaptive, harsh self-evaluations and
the perceived need to achieve perfection were associated with anxiety
and depressed moods (281). As an added pressure in navigating the
transition to college, rst-year honors students immediately engage
in rigorous coursework and strive to meet high performance stan-
dards and expectations. is behavior is oen accompanied by anxiety
and elevated levels of stress. Students in the Flourishing course have
described persistent feelings of stress and perceptions of stress as a
normal part of their experience. “If I’m not stressed,” a typical student
will say, “I feel like I’m doing something wrong.” Although honors
students’ preoccupation with performance is sometimes overzealous,
there is some grounding to these beliefs. Performing at high levels is
a valid concern because high GPAs must be maintained to remain eli-
gible for scholarships, be competitive for post-graduate programs, and
retain their honors status.
In a 2017 honors thesis, Steven Pham warned of the growing
prevalence and severity of mental health issues among honors col-
lege students. He advocated for increased programming designed to
promote wellbeing and mindfulness. His suggestions included imple-
menting educational programs to promote wellbeing and mental
health, teaching students stress management techniques, and pro-
moting a sense of belonging among students (24). Likewise, honors
educator Christine Rockey assessed life satisfaction scale scores among
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y students enrolled in a wellbeing-based rst-year honors seminar
called “e Good Life” and found that upon completion of the course,
students experienced signicant increases in measurements of happi-
ness and positive perceptions of life. “Enrolling in a happiness-oriented
honors course during the rst semester in college,” Rockey writes, “can
contribute to a change in attitude that results in a more centered stu-
dent and can ultimately improve the quality of an honors education”
(210). Promoting individual student wellbeing strengthens the overall
honors community and ultimately improves the honors experience
for all community members. It has become increasingly apparent that
to support students, institutions of higher education in general and
honors programs specically should consider teaching specic evi-
dence-based strategies that help students not only to cope with anxiety,
depression, and stress but also to learn to cultivate life satisfaction and
personal ourishing. Such emphases promote healthy development, life
satisfaction, and success for students in the classroom and beyond. In
his work proposing a model of complete mental health, Corey L. M.
Keyes explains that teaching wellbeing does not replace mental health
treatment for those who need it, but it provides an introduction to the
science of wellbeing and oers tools that can promote optimal func-
tioning across the spectrum of mental health (“Promoting” 95). With
leadership keenly attuned to the needs of honors college students, cre-
ating a curriculum that supports students’ transition into college and
teaches them how to focus on personal wellbeing over the long term
has become a priority at VCU.
e VCU Honors College required the rst-year one-credit sem-
inar (Flourishing: e Applied Science of Wellbeing) to introduce
students to literature on the state of college student mental health and
wellbeing on a personal and systems level. It provides an opportu-
nity for students to re-evaluate their beliefs, values, and assumptions
within the context of learning about the science behind health and
wellbeing. Key ndings from leading researchers in the elds of posi-
tive psychology and the study of mental health include Ed Diener’s
conceptualization of subjective wellbeing (34), Martin E. P. Seligman’s
PERMA wellbeing model (16), Corey L. M. Keyes’ complete state
model of health (“Mental” 540), and Barbara L. Fredrickson’s broaden
and build theory of positive emotions (218). ese researchers’ works,
along with a host of others, inform students’ understanding of the
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biopsychosocial underpinnings of wellbeing. e practice of mindful-
ness is emphasized, and students learn about and practice mindfulness
in multiple ways throughout the semester-long class. Additional infor-
mation about evidence-based practices to promote wellbeing in the
college environment targets areas such as self-care, emotional health,
gratitude, and stress management.
In his research, Diener describes wellbeing as evident “when peo-
ple feel many pleasant and few unpleasant emotions, when they are
engaged in interesting activities, when they experience many pleasures
and few pains, and when they are satised with their lives” (34). He
proceeds to explain that wellbeing encompasses multiple aspects of a
person’s life, including experiencing positive emotions; being satised
with important areas such as work, relationships, and school; minimiz-
ing the experience of negative emotions; and having a sense of overall
satisfaction with life. e term wellbeing is oen used synonymously
with terms such as thriving and ourishing because having a sense of
wellbeing is associated with positive emotions, resilience, a sense of
agency, and self-ecacy. Each of these experiences plays a vital role in
driving eorts toward self-actualization, the process of reaching one’s
optimal level of functioning.
For college students, academic study is an important area of life,
and subjective wellbeing has been shown to have a positive relation-
ship with behaviors associated with academic success. In a study by
Andrew J. Howell, a sample of approximately 400 students taking an
introductory college class at a four-year undergraduate college com-
pleted measures of ourishing that assessed emotional, psychological,
and social wellbeing. Measures of ourishing were positively related
to motivational factors associated with successful learning including
interest, goals of learning for mastery, and self-regulation. ese moti-
vational factors play a role in student persistence and resilience, both of
which are important for retention and academic success. Further, our-
ishing was related to high self-reported GPAs (Howell 4). Given the
evidence-based potential for supporting success and making a lasting
dierence in the lives of honors college students by teaching princi
-
ples and practices of the applied science of wellbeing, Flourishing has
become a valuable cornerstone of the rst-year experience.
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Wellbeing and Mindfulness
COURSE FOUNDATIONS
Flourishing introduces students to positive psychology and to evi-
dence-based wellbeing practices and techniques, and it teaches them
how to implement these strategies in their daily lives. An emphasis
on experiential learning and learning from peers rather than lec-
ture-based content delivery characterizes the course. Each aspect of
the course was designed with intention and guided by conceptual
frameworks that have been shown to support student learning and
motivation. e course is built upon a foundation of Richard M. Ryan
and Edward L. Deci’s self-determination theory and scaolded using
Maryellen Weimer’s framework for learner-centered teaching. With
self-determination theory as the foundation and learner-centered
teaching as scaolding, mindfulness training is the cement that binds
and strengthens the entire course structure. In the following sections,
we describe how we used these evidence-based pedagogical approaches
to design and implement Flourishing.
Creating learner-centered classrooms is an important movement
born out of the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher edu-
cation. Maryellen Weimer, an internationally recognized expert in
the areas of instructional development and postsecondary learning,
championed this approach. In contrast with teacher-centered class-
rooms, oen characterized by content delivery in the form of lectures
and a passive student audience, learner-centered teaching (LCT) is
designed to engage “students in the hard, messy work of learning” (15).
In the context of Flourishing, this means that students are challenged
to explore their assumptions, values, and beliefs about what “wellbe-
ing” means, evaluate how their current and past behaviors might help
or hinder wellbeing, and generate new, personally eective wellbeing
practices based on the evidence and information provided. As Weimer
explains, several other features characterize a learner-centered class-
room. In LCT, content delivery via lecture is minimized, and students
take control over their learning through active engagement with the
content (15).
We model this approach in Flourishing, where a maximum of 15
minutes of each 75-minute class is devoted to content delivery. During
these 15 minutes, the instructor introduces the day’s topic and briey
summarizes relevant research and key points. e remaining hour of
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class is devoted to meditation, personal reection, interactive exercises,
and discussions. Flourishing students participate in interactive learn-
ing opportunities in class and complete a related assignment each week
outside of the classroom. For example, during the week of studying the
connection between physical health and overall wellbeing, students
keep a journal detailing either eating, sleeping, or exercising patterns
for the week. When they come to class, they are ready to discuss their
journals and their observations. LCT also encourages interaction and
collaboration between students. Whether taking turns sharing “what
went well” during the week, discussing written reections with a part-
ner, or playing a cooperative game, students recognize that learning
via interaction and collaboration are key experiences in the course.
Finally, LCT promotes student reection on new material and how it
connects to their personal experiences through written assignments,
in-class activities, and discussions.
In addition to intentional planning that emphasizes the central
role of the students in guiding their learning experience, the course
was also designed using Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory
(SDT), a well-researched and validated motivational framework for
understanding optimal conditions for student learning in the eld of
educational psychology (68). According to the theory, individuals have
three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competency, and related-
ness. When these needs are met in educational settings, students have
been shown to have greater motivation for learning, persist when faced
with challenges, and develop intrinsic motivation. As a result, Ryan
and Deci note that they engage in the work of learning for the sake of
internal rewards and personal growth rather than external rewards. In
a class such as Flourishing, it is important that students feel motivated
to actively engage in the process of learning how the practices and
principles of the course can be personally benecial. e subsequent
outcomes of cultivating wellbeing far outweigh the value of simply
earning an ‘A’ for memorizing the information. erefore, meeting
each of the three core psychological needs outlined in SDT is woven
throughout the fabric of the course.
Flourishing students, for example, are provided with multiple
opportunities for making decisions and taking ownership of their learn-
ing in the course. Playing an active role in shaping one’s own learning
experience promotes student autonomy. Based on his body of research
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into best practices for applying self-determination theory to educational
settings, Johnmarshall Reeve posits that the need for autonomy is met
when students can take ownership and control aspects of their educa-
tional environments. In Flourishing, the moment the students walk in
the door of the class, they can choose the “soundtrack of the day” that
plays in the background as they get settled. Students are also allowed
to choose the meditative exercise for the day. As another example,
students can choose the format in which they submit their nal proj-
ects. For the nal project—a plan for how the student intends to bring
positivity into the world beyond the classroom—students are given
autonomy in choosing not only the subject of the plan but also how
they present the plan: a formal paper, presentation, or creative artifact.
Meeting the second psychological need—competence—is inter-
woven in several ways. In the framework of SDT, Ryan and Deci note
that competence refers to developing a sense of mastery or self-ecacy
in a given context (68). Students demonstrate competence or mas-
tery of concepts in Flourishing throughout the course. First, students
demonstrate their understanding of content and ability to integrate
information from primary research with personal experiences through
weekly written reections. In these reections, students are presented
with writing prompts that challenge them to summarize the read-
ings and apply what they have learned to their personal experiences.
Students also demonstrate competence by participating in class dis-
cussions and completing in-class activities. Activities include debates,
creating informational posters to share, interactive quizzes and games,
role-playing, and providing solutions for real-life scenarios.
e nal psychological need in the SDT framework that is perhaps
most important for this course is relatedness. Students begin to form
a class community prior to the rst meeting by introducing them-
selves in the online Canvas discussion forum. Ample opportunities
are provided in class for students to interact through discussions and
activities. Small class sizes (fewer than 20 students) create a close envi-
ronment for students to get to know each other and to learn from one
another. Students oen cite feeling normalized and connected to oth-
ers when hearing classmates describe shared experiences and feelings,
which is essential for promoting a sense of belonging and wellbeing,
especially during the rst year of college. e connections formed
in the Flourishing classes extend beyond the classroom and provide
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another line of support and relatedness that is valuable for promoting
overall social wellbeing and ourishing. While pedagogical practices
informed by LCT and SDT are oen designed with a behind-the-scenes
approach, exercises grounded in the third foundational conceptual
framework guiding the course—mindfulness—are prominently dis-
played and actively practiced throughout the experience.
Introducing students to mindfulness and providing opportunities
to experience a variety of mindfulness techniques are important areas
of focus for the Flourishing course. As dened by the modern “Father
of Mindfulness,” Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is “moment-to-moment,
non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention . . . in the
present moment” (1481). Although mindfulness can be traced back
to Buddhist meditative practices, Kabat-Zinn claries that attentive
awareness to oneself in the present moment is a universal basic human
capacity and need not be tied to any religious beliefs. Mindfulness
is consistently associated with greater wellbeing, optimism, and life
satisfaction and inversely related to anxiety, depression, and neuroti-
cism (Brown and Ryan 822). And teaching mindfulness and meditative
practices can help college students by reducing stress, anxiety, and per-
fectionist thoughts. By nature, college is a time of preparation for the
future. Consequently, many students are preoccupied with how cur-
rent performance will aect future academic and professional success.
Training students to balance future perspective with grounding in and
appreciation of the present is a central goal of Flourishing.
Students in Flourishing learn to use mindfulness practices as a step
in promoting overall wellbeing. In the context of the class, mindfulness
is considered in terms of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive com-
ponents. First, as an example of the behavioral aspect of mindfulness,
students learn how to pay attention to physical symptoms of stress.
When they notice these symptoms, they learn to respond by man-
aging breathing in ways that counteract physical symptoms of stress
and tension and promote feelings of calm and relaxation. During each
class, students practice brief meditations, such as walking meditation,
meditative eating, and body scans to identify areas of tension in the
body and release that tension. Students generate and share ideas for
specic mindfulness calming techniques to use in particularly stressful
moments, including in moments prior to exams, during long studio-
type classes, and when experiencing insomnia.
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Wellbeing and Mindfulness
As a cognitive exercise, mindfulness and bringing awareness to
thoughts are valuable practices for honors college students. Jamie L.
Burns and her colleagues provided evidence for this claim in a study
of 43 college students from a small liberal arts college. ey found that
students trained in meditation techniques as part of a rst-year seminar
showed reductions in measures of perceived stress and perfectionistic
thinking (140). Teaching students to be aware of their thoughts and
stop the spiral of negative thought patterns associated with self-critical
evaluations and anxiety is important for this population of students.
For example, if students do not meet self-imposed expectations on
an assignment, they may automatically begin to catastrophize: “I will
never succeed now! I am a failure!” My life is ruined!” Teaching stu-
dents to be mindful of these thoughts can stop maladaptive thinking
patterns and counter them with more realistic and positive refram-
ing, such as arming: “is is just one test. What can I do to improve
next time?”
Finally, in learning to be mindful of emotions and emotional states,
students can begin to understand patterns of emotions and how dif-
ferent experiences can trigger positive and negative emotional states.
Increasing the ratio of positive to negative emotions is an evidence-
based strategy for promoting wellbeing as articulated by Fredrickson
in her broaden and build theory. Fredrickson explains that positive
emotions expand an individual’s thought-action repertoires, coun-
teract negative emotions, and fuel psychological resiliency (221). For
example, when experiencing a negative emotion such as sadness, indi-
viduals oen feel depleted and seek to retreat or nd comfort. When
experiencing positive emotions such as happiness, interest, or hope,
individuals are more open to new experiences and enjoy a broader
view of options and actions. In Flourishing, students learn not only to
become mindful and aware of their emotions but also of how emotions
are connected to motivation and actions and how to acknowledge and
manage negative emotions such as stress and anger. ey also practice
nding ways to increase positive emotions such as gratitude, awe, hap
-
piness, and interest. Learning about mindfulness is consistently cited
as the most useful aspect of the class by students. As Ji, a biomedical
engineering student, explained: “By far, the thing I enjoyed the most
was learning about mindfulness. I feel like being mindful is the most
important thing for myself in regard to mental health. I have always
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had issues with being pessimistic and having those pesky automatic
thought patterns. rough mindfulness, I am able to recognize those
thoughts as negative ones, and then be able to reconstruct my thought
patterns.” Learning to be mindful is a process, and like any new skill,
it requires practice to become more procient. Flourishing provides a
space and supportive environment for learning and developing mind-
fulness as a step toward increased wellbeing over time.
STUDENTS RESPOND TO FLOURISHING
To date, feedback on the eectiveness of the course has been obtained
through instructor-generated student evaluations, which are admin-
istered once at midterm and again at the end of the semester, and also
via end-of-semester written reective assignments from students. e
evaluations are comprised of several Likert-type items asking students
to rate their overall experience: whether the course gave them deeper
insight into personal wellbeing; whether the class was helpful in oer-
ing useful strategies for managing stress; how likely they would be to
integrate tools learned in this class to promote personal wellbeing;
and how helpful the class was in oering useful strategies for manag-
ing stress. Open-ended prompts were also included to allow students
to elaborate on their experiences and oer feedback. ese prompts
asked students what information or practices they have found most
useful in this class and what they would like to see changed. Students
are also invited to oer other comments or suggestions to their instruc-
tor about the course. e evaluations are administered on paper during
the last ve minutes of class to increase response rates. Data from these
informal evaluations have been used solely for in-house formative pur-
poses to improve the course. Feedback was shared with each instructor,
and the implementation of the course was revised as necessary and as
appropriate based on students’ responses. As an example of a change
inspired by student feedback, time spent on content delivery in each
class was reduced, and more interactive exercises and practice with
specic mindfulness techniques have been added.
Based on recent end-of-semester data across all six course sec-
tions, students (N = 82) rated their overall classroom experience as
very good (M = 4.17). Most students indicated that the course was
very helpful in fostering deeper insights into personal wellbeing (M
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Wellbeing and Mindfulness
= 4.33) and also very helpful in oering useful strategies for manag-
ing stress (M = 4.20). Students also reported that they were likely to
integrate mindfulness into their daily routine aer taking the course
(M = 4.04), and most indicated they were likely to use the techniques
learned in the class to promote personal wellbeing (M = 4.23). Data
from students have been consistent across all sections and semesters,
indicating that students are responding positively to the content and
to the overall course experience.
Detailed insights into aspects of the Flourishing course that stu-
dents nd most salient were gained from the open-ended evaluation
responses and from written reection assignments that students sub-
mitted in response to these prompts, “What did you learn through this
course? How do you plan to integrate what you have learned into your
life moving forward?” Quotations from students (identied by pseud-
onyms) illustrate key ndings from evaluations and written reections.
First, we found that mindfulness matters. Across all sections and
all semesters of the Flourishing course to date, mindfulness and med-
itative practices were overwhelmingly identied as the most useful
practices and information from the course. is reection is from
Jenny, a biology major:
is course was exceptionally helpful to me this semester. I really
enjoyed how it went deeper than just the surface of “being the
best you can be,” and really dove into the science and research
ndings behind ourishing. We didn’t just do yoga or work on
coloring pages to have fun and pass time, we did it to reinforce
the science and facts we learned about mindfulness and how it
can help with achievement and success.
Focusing on mindfulness is salient for honors college students because
it helps them recognize when they are experiencing stress, anxiety, and
negative thought patterns, and it helps them develop specic strategies
for managing these issues. Because they are exposed to many dierent
meditative practices throughout the course, they can choose person-
ally benecial techniques. For many students, this course represents
the rst time they have stopped to notice how their thoughts con-
nect to their feelings and behaviors. In the Flourishing course, they
learn to notice the symptoms of stress and reduce the physiological
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and psychological symptoms of stress using strategies such as mind-
ful breathing, listening to music, meditating, and progressive muscle
relaxation. Phil, an engineering major, shared this perspective: “is
class taught me how to handle that stress and use dierent techniques
to relax myself when I’m faced with a stressful situation. is class has
taught me techniques that I will use throughout college and very likely
for the rest of my life.”
We also found that students value the emphasis on physical
health and self-care, including healthy eating, exercising/movement,
and sleeping habits. Each semester, students are surprised when, aer
a week of required tracking of their habits, the eects of unhealthy
behavior and neglect of self-care become alarmingly apparent. Amir,
a computer science major, for example, reected:
I was truly ignorant of how destructive things like sleep depri-
vation, social media . . . really were to my overall wellbeing. I
had just accepted that most of my college career would be full of
late-night studying, homework-induced stress, and overall nega-
tivity. [I learned] . . . several powerful ways to disconnect from
the things that drag me down, and build stronger connections
to the things that build me up.
Exploring the connection between the mind and the body is an impor-
tant focus of the course. Students learn to recognize how establishing
healthy habits and self-care contribute to their overall wellbeing and
how they can develop and maintain these healthy habits in the college
environment.
Beyond this emphasis on mindfulness and personal health, we
found that students highly valued the opportunities for social connec-
tion as a strength of their Flourishing experience. Helping students to
build and strengthen relationships is an important goal of the course.
In each class session, students are interacting and learning from each
other. ey share experiences and process the course content together
through activities and discussions. Jane, an arts major, observed:
is course was very benecial to me in the sense that it was the
rst time I had been exposed to honest discussion of mental and
physical health in an open, friendly context. I think one of the
main things that made this a good course was the sort of positive
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Wellbeing and Mindfulness
energy and communication this environment fostered. It was
good for me to hear my classmates, people in the honors college
that I look up to, talk honestly about the same problems I have
been going through since I got here. at aspect of this class de-
nitely helped me to feel less alone in my adjustment to college.
Having a sense of belonging has been consistently identied as an
important factor in overall student engagement and success in college
(e.g., Diener and Seligman 81; Walton et al. 513). erefore, the con-
nection between healthy social relationships and overall wellbeing is
studied as a topic in the course. Students explore relationship issues,
including communication styles, social media usage, expressions of
aection, conict resolution, power dynamics, and boundaries. In
class, opportunities are provided to role-play common relationship
issues such as roommate conicts, navigating working together as a
group, and communicating with family members. As an example of
how students embrace and apply lessons from the class, Frances, a pre-
health student, noted:
I have already started to try to integrate some of the things I
have learned in this course into my life. In fact, just a few days
ago I was talking to my mother on the phone and I opened up
to her about how I did not like that I am not able to open up
to others and how I felt like that was a result of my upbringing.
We ended up having a really good conversation about how my
parents came to be that way and why they raised me the way
that they did.
In addition to learning about relationship skills, students also form
connections with classmates. In spending time together and learning
about each other throughout the semester, they form bonds that extend
beyond the class. Social connections and communication skills gained
from students’ participation in this class are invaluable for promoting
healthy relationships and overall wellbeing.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
One of the biggest challenges that we have encountered is overcoming
students’ initial skepticism about taking the course. Students, especially
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those in their rst semester, may not know what to expect from the
course and wonder, “Why do I have to take this course?” and “How
does this apply to me?” In anticipation of such questions, activities and
lessons are designed to engage students through active participation.
Creating a supportive and collaborative classroom environment is a
core element of the course. Assignments allow students to apply prac-
tices and principles to their own lives and observe subsequent changes.
Henry, a biology major shared the following:
Skeptical is a word that denitely could have described me at the
beginning of this course. What I liked about this class is that it
not only taught us the benets of mindfulness, but really put a
focus on wellbeing as a whole. Seeing the bigger picture helped
me a lot. I’m very excited to use what I’ve learned to go forward,
nd meaning and positivity in my life, and ourish.
Among honors college students, reading primary research and
critiquing wellbeing studies have been identied as a strength of the
course. rough this lens, Flourishing is viewed as not just a self-
help or pop psychology-type course but one grounded in evidence
and scientic inquiry. is combination is especially important and
impactful for students who approach the course with skepticism. In
the words of a Flourishing student, “I really appreciated the scientic
research that backed every topic because if ever I had the doubt that
‘why would this even work?’ the evidence was staring me square in the
face.” Honors students have embraced the opportunity to read primary
research. is, along with the collaborative and experiential nature of
the course, has helped students, even those who were initially skeptical,
to embrace Flourishing content.
Continuous improvement of students’ experiences and the eec-
tiveness of the course is a persistent goal. Future ideas include bringing
in additional guest speakers and experts to provide more in-depth
information in areas students have identied as personally salient. For
example, students have identied nding ways to consistently main-
tain healthy eating habits on campus as a challenge. It is easy to present
information on what it means to eat healthy and what students should
be doing; however, students struggle with how to implement healthy
eating habits on campus. Bringing in the expertise of dietitians and/
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Wellbeing and Mindfulness
or nutritionists can expose students to creative and cost-ecient solu-
tions for making healthy food choices on campus.
Future eorts to rene the course design and implementation
will continue to be informed by the foundational theories of learner-
centered teaching and self-determination. Student autonomy and
empowerment are central to both LCT and SDT (Ryan and Deci 68;
Weimer 15). Because of this focus, a component of the nal grade in
future classes will be derived from “free-choice wellbeing activities.”
Students will be required to engage in activities outside of the class
-
room to promote personal wellbeing. Because wellbeing is a personal
journey, the denition of a wellbeing activity will be broad. If stu-
dents can explain how an activity contributes to their wellbeing in
alignment with practices and principles from the course, the activity
will be accepted for credit. Free-choice activities can include exercise,
meditation, therapy appointments, journaling, community service/
engagement, and attending religious services. Including opportuni-
ties for personal choice will promote student autonomy and extend the
learning experience beyond the walls of the classroom.
Bringing in upper-level student teaching assistants is also planned
for future semesters. Enlisting undergraduates as teaching assistants
has been implemented successfully as a high-impact educational prac-
tice (Odom et al. 152). Flourishing students will benet from hearing
about the experiences and perspectives of fellow students. ey may
also relate more closely to information heard through the voice of a
peer rather than from a faculty member. Student teaching assistants
can also benet from the process because they will gain leadership
experience, serve as role models, form a collegial working relationship
with a faculty member, and gain experience in working with a diverse
range of students. As a nal benet, they will engage with purpose and
depth with course content, which, in the case of this class, will reinforce
the principles and practices of wellbeing.
Faculty for the course and administrators of the honors college are
currently in the process of designing additional tools and processes to
assess the eectiveness of the course. e rst step in this process is the
development of an instrument that will provide insights into the rela-
tionships between students’ participation in the course and multiple
aspects of wellbeing. Subscales will likely be comprised of items from
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Tyndall and Smith-Mason
several instruments that have been validated, including Diener and
colleagues’ Flourishing Scale and Scale of Positive and Negative Feel-
ings (143); select items from the Brown and Ryan’s Mindful Attention
Awareness Scale (822); and items from Cohen et al.’s Perceived Stress
Scale (385). Future assessment eorts will also measure the longitudi-
nal eects of participation in the course as related to outcomes (GPA
and retention) as students progress through their studies. Assessment
is vital in ensuring that student outcomes are being met and to inform
eorts for continuous improvement. Further, as institutions of higher
education are increasing the push for outcome data as foundations for
decision-making, assessment eorts are crucial in providing evidence
for the positive impact of wellbeing initiatives.
rough this course, students learn valuable skills that help them
to identify patterns that may compromise wellbeing and cultivate skills
and strategies to promote wellbeing in college and beyond. Aesha,
majoring in physiology, exclaimed: “Wow! . . . [Even] though my time
in Flourishing was short, I can honestly say that I have felt myself grow
as both a student and human being.” Although a signicant portion
of the class focuses on the functioning of the individual, the impor-
tance of social health and foregrounding the principles of wellbeing to
impact one’s communities of involvement positively are also conveyed.
As examples, students learn the power of kindness and gratitude in
promoting wellbeing and discuss ways to demonstrate mindful lead-
ership. Ideally, as honors college students grow to become leaders in
college and in their chosen occupations, they will continue to use
practices to promote wellbeing and share them with others to create
positive change. Student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,
indicating that Flourishing is on target to eectively meet the needs
of honors college students and plant the seeds of cultivating lifelong
wellbeing. A critical part of our overall plan for honors students is to
help them learn valuable life skills that will encourage them to live to
achieve and achieve satisfaction in living.
REFERENCES
Brown, Kirk Warren, and Richard M. Ryan. “e Benets of Being Present:
Mindfulness and its Role in Psychological Well-Being.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 84, no. 4, 2003, pp. 822–48.
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Burns, Jaimie L., et al. “e Eect of Meditation on Self-Reported Measures of
Stress, Anxiety, Depression, and Perfectionism in a College Population.”
Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, vol. 25, no. 1, Mar. 2011, pp.
133–44.
Center for Collegiate Mental Health. 2023 Annual Report. Publication No. STA
24–147. Jan. 2024.
Cohen, Sheldon, et al. “A Global Measure of Perceived Stress.” Journal of Health
and Social Behavior, vol. 24 no. 4, 1983, pp. 385–96.
Diener, Ed. “Subjective Well-Being: e Science of Happiness and a Proposal
for a National Index.” American Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 1, 2000, pp. 34–43.
Diener, Ed, and Martin E. P. Seligman. “Very Happy People.” Psychological
Science, vol. 13, no. 1, 2002, pp. 81–84.
Diener, Ed, et al. “New Well-Being Measures: Short Scales to Assess Flourishing
and Positive and Negative Feelings.” Social Indicators Research, vol. 97, no.
1, 2010, pp. 143–56.
Fredrickson, Barbara L. “e Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology:
The Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions.” American
Psychologist, vol. 56, no. 3, 2001, pp. 218–26.
Howell, Andrew J. “Flourishing: Achievement-Related Correlates of Students’
Well-Being.” e Journal of Positive Psychology, vol. 4, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–13.
Kabat-Zinn, Jon. “Mindfulness.” Mindfulness, vol. 6, no. 6, 2015, pp. 1481–83.
Keyes, Corey L. M. “Mental Illness and/or Mental Health? Investigating Axioms
of the Complete State Model of Health.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, vol. 73, no. 3, June 2005, pp. 539–48.
---. “Promoting and Protecting Mental Health as Flourishing: A Complementary
Strategy for Improving National Mental Health.” American Psychologist, vol.
62, no. 2, 2007, pp. 95–108.
Odom, Summer, et al. “e Undergraduate Leadership Teaching Assistant
(ULTA): A High-Impact Practice for Undergraduates Studying Leadership.”
Journal of Leadership Education, vol. 13, no. 2, 2014, pp. 152–61.
Pham, Steven. “Addressing Common Mental Health Issues Prevalent Among
Honors College Students.” 2017. Western Michigan U, Honors esis.
ScholarWorks at WMU, scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses/2891.
Reeve, Johnmarshall. “Self-Determination eory Applied to Educational
Settings.” Handbook of Self-Determination Research, edited by Edward L.
Deci and Richard M. Ryan, U of Rochester P, 2002, pp. 183–203.
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Rockey, Christine. “Using The Happiness Advantage in a College Honors
Program.” Honors in Practice, vol. 11, 2015, pp. 203–12.
Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. “Self-Determination eory and the
Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social-Development, and Well-Being.”
American Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 1, 2000, pp. 68–78.
Seligman, Martin E. P. Flourish. Simon and Schuster, 2011.
Seligman, Martin E. P., and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “Positive Psychology: An
Introduction.” American Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 1, 2000, pp. 5–14.
Walton, Gregory M., et al. “Mere Belonging: e Power of Social Connections.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 102, no. 3, 2012, pp.
513–32.
Weimer, Maryellen. Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice.
2nd ed., John Wiley and Sons, 2013.
Wimberley, Tessa E., and Michael J. Stasio. “Perfectionistic oughts, Personal
Standards, and Evaluative Concerns: Further Investigating Relationships
to Psychological Distress.” Cognitive erapy and Research, vol. 37, 2013,
pp. 277–83.
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Jodi Meadows
Southwest Baptist University
Founded in 1878 as Southwest Baptist College in Lebanon,
Missouri, Southwest Baptist University (SBU) is now located
in Bolivar, Missouri. SBU is a private, faith-based liberal arts
university whose academic oerings include eighty-one majors,
forty-four minors, four master’s degree programs, one graduate
certicate program, and three doctoral programs. In fall 2024,
SBU had 2,101 undergraduates enrolled across four campuses
and 608 graduate students. Minority students comprise 16% of
the student population, and 65% of enrolled students are female.
irty percent of the students live in residence halls; 73% of the
students are Missouri residents. e faculty-to-student ratio at
SBU is 12:1.
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Meadows
THE GORDON & JUDY DUTILE HONORS PROGRAM
The Gordon & Judy Dutile Honors Program was founded in 2005
under enrollment management but began reporting to the pro-
vost as an academic unit in 2014. Recently, total honors enrollment has
averaged 100 honors students. e program has historically recruited
approximately 25 rst-year students each year. To apply, incoming stu-
dents must have at least a 28 ACT or 1260 SAT, placing them in the top
10% nationally. Qualied students are then selected based on an on-
campus interview with faculty, an impromptu essay, and an evaluation
of their high school service, leadership, and scholarship.
e honors program curriculum consists of three mandatory hon-
ors-only courses during the rst year: Honors University Seminar,
Honors Introduction to Critical inking, and Honors Introduction
to Fine Arts. To graduate from the program, students must take at least
nine additional hours of honors general education oerings, at least
two one-hour honors colloquia, and an honors capstone course. In
addition, honors students participate in activities that reect the insti-
tutional values of servant leadership, intercultural engagement, and
spiritual development. Students reect on these experiences in writing
and submit them to the honors program director as honors graduation
components. Optional enrichment elements of the program include
Dutile M&Ms (a voluntary rst-year mentoring program), honors
housing, yearly cultural trips, honors gatherings, and undergraduate
honors conference participation.
HONORS UNIVERSITY SEMINAR
All first-year students at Southwest Baptist University (SBU) are
required to enroll in a one-credit extended-orientation rst-year
seminar called “University Seminar,” which is part of our general edu-
cation curriculum. e University Success Center faculty who teach the
University Seminar also serve as academic advisors for the rst-year
students in their sections of the courses. Honors program rst-year
students enroll in an honors-specic version of the course taught by
the honors program director, who also serves as their rst-year aca-
demic advisor.
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Southwest Baptist University
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
e University Success Center and the Dutile Honors Program were
founded at the same time in 2005, so the honors rst-year courses have
always been tied to our general-population rst-year courses. Every
year, the faculty in the Success Center collaboratively develop and
revise the University Seminar and Introduction to Critical inking.
Each section of the course utilizes the same shared assessments. e
course objectives in the University Seminar focus on students learning
about themselves, best practices for academic success, and navigation
of our specic campus environment.
While the honors sections share the same assessments as the
general population courses, they include curricular elements and ped-
agogical methods that are specic to the needs of honors students in
transition. In addition, the Honors University Seminar allows students
to explore the honors program’s mission and contextualize themselves
within it. Students oen say that the most “honors” element of the hon-
ors seminar is the other students in the course.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e Honors University Seminar is a practical introduction to college
life. e course begins with shared reading and responsive writing on
what it means to be a learner, as well as what it means to be an honors
program student at SBU. Students complete a calendar assignment in
which they collect all their assignments from their course syllabi for
use throughout the semester. In addition, students complete a small
research assignment as an introduction to our campus databases and
library resources. roughout the course, the faculty provide infor-
mation regarding campus services such as healthcare, the wellness
center, academic support, enrollment procedures, and student life
opportunities.
Most of the course comprises student research and presentations
on academic best practices. Each student chooses a topic, utilizes a
library database to locate a relevant scholarly article, identies informa-
tion pertinent to rst-year transition, and prepares a short presentation
for the class. Topics include note-taking, active listening, time manage-
ment, stress management, textbook reading, collaborative learning, and
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Meadows
test preparation. e honors sections also include these topics; how-
ever, the honors sections begin with presentations on topics specic
to gied students, such as perfectionism, multipotentiality, overexcit-
ability, and honors stigma. Aer the presentations, students write a
reective essay citing three topics that seemed most pertinent to them.
e student reections at the end of the Honors University Sem-
inar indicate increased self-awareness regarding the connection
between their high school and college academic experiences. Honors
students on our campus oen report a profound lack of academic chal-
lenge in high school. As a result, students must adjust their academic
self-concept and develop eective study behaviors during their rst
semester. e community of honors students with similar academic
aptitude, values, and struggles provides a safe place for exploring hon-
ors identity and expanded academic behaviors.
123
Jodi Meadows
Southwest Baptist University
B
ecause of the renewed interest in the honors community regarding
the relationship between gied and honors education, this chapter
presents a rst-year seminar (FYS) model developed in the Gordon &
Judy Dutile Honors Program at Southwest Baptist University (SBU) in
Bolivar, Missouri. It features reective practice and gied education
research as the central curricular components. To frame the intro-
duction of the FYS model, this chapter begins with an overview of
giedness as a research construct and its relation to honors education.
Giedness is a complex and controversial concept. ere is no
universal denition of a gied student, much like there is no universal
denition of an honors student. e drive to dene giedness is rooted
in the desire to select students for gied programming. Researchers in
gied education use various terms to identify their research partici-
pants. Researchers may describe students as gied, high ability, high
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Meadows
achieving, or talented with varied meanings dependent on the study
sample; however, “gied” and “high ability” are oen used to describe
inherent aptitude or potential, and “high achieving” or “talented” are
oen more descriptive of performance than potential. Early research
in giedness relied primarily on intelligence testing; however, most
contemporary gied research utilizes a broader denition of giedness.
One such model is Joseph Renzulli’s inuential ree Ring Con-
ception of Giftedness. Renzulli, an international leader in gifted
research, dierentiates between gied ability and gied behavior.
According to Renzulli, gied behavior results from a combination of
superior inherent ability, task commitment, and creativity, which are
the characteristics oen used as selection criteria in honors program-
ming. us, it may be helpful for honors educators to think of honors
programs as environments that foster gied behavior.
e National Association of Gied Children (NAGC) and the
National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) created a joint task force
in 2018 to brainstorm ways in which the two organizations could best
serve high-ability students. In the same year, the Journal of the National
Collegiate Honors Council published a Forum on Gied Education and
Honors, which featured an article from Nicholas Colangelo, Dean of
the College of Education at the University of Iowa and co-author of the
inuential book A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s
Brightest Students. In “Gied Education to Honors Education: A Curi-
ous History, a Vibrant Future,” Colangelo presents three commonalities
shared by gied and honors education: dedication to intensive edu-
cational and social experience for students, similar selection criteria,
and recognition of the need for alternate paths of acceptance to accom-
modate students from varied backgrounds. Colangelo notes that the
values and goals of gied and honors education are the same. He calls
for what he views as a long overdue partnership between honors and
gied education to meet high-ability students’ needs.
e essays from honors practitioners in response to Colangelo
were varied. Much of the conversation in honors regarding giedness
focuses on the distinction between giedness as an inherent ability
or psychological experience versus giedness, as evidenced in high-
achieving academic behavior. In the essays, honors professionals were
asking important questions. Are honors students gied students? How
do we in honors best support gied behavior? What selection criteria
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Know Thyself
are appropriate? What is the role of psychosocial education in honors
programming?
In her lead essay, “Honors Is a Good Fit for Gied Students–Or
Maybe Not,” Annmarie Guzy, Associate Professor of English at the
University of South Alabama, focuses on giedness as a psychological
dierence. Guzy states that traditional honors programming, with its
emphasis on experiential learning, community service, and stringent
academic criteria, does not serve the needs of some gied students
who may be introverted and averse to structured and narrow disci-
plinary topics. Guzy argues that honors programs must “expand our
denition to more fully embrace intellectual diversity” (14) if we wish
to serve gied students.
Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison, Assistant Professor of Communica-
tion at the University of Baltimore and current NCHC Gied Special
Interest Group chair, shares Guzy’s concern. She also focuses on gied-
ness as a psychological dierence. Yarrison argues for recruiting and
supporting what she describes as underachieving gied high school
students to honors. If giedness is an inherent ability, gied students
can be underachieving. In other words, gied students may not be
high achieving and may not meet the most common criteria for selec-
tion into honors programming. Gied students, who are oen highly
motivated, independent learners, can slide into underachieving in edu-
cational environments in which they are not challenged. As Colangelo
notes, gied students may purposefully underachieve in educational
environments in which their dierentness may have a negative social
consequence. Yarrison argues that honors can be a place for those stu-
dents to thrive, but only if honors practitioners understand the unique
lived experience of giedness and adapt honors recruiting and pro-
gramming accordingly.
Perhaps, then, there is room in honors for a wide range of students.
In “Are You Gied-Friendly? Understanding How Honors Contexts
(Can) Serve Gied Young Adults,” Jonathan D. Kotinek, Associate Pro-
gram Director for LAUNCH Honors at Texas A&M University, bridges
the perceived gap between gied students and honors programs. He
provides a broad overview of the history of gied research and the
evolving criteria used to select students for gied programming. Like
Yarrison and Guzy, Kotinek focuses on giedness as a psychological
dierence and distinguishes between gied ability and achievement;
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Meadows
however, Kotinek states that a learner-directed environment and phi-
losophy can serve all kinds of exceptional students. Kotinek suggests
that giving students language to describe their experience as gied stu-
dents may allow them to function more eectively within an honors
environment. He suggests organizing a “discussion group that consid-
ers how giedness is a psychological dierence” (21). e FYS model
at SBU is based on that principle: it uses gied education literature and
reective practices to give students language to describe themselves
and their experiences.
Recognizing the ambiguity of terminology, Angie L. Miller,
Research Scientist at the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indi-
ana University Bloomington, tried to make sense of the overlapping
denitions of gied and honors, including other categories such as
non-gied honors students (honors program students who were not
previously identied for gied programming) and non-honors gied
students (students who had been identied for gied programming
before entering college, but who are not in honors programming).
Miller suggests that we “gure out the overlap between gied students
and honors students” (40). Miller’s research indicates that 92% of hon-
ors students report some participation in gied programming. us,
she advocates for integrating gied studies literature on the psychoso-
cial needs of gied students into honors practice.
Finally, Associate Director Jaclyn M. Chancey and Director
Jennifer Lease Butts of the Honors Program at the University of Con-
necticut suggest that instead of dierentiating between gied students
and honors students, honors professionals might focus on the most
helpful constructs from gied research to foster an environment in
which exceptional students of all kinds can thrive. “We realized,” in
other words, “we should focus on an honors education and not just on
educating ‘honors students’” (35). ey have implemented an honors
framework based on Renzulli’s Enrichment Triad Model to accom-
plish this objective. e program at the University of Connecticut has
multiple entry points so students can enter even if they did not excel
in high school. e curriculum, while purposeful, is student-directed,
allowing for a student experience that is exible and creative.
e integration of gied literature into honors practice can be com-
plex, particularly if the focus is on dening the exact nature of gied
students. Although the honors responses to Colangelo vary in their
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Know Thyself
emphases, they all recognize the imperative to consider the unique
needs of the students in our programs regardless of the label we use
to describe them. e Honors University Seminar at Southwest Bap-
tist University is based on the idea that all students who enter honors,
regardless of whether they have been identied for gied programming
in the past, have been chosen and, to some degree, have self-selected
into a program of dierentiated instruction based on their academic
aptitude, interest, and needs. is decision makes them dierent from
their peers. ey likely had recognized this dierence before entering
honors but lacked the language to describe it. Integrating research from
gied education into an honors FYS can facilitate fruitful conversations
about the student’s previous experiences in education, their academic
self-concept, and their shared identity in honors.
RESEARCH ON GIFTED COLLEGE STUDENTS
Although giftedness research often focuses on K12 students, the
research on gied college students is growing. Anne N. Rinn, Profes-
sor of Educational Psychology at the University of North Texas, and
Jonathan A. Plucker, Professor of Talent Development at Johns Hop-
kins University, produced a systematic research review of 52 empirical
studies published between 2002 and 2017 with the goal of “provid-
ing the gied education and honors education communities with a
stronger understanding of the current research on the experiences of
high-ability college students and undergraduate honors programming”
(189). eir ndings fell into two broad themes: characteristics and
experiences of high-ability college students and eects of honors pro-
gramming on student outcomes. at these two leading researchers in
gied education do not use the word “gied” to describe students in
honors programs is worth noting. Instead, Rinn and Plucker describe
honors students as high ability. As previously mentioned, “gied” is
dicult to dene, and “high ability” may be the more palatable term
within the honors community.
e studies that fall into the category of characteristics and experi-
ences of high-ability college students, according to Rinn and Plucker,
describe “social, emotional, or psychosocial” characteristics and use
those characteristics to examine their impact on other factors such
as “enrollment, retention, excellence gaps, and success” (191). e
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Meadows
three most studied characteristics of high-ability college students in
the review were perfectionism, self-perception, and motivation. ese
topics are central to the Dutile Honors FYS model and provide an
excellent introduction to the most pertinent research on high-ability
college students.
Perfectionism is a common topic among honors educators. At the 2019
NCHC National Conference, three sessions discussed various aspects
of perfectionism (Meadows et al.; Santarosa and Buttereld; Santrosa
et al.). Rinn and Plucker noted that “research on perfectionism dom-
inated the studies related to social and emotional characteristics of
high-ability college students” (191). us, integrating research on per-
fectionism into an honors FYS can be useful to students in transition.
Perfectionism is a complex construct in gied research, with
numerous denitions and models. For example, one study identied
by Rinn and Plucker, which was conducted by Kristie L. Speirs Neu-
meister, a leader in research on perfectionism, examined the factors
associated with developing self-oriented or socially oriented perfec
-
tionism in gied college students. According to the study, students
who experience early academic success, lack of failure, and authori-
tative/supportive parenting may develop self-oriented perfectionism.
Self-oriented perfectionism is characterized by unrealistic standards
for self and a lack of coping skills to manage failure. A key dierence
emerges as parenting style shis. Students who experience early aca-
demic success and lack of failure but with authoritarian parenting or
parental perfectionism may develop socially oriented perfectionism.
Students struggling with socially oriented perfectionism are motivated
by fear of disappointing others. When students engage these studies,
they are able to consider how their perfectionist tendencies relate to
personal experience and upbringing.
For some rst-year honors students, the transition to a more rigor-
ous academic environment can contribute to perfectionistic tendencies
that can be detrimental to academic success and personal wellbeing. Sal
Mendaglio, a psychologist specializing in counseling gied students,
describes the experience of an inexperienced student struggling with
perfectionism who encounters academic challenges for the rst time
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Know Thyself
in college as “hitting the wall” (7). is experience can create a crisis of
self-concept. Self-awareness regarding the detrimental eects of perfec-
tionism can be a powerful tool for students to develop behaviors and
manage themselves eectively. Research and discussion on perfection-
ism in an honors FYS can facilitate growth in student self-awareness.
In addition to perfectionism, self-perception plays a central role
in gied student’s ability to transition to college successfully and can
be explored in an honors FYS curriculum. Perfectionism is related
to self-perception: students who struggle with perfectionism perceive
themselves as falling short of their own or other’s expectations. Self-
perception in the literature identied by Rinn and Plucker, however,
was concerned with the relationship between self-perception and other
factors. Several studies focused on academic self-concept and implicit
beliefs about intelligence and giedness. In one study, Lee Kem and
Joy L. Navan conducted an extended focus group of twelve honors stu-
dents at Murray State University: the students described their eort to
adjust their self-perception in relation to other students. e students
described “feeling isolated except when with other gied or honors
students” (21); they also expected more of themselves because of their
giedness and desire to fulll their potential.
I have seen this phenomenon in my own work with rst-year
honors students. My institution encourages faculty to host groups
of rst-year students for a meal during our Welcome Week; I host
the honors rst-year students at my house. Aer everyone had gone
through the buet line in my kitchen, I went downstairs to visit with
some of the students I had just met for the rst time. Much to my dis-
may, I found them deeply engrossed in a conversation in which they
were publicly disclosing their standardized test scores to one another.
is topic seemed normal to them. As I reected on this experience, it
occurred to me that they were endeavoring to manage their self-per-
ception in relation to one another and the honors community. ey
viewed the standardized test scores as a measure of their t in the
honors program. is casual conversation entered our classroom dis-
cussion some weeks later when we explored academic self-concept as
a research construct.
Students in Kem and Navan’s focus group also reported “height-
ened sensual, emotional, and imaginational episodes” (24), which Kem
and Navan interpreted through the lens of Kazimierz Dabrowski’s
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Meadows
overexcitabilities. Overexcitabilities are another aspect of self-per-
ception that interests researchers in gied education because it may
be a psychological dierence related to giedness for some students.
e concept of overexcitabilities is derived from Dabrowski’s complex
developmental model, which he called the theory of positive disinte-
gration. Dabrowski developed his model aer his experiences in World
War II. He was interested in the “juxtaposition of inhuman humans
with those who were sensitive, capable of sacrice, [and] courageous.”
(Foreword 233). Although a thorough exploration of his work is out-
side the scope of this essay, it has been inuential in gied research for
the past decade. Dabrowski described overexcitabilities as “an unpro-
portional reaction to a stimulus, an extended, long-lasting, accelerated
reaction, and a peculiar reaction to a neutral stimulus” (Personality
Shaping 81). Within the theory of positive disintegration, overexcit-
abilities are essential to fostering development when integrated into
personality.
Cheryl Ackerman, a leading researcher in the social-emotional
aspects of gied persons, has used Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities as
a theoretical frame. Ackerman notes the most common expressions
of the ve overexcitabilities: psychomotor, sensual, imaginational,
intellectual, and emotional. Some gied research suggests that gied
individuals may experience overexcitabilities of this nature. While the
overexcitabilities can fuel creative and productive behavior, they can
also be overwhelming unless students who experience overexcitabili-
ties learn to manage them appropriately.
Finally, motivation among gied students was the focus of several
studies in the Rinn and Plucker review. ey observed that motivation
can be a factor of “achievement or underachievement among high-
ability undergraduates” (196). Megan Balduf identied three factors
that contribute to a gied student’s underachievement in college: lack
of preparation, poor time management, and issues with motivation
and self-discipline. All these factors can be associated with the lack
of being challenged in high school. When students achieve academic
success in high school with little to no eort, they may not learn how
to manage themselves when confronting dicult material. ey oen
do not develop the time-management habits or self-direction needed
to persist with challenging coursework. us, honors students who
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Know Thyself
experienced little academic challenge in high school may actually need
more study-skill instruction than non-honors students.
Conversely, students are more likely to be motivated in college
if they develop a strong sense of personal and professional identity
(Speirs Neumeister and Rinker), have high parental expectations and
support, and have been challenged academically in high school. Per-
fectionism, self-perception, and motivation are all characteristics of
gied students that can be used to structure an FYS that facilitates
self-knowledge, self-direction, and community among honors rst-
year students.
According to Kem and Navan, one of the most persistent myths
in gied education is that gied students will be ne on their own.
According to Colangelo, those of us in “gied and honors education
know better” (3). In addition to introducing students to honors models
of teaching and learning, honors FYSs can aid students in their psy-
chological and social development as gied persons. In other words,
honors FYSs can be a place of connection where gied rst-year stu-
dents can explore their academic identity within the context of honors.
SEMINAR
e curriculum in the honors FYS in the Gordon & Judy Dutile Hon-
ors Program utilizes research from gied education as its central
curricular content. Dutile honors students are required to enroll in an
honors-only section of the University Seminar, a one-hour extended-
orientation course required for all rst-year students on campus. e
honors version of the University Seminar fullls both general educa-
tion and honors curricular requirements. e course has three main
objectives: students will know more about themselves as learners,
increase their ability to navigate the campus and its resources, and
develop meaningful connections with peers and faculty. e Honors
University Seminar uses research on the common characteristics and
experiences of gied students as a curricular focus and employs reec-
tive writing and peer teaching in the main assignments of the course:
Learner Testimony, Reective Journal, and Research Presentations.
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Meadows
Reective learning is at the heart of the honors curriculum. e NCHC
“Denition of Honors Education” states that “articulated metacogni-
tion” is one of the measurable outcomes of student development in
honors courses. e ability to recognize and analyze one’s thinking is
the basis of self-management and self-directed behavior. Students can-
not be self-controlled if they have no awareness or understanding of
the eect of their thoughts and feelings on their behavior.
Metacognition plays a signicant role in young adult development
as well as in academic success. What students believe about themselves
and their ability to be successful aects cognition, aective experi-
ence, motivation, and behavior regulation; in other words, students’
beliefs about their ability to succeed aects how they think, feel, per-
sist and perform. Albert Bandura, a leading psychologist at Stanford
University, calls these beliefs about oneself “perceived self-ecacy”
(117). If students attribute their ease of success in high school to their
intelligence, their perceived self-ecacy is likely to wane when they
experience academic challenges. As students develop metacognitive
habits of mind, they notice how they feel when they encounter chal-
lenges, how they respond to boredom, or what motivates them. ey
can use that knowledge to adjust their environment and behaviors to
promote success.
Using reective discussion and writing to promote metacogni-
tion can also measurably increase student engagement. Angie L. Miller
and Amber D. Dumford, leading researchers in gied education, eval-
uated the responses to the National Survey of Student Engagement
(NSSE) of 1,139 honors college students and 7,191 general education
students. ey found that reective learning was the second most ben-
ecial element of honors coursework aer faculty interaction. Students
who reported more participation in reective learning activities, such
as reective writing, reective discussions, and reective portfolios,
reported higher overall engagement within their learning community.
As students develop their metacognitive abilities through reective
practice in class, they can make meaning of their course content and
integrate it into their behaviors. e Learner Testimony assignment
in the Honors University Seminar requires students to reect on their
own experience of transition and share that reection with fellow
133
Know Thyself
students. is activity can bridge the lived experience of honors stu-
dents in transition and the research in gied education introduced in
later assignments.
At the beginning of the Honors University Seminar, each student
is assigned a date to open the class with a Learner Testimony. e
testimonies are three to ve minutes long and allow structured self-
disclosure in which students describe a problem and solution from
their experience in transition. Testimonies have included the general
transition to adulthood, such as the student’s rst trip to the doctor
without parents or the search for inexpensive groceries; however, they
oen include elements of academic, social, and psychological transi-
tion noted in the gied education research. For example, one student
vividly described his experience in the rst weeks of calculus. He had
been spending hours in his room, searching online for the help he
needed to complete his assignments while knowing that his teacher
had repeatedly oered help during her oce hours. Despite a deep
dread, he described forcing himself to visit his calculus professor. He
stated that he never remembered having to ask questions in school;
doing so was a dramatic challenge to his academic self-concept. He
was delighted to nd his teacher ready to help and had his question
resolved in ten minutes.
is example of the challenge to self-concept, which Rinn and
Plucker identied in their review, may be familiar to gied students
transitioning to honors. Students who have been identied as gied
may view intelligence as “more xed than malleable” (Rinn and Plucker
196). In this example, the student displayed his xed view of intelli-
gence, believing that intelligent students did not need to ask questions.
He was using the assumptions developed through his previous educa-
tional experiences to make meaning within his new environment. He
encountered enough dissonance, however, through his calculus class to
require him to accommodate the new experience into his self-concept.
In preparing for Learner Testimony, the student engaged in self-
reflection that allowed him to modify his academic behavior. In
addition, when describing his experience in the Honors University
Seminar, he contextualized asking questions as a normative honors
behavior. In similar Learner Testimonies, students have described uti-
lizing academic support resources such as the writing center or study
sessions for specic courses. ey oen reference never needing this
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Meadows
type of academic help in high school, thinking it would be a waste of
their time, but now they were realizing its value. is example dem-
onstrates the fulllment of two course objectives: knowing themselves
as learners and increasing their capacity to navigate the campus and
its resources.
Structuring an appropriate environment for students to share
their transition experiences requires establishing class expectations
for discussion and self-disclosure early in the course. Honors stu-
dents may not have previously experienced this type of self-reection
within an academic setting and may not initially recognize its value.
Students’ ability to make cognitive connections between their aec-
tive experiences and academic and social success is integral to their
holistic development. In addition, this exercise can enhance the course
instructor’s insight and empathy toward their students’ transition
experiences. As students listen to the experiences of their peers, the
instructor moves away from telling students the answers to their ques-
tions regarding transition and toward seeking those answers together.
is practice aligns with Leslie G. Kaplan’s research on creating more
innovative discussion-based pedagogy. Kaplan notes that the metacog-
nition involved in reective discussion of coursework may be the most
critical aspect of the pedagogy, especially when employed in a rst-year
seminar. As students converse about their experiences in transition, the
groundwork is being laid for integrated learning as the course develops.
e logistics of the assignment further support a positive experi-
ence for the class. at the Learner Testimonies are limited to three to
ve minutes mitigates oversharing on the part of the student. Students
are instructed to share something they learned about themselves or
campus resources. Although they are provided with a list of possible
content for the testimony, some students may require signicant scaf-
folding to prepare even a short testimony because metacognition is a
learned skill. When instructors provide the directions for the assign-
ment, modeling the metacognition and appropriate self-disclosure
required by the students can be helpful. For example, course instruc-
tors might describe how they manage reading when it is tedious or
how they exercise time management. In this way, students may sense
that instructors have some understanding of their transition and the
way they are experiencing it. In this small exercise, the FYS begins to
establish an honors culture of honesty, curiosity, and mutual support.
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Know Thyself
Reective writing can be used in an honors FYS to encourage growth
in student self-knowledge and in the relationship with the teacher of
the course. As a complement to the class discussion, the Reective
Journal allows students to discuss their transition experiences privately
with the course instructor. In this way, the assignment can serve not
only as a reective writing exercise but also as an extension of the
advising relationship.
Students in the Honors University Seminar post in an online
reective journal every week for the rst eight weeks of the semes-
ter. Prompts for the reective writing assignment are open-ended and
allow for integration of the text for the course, which is Becoming a
Learner: Realizing the Opportunity for Education by Matthew L. Sand-
ers. Prompts for the posts include:
1. What is the most important thing on your mind this
week as you transition to college? Why is that important
to you? Describe, with as much detail as you can, how
this issue is aecting you this week.
2. What are three main ideas that struck you as important
during your reading of our text? Why is each one impor-
tant to you? How might those ideas aect the habits you
are developing as you transition to college?
3. What has been the most challenging part of transition for
you thus far? Describe that challenge. Why has it been
dicult? In what ways have you tried to manage that
challenge?
4. What places, groups, people, or experiences on campus
have been the most helpful to you? Please describe. Why
and in what ways have they been helpful?
5. What is an important lesson you have learned about
yourself in transition to college?
ese prompts could be modied on other campuses to target
campus or course-specic objectives. Written responses allow for a
136
Meadows
writing-to-learn pedagogy, which engages students in the course con-
tent and self-reection. Complementary to classroom discussion, the
Reective Journal allows introverted students to process the questions
and respond privately to the instructor. ese written conversations
between the instructor and the individual students further inform the
instructor of the relevant experiences of transition within the class. For
example, one open-ended question—What has been most challenging
for you in transition to college?—has elicited responses that students
would never oer in class, such as issues with parents or signicant
others, loss of pets, roommate challenges, and illness or injuries aect-
ing their transition. Oentimes, the students do not recognize the
eect of those life issues on their transition in general and their aca-
demic work in particular. Frequently, several students in the class will
mention a similar issue in response to this question, which allows me,
as an instructor, to introduce the issue, when appropriate, into our
class discussion. In addition to external issues, students oen men-
tion internal experiences such as self-doubt, lack of motivation, fear of
failure, or loneliness. Students usually view these experiences as idio-
syncratic and unrelated to their honors identity. It is powerful when,
aer identifying their felt needs as honors students in transition, they
see themselves in the literature we review. ey recognize the univer-
sal nature of the developmental issues they are facing as young adults
and as high-ability students. is recognition can foster a deepening
of shared identity as honors students, not only in their aptitude but in
the unique challenges they may face in transition to college.
e FYS at SBU is a one-hour course that is front-loaded into the
rst eight weeks of the semester. Aer the rst few weeks of class, the
remainder of the semester is dedicated to what is called Academic Best
Practice Presentations on issues pertinent to transition. Both honors
and non-honors FYS sections share some topics. ose topics include
student-athletes and academics; college nancial stress; relationships
with parents; note-taking methods; active listening; using a planner;
managing stress, sleep, and nutrition; managing social media/gam-
ing; dealing with procrastination; goal setting; creating a study guide;
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Know Thyself
managing a study environment; test-taking methods; managing test
anxiety; and self-testing.
In addition to these shared topics, students in the honors section
of the University Seminar can choose to research and present top-
ics from gied education research that may be particularly relevant
to honors transition such as perfectionism, academic self-concept,
overexcitabilities, motivation, and occupational indecision related to
multipotentiality. e Academic Best Practice Presentations assign-
ment serves several course objectives. It provides an orientation to
the library databases because students are required to use the library
website to locate their articles. It allows students to prepare a short
research presentation in a supportive environment. Finally, it intro-
duces students to a research-based perspective on transition topics that
they are currently experiencing. e presentation of this research by a
student, literally in a student’s voice, with discussion led by a student
presenter, is eective in a way that the same material presented by a
faculty member may not be.
Honors students who have experienced little academic challenge in
high school may enter the FYS with a lack of awareness of their need to
develop new academic behaviors. is can result in resistance toward
instruction on study skills because students may not have realized the
need for that instruction until later in the year. us, the presenta-
tions on honors-specic topics are scheduled at the beginning of the
Academic Best Practice presentations. Perfectionism, self-concept,
motivation, overexcitabilities, and multipotentiality are constructs that
students may have experienced but never had the language to name.
As the students learn about these topics from a scholarly perspective,
they oen recognize themselves in the research. In addition, reecting
on these constructs can allow the students to interact in a more per-
sonalized way with the shared transition topics such as critical reading
and note-taking.
e eect of this assignment is apparent in some of the student
comments from the course and instructor evaluations. One student
commented, “It made me realize that the situations I have experi-
enced as a high-achieving student are common and manageable. I feel
much less alone.” Another student remarked, “She [the course instruc-
tor] understood what it means to be an honors student and all the
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Meadows
diculties that come with that. She was extremely helpful when it came
to making the dicult transition to college.” Of course, not all students
were convinced of the value of the course. One student commented,
“Some of the information seemed very elementary to me, and some-
times the class felt like it was, not necessarily a waste of time, but time
that I could have been . . . studying for another class.” is comment
may reect the diversity of needs of honors students entering college
because some students may have had signicant academic challenges
in high school and may not need as much instruction in study skills.
Aer the in-class presentations are completed, each student writes
a two-page essay reecting on the topics from the most pertinent
presentations. In those essays, students oen describe growth in self-
awareness regarding honors issues as well as the development of new
academic behaviors. One student described her identication with the
presentation on perfectionism:
I know I am a perfectionist; it is a blessing and a curse that I
have proted from and struggled with since I was in elementary
school. However, the negative eects of anxiety and depression
outweigh the positive outcome of always receiving a perfect
grade or winning rst place in every competition. [Another stu
-
dent] spoke about an idea that has really helped me set my desire
for perfectionism aside over the past week. e concept was that
growth is more important than perfection. I need to focus on
growth and learning; if the perfect grade is a result of the growth,
it is a bonus. I want to stop worrying about what others think of
my success and start measuring my achievement based on my
own self-improvement.
In this example, the student included two constructs that are noted in
the Rinn and Plucker review: others-oriented perfectionism (“I want
to stop worrying about what others think of my success”) and growth/
xed mindset (“growth is more important than perfection”).
Another student responded to a presentation on multipotential-
ity, which can be dened as “the possession of high levels of interest,
ability, motivation and/or opportunity in multiple areas” (Jung 435).
Multipotentiality can lead to overcommitment in college and/or
career indecision among high-ability students. e student made the
139
Know Thyself
following application of the multipotentiality presentation to his own
experience:
Doing everything you think you might like sucks your free time
and homework time away. It increases your stress levels, which
in turn decreases your academic performance. To manage this
in my own life, I have made a commitment to limit myself. I am
going to do competitive programming, class and homework, play
a few video games, and work. For right now, I am not going to
join any new clubs and organizations until I am sure that I can
handle my current load.
While traditional rst-year advising emphasizes involvement, gied
students struggling with multipotentiality may need to be encour-
aged to limit their involvement and thus avoid overcommitment and
burnout. is dilemma illustrates a possible psychological dierence
in gied students that can be addressed in honors FYSs.
As this monograph demonstrates, numerous rst-year honors
seminars exist to address the various needs of honors rst-year stu-
dents. Each institution has its own curricular goals and emphases.
e FYS example from the Gordon & Judy Dutile Honors Program at
Southwest Baptist University is one way to create a student-focused,
research-based seminar that encourages growth in metacognition, con-
nections within the honors community, and instruction in research
skills by integrating gied education research regarding the academic,
psychological, and social concerns of gied students. Regardless of
the setting, honors educators have a rich resource in gied education
research that can be used to cultivate lively and substantive environ-
ments for the students we serve.
REFERENCES
Ackerman, Cheryl. “e Essential Elements of Dabrowski’s eory of Positive
Disintegration and How ey are Connected.” Roeper Review, vol. 31, 2009,
pp. 81–95.
Balduf, Megan. “Underachievement Among College Students.” Journal of
Advanced Academics, vol. 20, no. 2, 2009, pp. 274–94.
Bandura, Albert. “Perceived Self-Efficacy in Cognitive Development and
Functioning.” Educational Psychologist, vol. 28, no. 2, 1993, pp. 117–48.
140
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Chancey, Jaclyn M., and Jennifer Lease Butts. “Gied Students, Honors Students,
and an Honors Education.” Journal of the National Collegiate Honors
Council, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018, pp. 33–37.
Colangelo, Nicholas. “Gifted Education to Honors Education: A Curious
History, a Vibrant Future.” Journal of the National Collegiate Honors
Council, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018, pp. 3–7.
Colangelo, Nicholas, Connie Belin, and Jacqueline N. Blank. A Nation Deceived:
How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students. e Connie Belin &
Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gied Education and Talent
Development, vol. 1, 2004. accelerationinstitute.org/nation_deceived/
nd_v1.pdf.
Dabrowski, Kazimierz. Personality Shaping rough Positive Disintegration. Little
Brown and Co., 1967.
---. Foreword. A eoretical and Empirical Approach to the Study of Development,
by M. M. Piechowski. 1975, pp. 233–37. Genetic Psychology Monographs
92.
Forum on Gied Education and Honors. Journal of the National Collegiate
Honors Council, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018, pp. 1–37.
Guzy, Annmarie. “Honors Is a Good Fit for Gied Students—Or Maybe Not.”
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018, pp.
9–16.
Jung, Jae Yup. “e Cognitive Processes Associated with Occupational/Career
Indecision: A Model for Gied Adolescents.” Journal for the Education of
the Gied, vol. 36, no. 4, 2013, pp. 433–60.
Kaplan, Leslie G. “Innovative Discussion-Based Pedagogy.” Breaking Barriers in
Teaching and Learning, edited by James Ford and John Zubizarreta, National
Collegiate Honors Council, 2018, pp. 17–34. NCHC Monograph Series.
Kem, Lee, and Joy L. Navan. “Gied Students in College: Suggestions for
Advisors and Faculty Members.” NACADA Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, 2006,
pp. 21–28.
Kotinek, Jonathan D. “Are You Gied-Friendly? Understanding How Honors
Contexts (Can) Serve Gifted Young Adults.” Journal of the National
Collegiate Honors Council, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018, pp. 17–24.
Meadows, Jodi, et al. “Disrupting Maladaptive Perfectionism: Fostering
Excellence and Healthy Self-Concept.” Disrupting Education: Creativity
and Innovation in Honors. National Collegiate Honors Council Annual
Conference, 9 Nov. 2019, Sheraton Hotel, New Orleans, LA.
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Know Thyself
Mendaglio, Sal. “Gied Student’s Transition to University.” Gied Education
International, vol. 29, no. 1, 2013, pp. 3–12, doi.org/10.1177/026142941
2440646.
Miller, Angie L. “Ways We Can Do Better: Bridging the Gap Between Gied
Education and Honors Colleges.” Journal of the National Collegiate Honors
Council, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018, pp. 39–44.
Miller, Angie L., and Amber D. Dumford. “Do High-Achieving Students Benet
from Honors College Participation? A Look at Student Engagement for
First-Year Students and Seniors.” Journal for the Education of the Gied,
vol. 41, no. 3, 2018, pp. 217–41.
National Collegiate Honors Council. “Definition of Honors Education,”
nchchonors.org/general/custom.asp?page=honors-advocacy-toolkit.
Renzulli, Joseph. “e ree-Ring Conception of Giedness: A Developmental
Model for Promoting Creative Productivity.” Conceptions of Giedness,
edited by Robert J. Sternberg and Janet E. Davidson, 2nd ed., Cambridge
UP, 2005, pp. 246–79.
Rinn, Anne N., and Jonathan A. Plucker. “High-Ability College Students and
Undergraduate Honors Programs: A Systematic Review.” Journal for the
Education of the Gied, vol. 42, no. 3, 2019, pp. 187–215.
Sanders, Matthew L. Becoming a Learner: Realizing the Opportunity of Education.
Institute for Communication and Leadership, 2012.
Santarosa, Stephanie, and Kristen Buttereld. “Disrupting Perfectionism:
Supporting High-Achieving Students and Promoting Wellness.” Disrupting
Education: Creativity and Innovation in Honors. National Collegiate
Honors Council Annual Conference. 9 Nov. 2019, Sheraton Hotel, New
Orleans, LA.
Santarosa, Stephanie, et al. “Diagnosis: Perfectionism / Prescription: Authenticity
and Compassion.” Disrupting Education: Creativity and Innovation in
Honors. National Collegiate Honors Council Annual Conference. 9 Nov.
2019, Sheraton Hotel, New Orleans, LA.
Speirs Neumeister, Kristie L. “Factors Influencing the Development of
Perfectionism in Gied College Students.” Gied Child Quarterly, vol. 48,
2010, pp. 259–74.
Speirs Neumeister, Kristie L., and Julie Rinker. “An Emerging Professional
Identity: Inuences on the Achievement of High-Ability First-Generation
College Females.” Journal for the Education of the Gied, vol. 29, no. 3,
2006, pp. 305–38.
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Yarrison, Betsy Greenleaf. “If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When?” Journal of the
National Collegiate Honors Council, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018, pp. 25–32.
143
Michelle Miles and Rita L. Bailey
Kennesaw State University
Founded in 1963, Kennesaw State University (KSU) has grown
rapidly from a junior college to a doctoral-granting compre-
hensive university of nearly 45,000 students. Situated in the
northwest suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, KSU is now one of the
50 largest public institutions in the U.S. and has been classi-
ed as a Carnegie R2, a doctoral research institution with high
research activity. Although KSU originally served a commuter
student population, its average undergraduate student age has
steadily decreased and, according to the most recently published
KSU Factbook (2024–2025), is currently 21.4 years. KSU’s stu-
dent body is evenly balanced between male and female students.
It has a racial/ethnic composition of 39.7% White, 27.9% Black
(non-Hispanic), 15.7% Hispanic, 6% Asian, 5% multi-racial,
2.6% undeclared, 0.1% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 0.2%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacic Islander, and 3.1% interna-
tional. KSU’s international students represent 103 countries.
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Miles and Bailey
KSU’s mission is to provide access to high-quality educational
opportunities across various disciplines with an emphasis on
applied disciplines. A 2015 consolidation between Kennesaw
State University and nearby Southern Polytechnic State Uni-
versity broadened the university’s portfolio of majors, and KSU
undergraduate students can now choose from more than 80
majors. KSU also oers a variety of graduate programs, includ-
ing doctoral degrees.
KSU HONORS COLLEGE
T
he KSU Honors Program was founded in 1995 with an initial
cohort of 25 students; by 2013, the honors program became an
honors college, and in 2020, the unit was ocially named Keeping
Sights Upward (KSU) Journey Honors College. Our enrollment and
curricular oerings continue to increase. Currently, the honors college
supports over 1,800 students on two campuses, of which approximately
750 are new admits who are primarily rst-year students. Honors
courses and experiences are led by a dean, dedicated full-time faculty
members, honors sta, and aliated faculty from across campus.
KSU honors is based on eight Foundations of Honors Learning:
appreciating diverse perspectives; creativity and innovation; critical
thinking; professionalism; eective communication; information u-
ency; interdisciplinary learning; and leadership. Each required KSU
Honors Learning Experience (HLE) emphasizes one or more of the
foundations.
e college oers a variety of innovative curricular and co-curricu-
lar programming options. Honors students can earn three designations.
e rst is that of Honors Research Scholar, which requires students to
complete six HLEs and a capstone/thesis. e next designation, Honors
Scholar, requires eight HLEs but no capstone project. Finally, Honors
in the Major requires the completion of ve HLEs.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Between 2005 and 2021, incoming KSU full-time students with fewer
than 15 hours of university credit were required to take KSU 1101:
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Kennesaw State University
Honors First-Year Seminar, a three-credit-hour course. Although
faculty from KSU’s Department of First-Year and Transition Stud-
ies (FYTS) taught most of the courses, other KSU faculty and sta,
including Student Aairs professionals and part-time faculty, were also
involved in instruction.
Initially oered in 1983, KSU’s seminar for the rst-year student
population resulted in recognition in U.S. News & World Report 2022
top institutions oering a First-Year Experience (“Kennesaw State
Ranked Among Nation’s Best”). KSU 1101 used a common textbook,
Foundations for Academic Inquiry, written by FYTS faculty specically
for KSU’s rst-year seminar. Course instructors received professional
development but taught the course autonomously. Before the fall
2017 semester, honors students had the opportunity, if they wished,
to enroll in an honors section of KSU 1101. e honors section was
taught by an aliated honors faculty member and was dierentiated
from other KSU 1101 sections pedagogically: it featured a more dis-
cussion-based format and an additional emphasis on developing class
participants’ global understanding and competencies. Considering the
distinctive needs of honors students, the Honors First-Year Seminar
was ultimately proposed to meet the common learning objectives for
all students new to KSU and to induct new honors learners into a
community of scholars built around the eight Foundations of Honors
Learning.
In the fall semester of 2017, the honors program piloted KSU 1101:
Honors First-Year Seminar, which was designed specically for hon
-
ors students. All incoming rst-year honors students with fewer than
een credit hours were required to enroll in one of six sections of the
honors-specic course; 102 rst-year honors students completed the
pilot seminar, each section of which was oered by honors college sta
and aliated faculty. Designed as a common intellectual experience,
the discussion-based seminars were (and remain) a combination of
an extended orientation and academic rst-year seminar that employs
a shared curriculum and schedule. Instructors meet as a group each
month to discuss upcoming curriculum and receive assistance with the
course. To allow for deep learning through discussion and community
146
Miles and Bailey
building, each section has a maximum enrollment of 25. In 2021, KSU
excised KSU 1101 from its curriculum, but KSU Journey Honors Col-
lege maintained its version of the course, which is now oered as HON
1100.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e curriculum provided to each instructor was built around the
Foundations of Honors Learning. e Foundations include Critical
inking, Leadership, Interdisciplinary Learning, Appreciation of
Diverse Viewpoints, Creativity and Innovation, Professionalism, Eec-
tive Communication, and Information Fluency. Additional readings
include excerpts from academic journal articles and book chapters
written by authors such as Ken Bain and Carol Dweck. is combina-
tion of classic and current readings is used with in-class discussion,
videos, or audio clips of presentations by many of these authors (pri-
marily in TED Talk form), and opportunities for written reection at
the end of each class that utilizes four semi-structured reading prompts
to elicit student responses. Also embedded in the curriculum are a
rst-year honors advising session, exposure to the opportunities avail-
able in honors, and information regarding progression through the
honors curriculum to graduation.
Instructors supplement the class sessions with active learning strat-
egies, additional content, and involvement with Honors Peer Mentors
who are embedded in each course. ey are current honors students
who serve as role models, guides, and assistants to incoming cohorts.
In January 2018, a new position, Advanced Peer Mentor, was created
to allow former Peer Mentors to serve as leaders of the next Honors
Peer Mentor team. Honors Peer Mentors assist the course instructors,
model honors student behavior in class discussions and activities, and
meet with students in the course, either one-on-one or as a group, in
both academic and social settings. e Honors Peer Mentorship is a
paid position; each appointee works approximately six hours per week.
e position also fullls their required Honors Learning Experience
for the term they serve.
rough course assignments, students analyze and reect upon
their individual learning experiences and demonstrate their under-
standing of the eight Foundations of Honors Learning as applied to
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Kennesaw State University
their academic pursuits at KSU and their developing professional
endeavors. Assignments build on student learning and provide
expanded opportunities for creativity and autonomy with each new
assignment. Students are asked to explore how and why they learn and
develop direction for their honors education, majors, and intentions
post-graduation.
149
Michelle Miles and Rita L. Bailey
Kennesaw State University
I
n 2008, George D. Kuh employed the phrase “High-Impact Edu-
cational Practices” (HIPs) to delineate a variety of pedagogical
approaches and activities united by the objective of maximizing stu-
dent learning across the collegiate curriculum. Emphasizing the link
between active, impactful learning practices and student retention and
engagement, Kuh’s ndings underscore the importance of high-impact
learning commencing at the onset of a student’s undergraduate tenure
and extending to its close. He explains:
When I am asked, what [is] one thing we can do to enhance stu-
dent engagement and increase student success […] I now have an
answer: make it possible for every student to participate in at least
two high-impact activities during his or her undergraduate pro-
gram, one in the rst year, and one taken later in relation to the
major eld. e obvious choices for incoming students are rst-
year seminars, learning communities, and service learning. (21)
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Miles and Bailey
To educators familiar with undergraduate honors pedagogy, Kuh’s
view will resonate, as will his conviction that “[t]he highest-quality
rst-year experiences place a strong emphasis on critical inquiry, fre-
quent writing, information literacy, collaborative learning, and other
skills that develop students’ intellectual and practical competencies”
(21). Indeed, high-impact learning has the potential to change both
the thoughts and the actions of learners; when introduced to engaged
and motivated rst-year honors students freshly embarking upon their
collegiate educations, the eects can be profound and lasting.
One strategy that facilitates meaningful educational impact
and complements several of the HIPs noted in Kuh’s research is to
stimulate learners to reect upon their own learning experiences
systematically. While the outcomes of such reective practices are
myriad, those found in the realm of self-discovery and personal
growth are particularly noteworthy, as are those factors contributing
to content retention and the expansion of knowledge. While deni-
tions of self-reection will naturally vary by context, as John Sandars
has indicated in a study on reection in medical education, inten-
tional reection, regardless of disciplinary-specic scaolding, may be
usefully described as a metacognitive process that occurs before, dur-
ing, and aer learning situations with the goal of developing greater
understanding (685).
Sandars’s observation aligns with the tenets of undergraduate hon-
ors philosophy and pedagogy, which have traditionally emphasized
key elements of reexive praxis, such as articulated metacognition.
e success of the interdisciplinary inquiry inherent in this informal
honors mission statement is contingent upon an approach to teaching
and learning that is intentionally relational and reective. And while
reective practices oen take various forms across various disciplines,
written reection is particularly well-suited to combining these meta-
cognitive processes with purposeful communication, both with others
and with multiple aspects of oneself. In that sense, writing can facilitate
impactful reection within and across traditional disciplinary and/or
classroom boundaries—an exchange that is reective of the core of
the National Collegiate Honors Council’s (NCHC) 2013 denition of
honors education and pedagogical vision to facilitate in-depth learn-
ing in concert with “multi- or interdisciplinary learning.” (“Denition
of Honors Education”).
151
Reflection Practices
As Donald A. Schön argues in his seminal text e Reective Prac-
titioner, rst published in 1986 and printed again in a second edition
in 2001, writing about lived experiences enables learners to recognize
interconnections and integrate new content with existing knowledge
so that fresh insights may have an amplied impact on both thought
and action (26). Deep learning occurs when students are involved in
cognitive processes that expand accrued knowledge beyond what they
gain from an initial learning experience (Schön 35). Along these same
lines, Rita Charon succinctly notes in “Our Heads Touch: Telling and
Listening to Stories of Self” that writing about an experience is a highly
eective means by which to expand knowledge regarding that experi-
ence and to integrate new learning with prior learning to draw fresh
connections (1155).
Ostensibly, all learning involves precisely what Charon mentions:
integrating new learning with prior learning to draw fresh connec-
tions. Indeed, Charon’s insight into the very scaolding of the learning
process, regardless of subject matter and content, serves as a help-
ful framework from which to consider perhaps the most far-reaching
of undergraduate pedagogical objectives: preparation for lifelong
learning. While college students ultimately pursue their studies in cir-
cumscribed and eld-specic disciplines, thus preparing themselves
for professional lives in targeted arenas, their success is arguably predi-
cated upon their uency in, and facility with, the learning process in
general. And just as content may be disseminated to undergraduates,
so too may be the cross-disciplinary skill set of meaningful reective
practice. is essay explores how the incorporation of semi-structured
written reection in a sample group of rst-year honors students at
KSU Journey Honors College aords meaningful insight into the high-
impact practice (HIP) of written reection in the formative rst year
of undergraduate honors education.
THE ROLE OF REFLECTION IN THE TRANSFORMATIVE
LEARNING EXPERIENCE
In 1975, Jack Mezirow and Victoria Marsick published a study entitled
Education for Perspective Transformation: Women’s Re-Entry Programs
in Community College, which identied key phases of transformative
learning experiences. ese phases became foundational for Mezirow’s
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Miles and Bailey
constructivist approach to learning and development, and they con-
tinue to impact pedagogical practice to this day. In a subsequent
overview that distills his work on transformative learning, Mezirow
denes transformative learning as the “process by which we transform
problematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, meaning
perspectives) […] to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open,
reective and emotionally able to change” (“Overview” 94). He pres-
ents the ten phases that mark the transformative learning process as
follows:
• A disorienting dilemma;
• A self-examination with feelings of guilt or shame;
• A critical assessment of epistemic, sociocultural, or psychic
assumptions;
• Recognition that one’s discontent and the process of trans-
formation are shared and that others have negotiated a
similar change;
• Exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and
actions;
• Planning a course of action;
• Acquisition of knowledge and skills for implementing one’s
plan;
• Provisional trying of new roles;
• Building of competence and self-condence in new roles
and relationships;
• A reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions
dictated by one’s perspective.
(“Overview” 94)
Contemporary theorists have usefully extrapolated upon Mezirow’s
foundational work to posit updated applications of transformative
learning theory in the twenty-rst-century classroom; individually and
collectively, these new visions foreground the importance of inten-
tional reection to transformative learning experiences. According
to Jacqueline K. Kuennen, for example, “in a transformative learning
153
Reflection Practices
environment, critical reection is used as a strategy to promote reec-
tive professional practice whereby learners develop a new way of
interpreting the meaning of one’s experience in order to guide future
action” (306). In similar fashion, Kathleen King points to a student’s
prerequisite experience of “disequilibrium [in the classroom], which
causes the individual to reexamine prior understanding of values,
beliefs, or assumptions” (5).
Signicant as these contemporary ndings are, the understand-
ing that reective practice is somehow foundational is not new. To
be sure, the vital role reection plays in the learning process predates
Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning by several decades and is,
in many ways, fundamental to it. Educators initially began encouraging
the practice of classroom reection aer John Dewey rst proposed it
in the 1930s in his seminal study, How We ink, wherein he denes
reective thought as “[a]ctive, persistent, and careful consideration of
any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds
that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. . . . It is
a conscious and voluntary eort to establish belief upon a rm basis
of reasons” (118). Furthermore, such knowledge or belief, according
to Dewey, is dependent upon active reection:
Reection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a con-
sequence–a consecutive ordering in such a way that each
determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn
leans back on its predecessors. e successive portions of the
reective thought grow out of one another and support one
another; they do not come and go in a medley. Each phase is
a step from something to something–technically speaking, it is
a term of thought. Each term leaves a deposit which is utilized
in the next term. e stream or ow becomes a train, chain, or
thread. (4)
is genealogy of knowledge acquisition, so to speak, applies not
only to an individual learner in a prescribed subject parameter but,
likewise, to broader cross-disciplinary discoveries and new forays
into pedagogical practices incorporating reection. Over the inter-
vening decades since Dewey published his ideas, as education scholar
Katrina Liu discusses in compelling detail, the practice of reection has
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Miles and Bailey
become entrenched in—and increasingly embraced by—teacher edu-
cation programs (137). Likewise, the use of critical reection has been
increasingly described as benecial to higher educational teaching
and learning practices across the full range of disciplines, particularly
in honors pedagogical models, such as City as Text®, Place as Text,
and Partners in the Parks®. Indeed, the NCHC Monograph Series has
published extensively on these reective pedagogical spaces. See, for
example, Place, Self, Community: City as Text
TM
in the Twenty-First
Century, edited by Bernice Braid and Sara E. Quay, and Writing on
Your Feet: Reective Practices in City as TextTM, edited by Ada Long.
In “Critical Reection on Professional Development in the Social
Sciences,” for example, Ortun Zuber-Skerritt and Eva Cendon describe
the practice of reection in higher education settings within a wide
variety of social science elds as “essential for a deep approach to
learning, research and professional development and [as] a driving
force to enable learners to be adequately equipped for constant and
complex change” (16). Likewise, educators in healthcare elds have
reported the myriad benets of instituting reective learning practices
in their courses (Kuennen 306; Nielsen et al. 513–16). So, too, have
instructors acknowledged the value of encouraging intentional self-
reective practice in students preparing for careers in business; Patricia
R. Hedberg’s “Guiding Moral Behavior rough a Reective Learning
Practice” and Stephen A. Yoder’s “Encouraging Self-Reection by Busi-
ness Honors Students: Reective Writing, Films, and Self-Assessments”
oer extended discussions of relevant pedagogical adaptations of the
reection process. Although each of these studies primarily focuses on
discipline-specic aspects of student reection, they are alike in their
conclusion that the incorporation of regular reective practice into
college classrooms results in marked augmentation of both content
retention and the achievement of course objectives in fashions aligned
with Dewey’s formative contentions and emphasis on the consequences
of reective learning.
In “Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and
Reective inking,” Carol Rodgers breaks down Dewey’s sequen-
tial conception of reection into four key criteria. First, she argues
that reection must involve a process that fosters movement from one
learning experience to the next with an enhanced understanding of
the content of the instruction as well as how learning experiences,
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Reflection Practices
knowledge, and ideas–both within and beyond the classroom–con-
nect with each other. e second criterion is that reection should
be completed in a way that employs standard methods of scientic
inquiry that are systematic, disciplined, and rigorous. In other words,
the fashion in which written reection is assigned to and performed
by students must be both well-dened and suciently comprehen-
sible to facilitate maximum impact. Another criterion of meaningful
classroom reection is that it requires interaction with others who
have likewise engaged in the learning experience and are willing to
share their understanding, ideas, and perceptions about the process.
Rodgers suggests that the nal criterion for the pedagogical practice is
that learners conducting reection maintain “attitudes that value the
personal and intellectual growth of oneself and of others” (845). is
statement underscores the signicance of sharing aspects of indepen-
dent reection with others and the importance of remaining open to
a critical examination of concepts and ideas that incorporate varied
perspectives. It also emphasizes the imperative for initial buy-in: to
nd value in reection, one has to consider reection to be a mean-
ingful enterprise.
Arguably, one of the challenges to initial student and instructor
buy-in to the value of intentional and active reection practices relates
to how traditional pedagogical models have not explored reection
deeply enough, leaving it as a largely unarticulated byproduct of con-
tent assimilation. Nevertheless, the increasing number of researchers
reporting on the multiple benets of intentional and explicit reec-
tion activities invites further consideration and application. Lee and
Hutchison, for instance, oer examples of reection prompts used in
classroom settings to establish experiments that will determine the
fashion(s) in which reection activities aect learning. ey note that
in their joint experience, student samples reveal instances of “learning
beyond what [they] could self-explain” and that “carefully proposed
questions [do result] in better learning” (187). And while the reection
process can be stimulated on a basic level by something as simple as
a pointed follow-up question aer material has been disseminated to
students, Lee and Hutchinson emphasize that reection is optimized
when it is prompted more frequently and intentionally (e.g., provoking
student response to material every few pages of reading rather than at
the end of a text or lesson) in order to maximize its educational value
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Miles and Bailey
(188). In other words, semi-structured invitations to reect upon the
learning process while it is still occurring prove to have the most sig-
nicant impact.
Still, as Lee and Hutchinson also note, the explicit practice of
active reection is seldom included in conventional, content-driven
learning environments. In order to illustrate the potential ramica-
tions of this omission, they discuss the standard pedagogical practice
of exposing students to case studies in the elds of medicine or law,
for instance, without any attention being paid to the reective pro-
cesses of the study’s original subjects—or, indeed, of the learners’
own reective processes. erefore, in this conventional instructional
model, while students are geared to assimilate the content of a particu-
lar case study, they oen neglect, through no direct fault of their own,
to consider the impact that purposeful reection has on the myriad
manifestations and iterations of the learning process (Lee and Hutchi-
son 187–88). Foremost among the implications of this oversight is the
missed opportunity for students to integrate an understanding of pro-
cess into content assimilation. As a result, Lee and Hutchison contend,
“students who study such examples and never learn how the expert is
thinking may not be able to apply the knowledge in those examples to
the diverse situations they will encounter in real life” (187).
According to Mezirow, there is an ethical dimension to this
implicit failure to encourage and facilitate reection in our students,
and that element should be imperative to all educators:
A dening condition of being human is that we have to under-
stand the meaning of our experience. For some, any uncritically
assimilated explanation by an authority gure will suce. But in
contemporary societies we must learn to make our own interpre-
tations rather than act on the purposes, beliefs, judgments, and
feelings of others. Facilitating such understandings is the cardi-
nal goal of adult education. Transformative learning develops
autonomous thinking. (Transformative Dimensions 5)
It is important to note that the classrooms Lee and Hutchison discuss
in their article are those of law, business, and medicine; in other words,
they are targeted and oen advanced-level courses in highly specialized
programs where participants are already well-versed in the conventions
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Reflection Practices
of their respective disciplinary discourses. ese scholars are not alone,
however, in nding evidence supporting the profound impact of delib-
erate and concentrated reection practices in transformative learning
environments, especially in specialized, upper-level learning forums.
In a separate testimonial, for instance, Kuennen describes an
advanced degree program in the eld of nursing leadership where
students are guided through a critical reection process to meet the
following objectives: (a) gain an understanding of relationships among
theory, research, and evidence-based practice; (b) acquire the ability
to generate new practice approaches; (c) employ critical analysis to
determine best-practice evidence; (d) experience proposing strategies
to implement evidence-based practice approaches in diverse settings;
and (e) use reection to enhance critical thinking about complex
issues (306). Kuennen indicates that students largely appreciate these
purposeful reection activities; she states that they, along with their
professors, perceive a high degree of achievement for stated course
objectives. Furthermore, the instructors of the graduate-level nursing
classes report that students’ coursework demonstrates augmented pro-
ciency in applying critical reection and evidence-based practice to
real-life situations, a pragmatic scholarly skill of increased importance
to learners proximate to real-world applications of their specialized
studies (307).
Fruitful and revealing as this and other similar studies are, both
in terms of their methodological approaches and ndings, the marked
pedagogical bias for incorporating overt reective practice into upper-
division, even predominantly graduate-level, coursework is equally
compelling. Far less prevalent is scholarship on the inclusion and e-
cacy of reection in the early undergraduate classroom. But as we have
seen, transformative learning appears to be predicated upon accumu-
lated experience and assimilated knowledge; if this insight is true, as
we believe it to be, then reection is a component at least as vital, if not
more so, to the rst-year classroom as it is to any later iterations, espe-
cially given what Mezirow has shown to be the role of the disorienting
dilemma in the transformative learning experience and the impera-
tive of cognizant engagement in the process of adjusting to unfamiliar
circumstances and frameworks.
In a provocative piece entitled “Transformative Learning: Les-
sons from First-Semester Honors Narratives,” Kyler Knapp, Phame
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Miles and Bailey
Camarena, and Holly Moore indicate a telling and signicant gap in
research related to the undergraduate experience of transitioning from
high school to college. ey note that while a relatively substantial and
ever-increasing body of scholarship is devoted to studying this forma-
tive moment in the life of undergraduate students, much less attention
has been given to the quality of that experience. Knapp, Camarena,
and Moore write: “Although a strong and growing body of literature
addresses the transition to college, the majority of this work focuses
on retention and persistence for those facing challenges while rela
-
tively little work focuses on those thriving in their new context” (126).
is distinction feels necessary, especially given the fact that, as Alvin
Wang, Crystal Espinosa, Cassandra Long, and Anik Patel indicate in
their research on team leadership in the honors FYE, student attrition
is greatest in the rst-year population, with more than half of those
who elect to leave college that rst year doing so during the initial six
weeks of the rst semester (129).
Kuh’s contention that HIPs are most eective when they com-
mence at the onset of one’s undergraduate education, Mezirow’s
attention to certain critical life moments where an established equi-
librium is upset in a potentially fruitful fashion, and Dewey’s sense of
the value of reection in navigating such periods of transition dem-
onstrate the rich potential for pedagogical innovation and scholarly
research related to reection and transformational learning in the rst-
year classroom. We believe that the honors rst-year classroom, with
its avowed commitment to interdisciplinary and autonomous learning,
is uniquely suited to this critical work.
WRITTEN REFLECTION IN UNDERGRADUATE HONORS
Undergraduate honors courses are a natural home for incorporating
written reection into innovative pedagogical approaches. Laird R.
O. Edman states, “Honors pedagogy nurtures and challenges students
to become self-motivated, self-regulating engaged thinkers” (Conclu-
sion 103). As such, an honors education should naturally encourage
metacognition in its participants. Put another way, self-reection is
inherent in developing critical thinking, and critical thinking has been
cited as foundational to learning in honors education. Edman explains:
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Reflection Practices
“For students to grow in their critical thinking, they must be able to
evaluate their own and other’s thinking. Without this, there is no hope
for transfer outside of the narrow connes of the honors classroom”
(“Teaching” 57).
Reection, however, can be hard to dene. As Rebecca Nowacek
and her colleagues note in their compelling research on how best to
build a culture of reection: “Reection is a capricious term, including
both routine and deeply intentional activities” (94). Furthermore, it is
a personal practice that will, to a degree, naturally vary according to
the approach and predilections of its practitioners. Alternatively, but
not incompatibly, Evelyn M. Boyd and Ann W. Fales dene reection
as “the process of internally examining and exploring an issue of con-
cern, triggered by an experience, which creates and claries meaning in
terms of self and which results in a changed conceptual practice” (100).
Perhaps most coherently–and undoubtedly, most succinctly–reection
is, according to Doug Specht, “a natural human activity” wherein we
consider “our daily lives, our successes and failures, relationships and
careers whether we like it or not” (61).
If it is challenging to dene precisely what constitutes reection,
it is likewise complicated to prescribe its practice. Although reection
can take a variety of forms for a diversity of purposes, educators and
learners alike are freed through written reection to engage with the
practice and observe its eects. Evidence suggests that written reec-
tion is a formidable means for promoting and making the connections
that can lead not only to improved retention rates and academic per-
formance but to long-term student success and personal fulllment.
Elsewhere, we have argued:
Written reection helps students maximize their individual
capacities to make meaningful connections both inside and
outside of the classroom as they simultaneously gain insight
through reection practices. Incorporation of meaningful reec-
tive practice into pedagogical strategies and approaches is a way
to increase students’ willingness to freely express their views,
challenge their own opinions and biases, ask dicult or awk-
ward questions, and interact willingly with their instructors and
peers alike. Use of written reection in class can provide a more
personal medium through which to foster increased learner
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Miles and Bailey
autonomy and encourage inclusivity in a variety of classroom
types and settings.
(Miles and Bailey 130)
In other words, the practice of reection, in this case, via semi-struc-
tured writing, informs the theory rather than the reverse. Perhaps in
part because of this dene-as-you-do reality, limited research is cur-
rently available regarding how best to structure reection exercises
and assess the learning that results from dierent response prompts.
But despite the diculty, instructors need to know how best to frame
reection assignments to gain the desired learner benets, especially at
moments of transformational juncture in a student’s education. Given
Kuh’s theory that HIPs are most impactful when they are introduced
early in an undergraduate’s education and OUR commitment to the
imperative of actualizing deep learning outcomes, we decided to con-
duct an investigation of our own in a section of KSU Journey Honors
College’s rst-year seminar, HON 1101: Introduction to Honors Edu-
cation. e following discussion is an account of our initial ndings.
DAYBOOK
KSU Journey Honors College oers a close-knit community within
the broader university to academically talented, highly motivated
students who enjoy lively discussion, creative expression, and intel-
lectual challenge. We provide small honors sections of core courses
and interdisciplinary honors seminars where students focus on deep
learning via an innovative curriculum. We also oer opportunities for
undergraduate research, domestic and international travel experiences,
applied learning, and community service activities. Given the con-
siderable size and student population of Kennesaw State University
(approximately 43,000 students participating in eleven colleges on two
metro Atlanta campuses), the sense of personalized community KSU
Journey Honors College oers both its students and aliated faculty
is considerable and prioritized.
e honors college wants to facilitate student learning and devel-
opment in a fashion that enhances and enriches the specialized degree
work of each of our members. With this aim, our curriculum is inno-
vative and exible: to graduate with the highest honors designation
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Reflection Practices
at KSU, students must complete eight Honors Learning Experiences
(HLEs), ranging from structured coursework and independent con-
tracts to internships, applied learning experiences, and capstone
projects. e single shared curricular requirement is Introduction to
Honors Education (HON 1100). Although most students in HON 1101
are in their rst year of college, a rst-year honors student will occa-
sionally transfer into the honors college as a sophomore or junior. (In
this sample study, all the students were in their rst year of college.)
In 2018, when this study was initially conducted, KSU required
that all incoming students enroll in a rst-year seminar; for students in
the honors college, we designed our own version of this course to fulll
the university requirement while simultaneously introducing honors
students to the program. e course, KSU 1101H, was a three-credit-
hour honors section of the KSU First-Year Seminar. is course (now
oered as a one-credit hour seminar called HON 1100: Introduction to
Honors Education) introduced students to the educational philosophy
of the KSU Journey Honors College whereby participants explored and
engaged in various forms of academic inquiry, guided by an honors
faculty member and an advanced peer mentor.
In past iterations of the class as well as present ones, students learn
strategies for maximizing their academic opportunities by developing
skills for leadership and service and preparing for the next phases of
their educational and professional pursuits within the supportive struc-
ture of the honors college. Instructional activities in the introductory
course have been carefully constructed to inspire and equip students
with the tools needed to maximize their honors program learning
experience and their undergraduate journey more generally.
Participants in this course are encouraged to think deeply about
learning, to discover and apply the eight KSU Journey Honors Founda-
tions (critical thinking; leadership; interdisciplinary learning; creativity
and innovation; information uency; professionalism; appreciation
of diverse viewpoints; and eective communication), and to leverage
professional resources and available opportunities. One of the primary
objectives of the course is educating students to maximize their full
potential by developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that align
with acute, engaged learning. e curriculum promotes a thoughtful
mindset from which to approach all aspects of undergraduate study;
the intent of the course is to increase awareness of both individual and
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Miles and Bailey
group capacities in order to impact various communities in lasting and
meaningful fashion.
In response to this imperative, this investigation was undertaken
with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of the merits and chal-
lenges of the incorporation of semi-structured reection prompts into
the honors rst-year seminar; we also sought a general measure of the
eectiveness of the associated learning outcomes as demonstrated by
students. Specically, we set out to determine the perceived type and
quality of responses obtained from the use of four semi-structured
writing prompts incorporated into each class session of a rst-year
honors seminar. Composition notebooks were purchased for each stu-
dent, and two lines—one horizontal and one vertical—were stamped
on every ve pages of the notebook, creating four quadrants on the
stamped pages. en, four prompts—Saw, Said, Happened, Con-
nected/Drawn—were distributed and stamped, one each, at the top of
the quadrants on all pages. ese pre-stamped notebooks, which we
labeled “Daybooks,” were distributed to each student.
Each class period, the students were instructed to respond to the
prompts; they were also told that their responses were not required
to remain within these four quadrants. Rather, once they responded
initially to the semi-structured prompts (this initial step was a require-
ment), they were free to write in an unstructured fashion in the four
pages that followed each stamped page. Intentionally, instructions for
these semi-structured responses were le relatively open-ended and
unspecic with the deliberate aim of globally stimulating responses
while still privileging a signicant degree of autonomy for each stu
-
dent. Aer commencing with the single specic direction to initially
respond to each of the four categories, students were free to interpret
the connotations of each quadrant as they saw t.
e terms we elected to use for each quadrant were chosen to
invite multisensory responses to each reection upon the student’s
individual learning experience in the classroom amid a larger group.
According to Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb’s research on experien-
tial learning styles and spaces, Experiential Learning eory (ELT) is
built upon Dewey’s observation that “education must be conceived as
a continuing reconstruction of experience: . . . the process and goal of
education are one and the same thing” (qtd. in Kolb and Kolb 194). In
other words, learning is both the means and the harvest of an impactful
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Reflection Practices
educational experience. As such, by employing explicitly sensory/expe-
rience-based terminology in the reection prompts, we hoped to invite
what Kolb and Kolb describe as “the holistic process of adaptation to
the world. Not just the result of cognition [but] the integrated function-
ing of the total person—thinking, feeling, perceiving, and behaving”
(194).
We employed qualitative methodology in this study because it oered
a means for in-depth exploration of themes found within the varied
responses to the reective writing prompts. Qualitative analysis has
historically been used to meaningfully analyze outcomes found in writ-
ten text that are not easily observable via more traditional research
methods, such as survey research. Nineteen students in a class of 25
agreed to participate in this research by allowing their written reec-
tions to be used in the study. All 19 students were members of the same
section of a single rst-year honors seminar delivered within the com-
prehensive university honors program. While we initially intended for
all students in each of the six sections of KSU 1101H to participate in
this study, only one section of the course engaged with the assignment
throughout the semester. (Potential reasons for the lack of buy-in will
be discussed later in this essay.) Although only one instructor and 19 of
25 students participated in the study, all sections of KSU 1101H shared
the same standardized syllabus, the same set of materials, the course
PowerPoints™, in-class and out-of-class learning activities, assignments,
and grading rubrics.
e course was oered as a shared and collective learning experi-
ence. To that end, the instructors met collectively four times before the
commencement of the fall semester. During the instructor workshops,
the content, learning outcomes, course anthology, and PowerPoints™
for use in the course were reviewed, and the pedagogical approach
and methodology were established. e instructors collaborated to
develop a joint course timeline and agenda, intending that the mate-
rial would be delivered uniformly across all six sections. Students who
participated in the investigation provided their reection journals to
the research team for evaluation at the end of the semester with the
understanding that aer transcription, the journals would be returned.
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Miles and Bailey
e researchers followed accepted methods for research with human
subjects, and the Institutional Review Board of Kennesaw State Uni-
versity approved the project prior to its onset.
By working with the lens of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss’s
conception of grounded theory methodology and utilizing a constant
comparison method of analysis through which we regularly reviewed
data for analysis, we constructed categories and themes from open
and axially coded data. Coding schemes were determined through
constant comparison by the researchers. Aer the transcription of
all written reection journals was completed, we organized the data
using a multiple coding approach, which Rosaline S. Barbour identied
for improving rigor in qualitative research. Specically, we began by
independently coding all transcribed written reections line-by-line.
A graduate research assistant also independently coded line-by-line
transcriptions for one out of every ve pages of the combined written
reections, commencing and concluding at the natural beginnings and
endings of written thoughts on each page. e graduate student’s codes
were used to conrm thematic categories as they emerged.
We met frequently to assess the data we drew from our individual
coding processes and discuss the development of categorical patterns
that emerged from our respective codes. When variations concern-
ing emergent categories occurred, we revisited the transcripts. In so
doing, we found instructive Barbour’s synopsis of the importance of
cross-checking when working with coding practices. Codes devel-
oped by the graduate student were compared to those of the research
team with the goal of arriving at a consensus. is process continued
until concordance among the research team across all categories was
achieved. e practice of cross-checking the coding of the major cat-
egories aorded an additional degree of rigor to the research study
and facilitated enhanced insights into the process of data analysis. In
short, the qualitative research methods employed in this study pro-
vided a means for identifying and comparing themes and determining
primary categories of response to reection prompt types. In addition,
the rich discussion and analysis that occurred as part of this activ-
ity led to a consensus among the researchers regarding the quality
and tenor of written responses that resulted from the designated and
applied prompts.
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Reflection Practices
A graphic representation of the results of the qualitative analysis of
Daybook written reections used in the class is depicted in Figure 1.
Although four dierent writing prompts were employed, three yielded
strikingly similar responses, while the fourth prompt generated largely
unique thematic and more nuanced categories. As such, while all writ
-
ing prompts were initially analyzed separately, we ultimately elected to
pool together the rst three prompts (i.e., Saw, Said, and Happened)
because of the similarities in categories of response across partici-
pant entries. Because the fourth writing prompt (Connected/Drawn)
yielded results that were distinct from the rst three writing prompts,
we will discuss the themes and ndings from this prompt separately
from the others.
Spontaneous
Class Events
and/or
Discussions
Important or
Main Ideas
Course
Content
Planned Class
Activities
CLASS SESSION SUMMARY
To Future To Prior Class
Content
To Personal
Life
To Other
Classes
LEARNING CONNECTIONS
We analyzed students’ written Daybook reections on their learn-
ing for thematic patterns. Overall, two major thematic categories
emerged, with four distinct subthemes identied within each cate-
gory. e thematic response to the rst three reection prompts (Saw,
Said, Happened) resulted in a compilation of perceived highlights from
each class session that we entitled “Class Session Summary.” Within
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Miles and Bailey
this overall thematic response, four subthemes emerged: (A) planned
class activities; (B) course content; (C) spontaneous class events and/
or discussions; and (D) important or main ideas.
A: Planned Class Activities
is subcategory included activities that the students perceived as hav-
ing been planned ahead of the class by the instructor. Most comments
regarding this topic reected the four prompts (Saw, Said, Happened,
and Connected/Drawn) in some fashion although with various degrees
of explicitness. Some examples are as follows: “We saw a video about
creativity which coincided with the reading we did prior to class.”
“What happened was the livestream from the [University] librarian
that gave an overview of how to use the library database search tool,
which was extremely helpful and informative.” “e PowerPoint pre-
sentation said that there are four parts to Kolb and Kolb’s experiential
learning cycle.” Participants’ writing reected an awareness that these
activities were part of the shared learning experiences of all of the stu-
dents in the class.
B: Course Content
Another subcategory of responses indicated additional material/insight
that may or may not have been actively experienced during the class
period but was nevertheless understood to be part of the course con-
tent. Oen, activities that took place in class were paired with learning
from required course readings, which may or may not have been
explicitly discussed. Comments such as the following revealed this
manner of content assimilation: “We briey skimmed over the read-
ing in class today, but it’s denitely something I plan to go back and
really [get] into.” “e reading backed the idea that anyone can build
creativity and make an eort to change. I’m not under any impression
that I will suddenly become an artist but the reading and class video
made me feel that I should at least try to be more optimistic about my
creative ability.” In this subcategory, student comments largely reected
an understanding of a broad knowledge scope that incorporated the
pre-session readings with a broader application of the learning goals
of the class sessions rather than a narrow response to the discussion
of content delivered in the class session alone.
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Reflection Practices
C: Spontaneous Class Interactions and/or Discussions
Students also responded to the rst three written prompts (Said, Saw,
and Happened) by identifying spontaneous class interactions that
emerged from the class discussion. For example, “Professor [name]
showed us the ethical standards adopted by her own profession, and
I thought that was very interesting and useful to have in professions
and that they should be strictly followed. Ethics are probably the most
important part of being a professional.” “Students voiced disagreements
on the eectiveness of our current education system.” ese interac-
tions occurred as a part of the class but were not depicted in the course
readings, slides, or planned discussions that students addressed in their
Daybooks. Instead, this subcategory of responses revealed extended
reection on the lived events of a class session and the thoughtful
incorporation of said events into the participants’ summaries of a
course lesson.
D: Important or Main Ideas
Students consistently reiterated class sessions’ main ideas in their Day-
books within the rst three prompt quadrants. Comments like the
following represent student reections related to these prompts: “We
watched a TED Talk explaining what professionalism really is and how
it is important in whatever career path someone chooses to follow.”
“We learned about the ability for [disciplinary] elds to be connected
together to solve and address problems. I am beginning to see and
understand the importance of interdisciplinary learning. e connec-
tion allows greater accomplishments from the strengths of multiple
experts from various professional elds.” “We discussed Ken Bain’s
work and the dierent types of learners he has written about such as
strategic, surface, and deep learners.”
Each of the four subthemes of the larger theme, Class Session Sum-
mary, contributed to an overall content-related representation of the
students’ perceptions of what individual class sessions had addressed
and included specic and/or additional thematic responses regard-
ing what students observed (Saw) in the class, what ideas had been
expressed (Said)—by themselves or by others, and what events had
occurred (Happened) during the class. e majority of responses
included single sentences that directly addressed the prompt. Although
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Miles and Bailey
these responses implicitly suggested that learning had indeed taken
place, the type of deep, introspective, and insightful comprehension
that the instructors hoped had been attained by students was largely
absent from the responses that made up the categorical theme Class
Session Summary. While occasional evidence of more complex cog-
nition and the drawing of connections between prior and concurrent
learning in these responses emerged, the writing in these three quad-
rants was largely devoid of such evidence.
As mentioned above, these ndings were initially puzzling: were
the single-word prompts simply too vague to elicit meaningful varia-
tion in student response? Did saw, for example, strictly imply visually
perceive or rather more broadly, did it indicate observe? Or, variably,
both? Also, how did the fashion in which saw was interpreted aect
each respondent’s approach to said? While one conclusion deserving
of extended consideration would be that the prompts were insu-
ciently structured, another would suggest that the benets of allowing
students a wide range to interpret semi-structured prompts carry with
them the instructive caveat that when in doubt about the appropriate-
ness of their independent response, many students favor a literal versus
gurative approach.
Responses that specically connected the class content to other learn-
ing or led the research team to infer the presence of deep and more
transformative types of learning arose in response to the prompt con-
nected/drawn. As a result, these data were identied as a separate
thematic category. e research team labeled this category “Learning
Connections.” Within this thematic category, four subthemes emerged:
[connections] (A) to prior class content; (B) to other classes; (C) to
personal life; and (D) to future.
A: Connections to Prior Class Content
e last ten minutes of each class session were devoted to students
reecting in their Daybooks. While many chose to draw on mate-
rial that they had just covered in class, a considerable number used
the Connected/Drawn portion to make connections with prior class
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Reflection Practices
content and learning experiences. One such example is as follows:
“In order to grow roots and make them deeper you need to water
the plants. Feed your education and your brain and you’ll become an
incredible learner like a beautiful tree.” is reection was recorded
upon completion of a unit related to the practices of critical thinking.
Still, beyond a simple reiteration of class content, the student appears to
integrate learning from a previous unit regarding surface versus deep
learning. Another student wrote: “Today I had a xed mindset that I
would have a poor day. I closed myself o from engaging as I usually
do because of how upset I was coming into class.” is comment was
written several weeks aer a class discussion addressing the dierences
between xed and growth mindsets. e comment provides clear evi-
dence of the student’s ability to connect their current state of mind with
previously assimilated course content. Another student drew connec-
tions between new and prior class discussions: “Five types of students
encompass various habitudes and a growth mindset. . . . When we
learned about Bloom’s taxonomy, it reminded me that the higher you
go, the more you need a growth mindset.”
B: Connections to Other Classes
Students’ reections in this category revealed several instances of
parallels they were drawing between the rst-year seminar’s lessons
addressing the learning process and the content of their other courses.
One student wrote, “I connected the concept of deep learning to how I
am in specic classes that interest me more than others. For example,
in English I feel that I am more of a deep learner versus my science
class [in] which I am more of a strategic learner due to the class not
being very interesting to me.” Students also connected specic honors
rst-year seminar content to content from other classes they were tak-
ing. As one student reected, “I connected [today’s class] with how we
have learned to talk about and use civil discourse in my English class.”
Another student connected learning in the honors seminar with prior
learning: “Back in high school, AP Psychology taught us how much
stronger intrinsic rewards are. Here, we see the same evidence over and
over again. Ken Bain’s deep learner has intrinsic motivation, and the
theory of growth mindset includes the concept of intrinsic motivation.”
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Miles and Bailey
C: Connections to Personal Life
A subtheme of drawing connections between the class and students’
personal lives also emerged. Students applied their learning to their
own work experiences. For example, aer one class session focusing
on the generative eects of cultivating optimistic, creative, and atten-
tive attitudes in shared spaces, be they personal or professional, one
individual wrote:
When they’re hiring, employers want to hire professional people
with professional attitudes. I had to overcome my surroundings
in my old job at a movie theater when the whole place ran out
of popcorn. I just couldn’t give up. ey were relying on me to
be a professional that they hired, not just a high school graduate.
People’s opinions of the workplace can go down if they don’t feel
like you care about them as customers. Emotional intelligence is
important in the workplace.
Similarly, this student applied learning in the honors seminar to
the workplace:
Adaptability and professionalism run hand-in-hand. I have to be
able to adapt to circumstances and people and requirements in a
number of things to really be a professional. Today we discussed
professionalism and what it truly means to be a professional in
today’s society. I was personally most interested [in this subject
matter] and connected [it to] the importance of adaptability and
professionalism when I’m at work.
As both of these examples reveal, student’s reections related to the
subtheme prompting personal connection to class content tended
toward lengthier and more developed insights.
D: Connections to Future
A majority of the students ultimately drew connections between the
rst-year honors seminar’s content and their own future goals. Finding
this relationship was exciting for the research team because it indi-
cated that students were poised to incorporate their learning from the
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Reflection Practices
course into their continuing personal and professional trajectories. As
one person expressed:
When we reach out to others around us and listen to their sto-
ries, we can gain a better perspective. We can immerse ourselves
in the study of culture to understand. at is really the rst step
to solving America’s problems. So, if we can reach out—even
within close communities—and begin to make an impact, we
can continue [to] widen our scope and ability to understand
other perspectives.
Other students suggested they were already drawing connections
between what they had learned in class and how they imagined their
future professional work experiences. is type of reection is evi-
dent in the following excerpt from one student’s Daybook: “We know
that someday we will have to be a professional at work, but we learned
that this is important also even now, at school. A professional chooses
to abide by ethics from their career and college is a place to practice
these ethics.” As another individual reected: “I think that disciplinary
learning in higher education where learning is deep in a single eld
might cause a person to get stuck in a certain career . . . interdisci-
plinary learning is important in college.” is manner of introspective
and personally driven application of assimilated content material did
not tend to occur in response to the rst three prompts despite verbal
participation in class suggesting students were drawing these connec-
tions. By employing our fourth prompt, Connected/Drawn, students
reected upon how they connected their rst-year honors seminar’s
class content and/or discussion to experiences outside of the class;
indeed, they demonstrated a ready ability to do so.
A strengthened capacity to draw complex connections, in general,
was a pedagogical goal jointly held by instructors of the rst-year hon-
ors seminar. Indeed, it was a realized goal whose fruition the research
team strongly believes was revealed and, more importantly, facilitated
through semi-structured reections in students’ Daybooks. Results of
this investigation indicate alignment between the practice of written
reection within honors rst-year seminars and the broader goals of
an integrative honors education.
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Miles and Bailey
Conrmability of ndings was achieved in two separate fashions. e
initial method involved corroborating evidence across a representative
sample of participants. In this investigation, corroboration was deter-
mined when individual research team members axed similar codes
in separately coded Daybook transcriptions. e second method of
corroboration compared participant and instructor open-ended survey
results with the themes that emerged in the investigation. e research
-
ers developed a survey to determine the perceptions of students and
instructors on the use of Daybooks. e survey results were used to
conrm and explain ndings from the qualitative analysis of reection
data. Seven open-ended survey questions were posed to all student
participants and the honors rst-year seminar instructors upon com-
pletion of the rst-year seminar course that incorporated Daybook
reections into classroom pedagogy, regardless of the duration of their
participation in the investigation. (See Tables 1 and 2 for Daybook
Reection Survey Questions for Students and Instructors.)
Prompts
Question 1 What was your impression of using the Daybooks for weekly
reection on learning in this class?
Question 2
Did you note any dierences in your ability to retain course informa-
tion or in your ability to make connections to other class information,
serendipitous learning, or life experiences? Why or why not?
Question 3 Did your Daybook contain pictures/drawings? How did these
contribute to your learning?
Question 4
Did the unit on reective practices using Daybooks, which was
provided at the onset of class, assist you in your learning? Why or
why not?
Question 5 Do you plan to use written reections again? Why or why not and
in what circumstances?
Question 6 Would you recommend the use of written reections in Daybooks
to a friend? Why or why not?
Question 7 Do you think you learned anything extra through the process of
reecting in your Daybook? What might that be?
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Reflection Practices
Prompts
Question 1 What was your impression of using the Daybooks for weekly
reection on your students’ learning in this class?
Question 2
Did you note any dierences in your students’ ability to retain
course information or in their ability to make connections to other
class information, serendipitous learning, or life experiences? Why
or why not?
Question 3 Did your students’ Daybooks contain pictures/drawings? Do you
think that these contributed to your students’ learning?
Question 4
Did the unit on reective practices using Daybooks, which was
provided at the onset of class, seem to assist students in their
understanding? Why or why not?
Question 5 Do you plan to use written reections as a part of your course(s)
again? Why or why not and in what circumstances?
Question 6 Would you recommend the use of written reections in Daybooks
to a colleague? Why or why not?
Question 7 Do you think your students learned anything extra through the
process of reecting in the Daybooks? What would that be?
Student Survey Results
A total of nineteen students and three instructors completed Daybook
surveys; this was our rst indication that a limited number of indi-
viduals had participated. While a full analysis of the results of this
survey data could be conducted as a component of subsequent course
assessment, the surveys were initially used solely for conrmation/
refutation and/or expansion of the ndings in this study. e inves-
tigators coded each student survey response as positive, neutral, or
negative. In addition to the recorded percentage of positive, negative,
and neutral responses, excerpts of survey responses that either con-
rmed, refuted, or expanded ndings will be explicated below. (See
Figure 2 for a graphic display of the percent of students’ positive, nega-
tive, and neutral responses to the seven survey questions.)
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Miles and Bailey
With the exception of Question 3 (Did your Daybook contain pic-
tures/drawings? How did these contribute to your learning?), student
responses to survey queries regarding the Daybook reection activity
were consistently and demonstrably positive. e highest percentage
of positive responses was given to Question 4 (Did the unit on reec-
tive practices using Daybooks, which was provided at the onset of
class, assist you in your learning? Why or why not?). e research
team members contend that this armative response rate reects the
relevance of detailed (though, importantly, not overtly prescriptive)
instruction regarding the reective process, as well as a successfully
communicated sense of instructor expectations pertaining to the
resultant written material. Conversely, the lowest percentage of posi-
tive responses was to Question 3, indicating that fewer students saw
the value of drawing in their Daybooks instead of submitting written
responses. Of additional interest were the responses to Questions 2 and
6: while the majority of student respondents did sense improvement in
the “ability to retain course information” and/or the “ability to make
connections to other . . . learning, or life experiences,” a minority, albeit
signicant, responded that this had not been the case; a similar divide
was indicated in the responses to whether or not the students would
175
Reflection Practices
recommend the use of written reections in Daybooks to a friend. In
our mind, this feedback indicates the challenge mentioned previously
of generating student and faculty buy-in to reection; this perception
is underscored by the fact that only one of the six seminar sections
participated in the Daybook experiment until the end of the term.
Student responses to the open-ended survey questions conrmed
the primary themes that emerged from their writing. One student
reected: “I feel like the ‘Happened’ and ‘Said’ sections could be some-
what redundant.” In contrast, another individual noted an increased
willingness to participate in class discussions as a response to one of
the Daybook prompts: “I learned that taking part in class discussions
would make reecting easier because the section in the Daybook say-
ing ‘said’ would be easy to ll out if I took part in class discussions.”
Several students stated that they felt limited by the prompts, which may
lend credence to the idea of combining the three prompts researchers
collapsed into a single theme or one general prompt. Students com-
mented as follows: “I personally felt that the grid format worked against
reection more than helped. e reason is that the prompts restrict
what I say to what I saw in class, what happened in class, and what was
said in class.” “I would say that making reections with such strict grid
sections is exceedingly dicult. I wanted to write and say much more
but only being able to say what I saw, what happened, and what was
said made it impossible to do so.” is feedback suggests that although
students did have four full additional pages to respond freely aer
their initial response to the semi-structured prompts, they either for-
got about this option or simply neglected to take advantage of it. Either
way, it appears that a prompt, however open and deliberately exible,
does pose the potential pitfall of circumscribing student responses.
In contrast, a prompt can be invigorating and stimulate explicit
reection on the learning that has taken place. And in doing so, deep
learning is facilitated. For example, several students conrmed the
unique benets of the Connected/Drawn prompt. Responses such as
the following were typical: “is course has surprised me. I nd myself
making more connections between other subjects I’m in and the other
aspects of my life.” Another student reported: “Yes, the connections
part was a big part of the reections because it really made me stop and
think about what I was really connecting to the material we learned
and how I can connect things to it, where previously I did not do that
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Miles and Bailey
in other classes.” Another student suggested that the ability to make
connections grew over time as a product of the daily reection process:
“As the course progressed and we wrote more and more reections,
making connections became easier for me due to the fact that writing
the reections had reinforced the learned information for me.” Another
student utilized the prompts to inspire their ability to learn deeply,
explaining, “I think the coolest part was the connected/drawn, where
I was able to ask myself questions in hopes of challenging myself to
grow, based upon the things or concepts that I had learned in class.”
e appreciation of the Connected/Drawn prompt was a consistent
response throughout the student surveys.
Instructor Survey Results
Because of the limited number of instructors facilitating the rst-year
honors seminar, responses were not coded as positive, negative, or
neutral and then converted into percentages, as was the process for the
student surveys. Instead, the instructor surveys were primarily used
to conrm, refute, or expand upon the research ndings by providing
the perspectives of those who had led the course. For example, one
instructor’s survey response underscored student comments regard-
ing the limitations of using four semi-structured prompts rather than
employing a more open-ended approach to the daily reections:
Some of my students really thrived with this activity while others
struggled. ose that thrived used the Daybook throughout the
class sessions, taking notes and recording things in the Said or
Happened sections as they were happening. en they were able
to maximize their reection time to draw connections and make
their own conclusions about what happened in the class and also
what they think. ose who struggled had trouble for two rea-
sons. e rst was that some of them didn’t jive with the format.
ey felt somehow restricted by the quadrants but had trouble
articulating this. e others who struggled were so focused on
the assignment and not actually engaging in true reection.
An additional nding that the instructor surveys largely conrmed
was the positive impact of the Connected/Drawn prompt on student
learning. One individual wrote: “I do think that for those who thrived
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Reflection Practices
they were able to see the connections in their course more clearly. I
also think they were able to better articulate the foundations of hon-
ors learning because they found ways to make personal connections
through their reections.” According to the third instructor, the Con-
nected/Drawn prompt facilitated substantial personal benets:
I definitely found connections in my own scholarship and
even just to my personal life, as well as being able to highlight
moments when my students taught me something related to the
course. I enjoyed the activity as an instructor. And it gave me
a place to note “this activity went well” or “they don’t like this
kind of activity” or “maybe this topic needs to move to another
place in the semester.” It was very helpful in considering my own
teaching of the course.
While not all instructor responses were uniformly favorable, each
respondent did report positive impressions regarding the practice of
reection and indicated that they were interested in using a variation
of the Daybooks’ reection assignment when oering the honors rst-
year seminar in subsequent iterations.
CONCLUSION
e current investigation was initiated to determine the impact of
semi-structured reection in an honors rst-year seminar course.
Compelled by the scholarship of Dewey, Mezirow, and other theorists
and educators invested in the potential of reection to contribute to
transformational learning experiences and convinced that the rst-year
honors classroom would serve as fertile ground upon which to explore
this topic, we embarked upon this study of the use of semi-structured
reection in the undergraduate classroom. While we were initially sur-
prised by the hesitancy of some students and instructors to engage in
the process over a full semester, we did conclude that this reluctance
only further indicates that one of the primary challenges of incorpo-
rating reection into pedagogical practices has to do with continued
uncertainty about the value and perhaps the methodology of doing so.
While the initial three prompts (Saw, Said, and Happened) elic-
ited limited in-depth ndings, the fourth prompt, Connected/Drawn,
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Miles and Bailey
yielded the unique thematic response of Learning Connections. e
Learning Connections theme, consisting of four subthemes (connec-
tions to earlier class content, to other classes, to personal life, and to
the future), showed marked evidence of enhanced student learning
and a widespread ability to draw complex learning connections across
the disciplines. Student and instructor survey responses conrmed
our ndings in the Daybooks themselves; they also oered additional
evidence regarding the value and challenges of foregrounding writ-
ten reection as classroom practice. In addition, recommendations
related to improving the process for this reective activity in the hon-
ors rst-year seminar were gained from student and instructor survey
responses. One primary nding, for example, is that students need to
be regularly reminded, even prompted, that free-form reection is an
absolutely valid and viable practice following initial responses to the
prompts. A second conclusion is that the prompts themselves, as well
as the quadrant structure, may need to be reworked in order to invite
gurative as well as literal initial responses.
As we continue to unpack our research ndings, one aspect stands
out: namely, the intrinsic value of written reection in higher education
classrooms in general and in university honors classrooms in particu-
lar. As Zuber-Skerritt and Cendon contend:
Reection entails serious thought or careful consideration about
an issue. It [involves] focusing our thoughts on a matter to try
to make sense of it. rough considering carefully, we try to
identify linkage, disjuncture, causes, reasons and any other new
insights that we had not recognized earlier, and we continue to
probe in this evolving light as our appreciation advances. More
specically in higher education, reective learning means learn-
ing through reection on something the learner has read, heard,
seen, observed or experienced. (19)
Kuennen extends this conception by emphasizing the importance of
understanding “critical reection as a process moving thought from
an existing situation to an emerging situation, connecting initial
understanding with deeper understanding” (306). And, as we write
elsewhere, written reection aids in the development of student auton-
omy and is “a critical feature of successful learner outcomes” (Miles
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Reflection Practices
and Bailey 140). Arguably, nowhere is the latter insight more relevant
than in the contemporary rst-year honors college classroom, where
interdisciplinary inquiry, instructor-modeled and facilitated learning
practices, and deep learning are placed in the pedagogical foreground.
NCHC contends that an “honors college or program [should
provide] opportunities for measurably broader, deeper, and more
complex learning-centered and learner-directed experiences for its
students than are available elsewhere in the institution” (1). We feel
that this philosophical premise indicates the importance of incorporat-
ing semi-structured written reection practices into rst-year honors
seminar courses. Furthermore, the primarily armative response of
both students and instructors to the usefulness of Daybooks, in terms
of internal and external course application, indicates that by incorpo-
rating written reection into a course designed to acclimate rst-year
students to honors methodology, instructors are optimally position-
ing their students for continued success in the honors college, in the
university at large, and in their respective and emerging professional
disciplines.
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183
Kevin W. Dean and Zachary Wooten
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Founded in 1871, the institution, which eventually became
West Chester University (WCU) of the Pennsylvania State Sys-
tem of Higher Education, transitioned in 1927 from a Normal
School to a State Teachers College. In 1960, the institution intro-
duced a liberal arts program, turning the one-time academy
into a comprehensive college. Finally, in 1983, the institution
attained university status. Located in the heart of Pennsylvania’s
Brandywine Valley in Chester County, WCU sits 25 miles west
of Philadelphia and 17 miles north of Wilmington, Delaware.
WCU is a public, comprehensive institution oering under-
graduate education and graduate programs. In fall 2024, the
university enrolled 3,005 new students and had a total enrollment
(undergraduate and graduate) of 17,171 students. Among under-
graduates, 58% identify as female. e university has a racial/
ethnic composition of 73% White, 10% Black (non-Hispanic), 8%
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Dean and Wooten
Hispanic, 3% Asian, 4% multi-racial, 2% undeclared, 0.1% Amer-
ican Indian or Alaskan Native, 0.01% Native Hawaiian or Other
Pacic Islander, and 0.2% international. WCU reports 63.2% of
faculty are full-time and the faculty to student ratio is 20:1.
A
ll undergraduate honors courses at West Chester University of
Pennsylvania (WCU) are designed to meet program-based
student learning outcomes consistent with the honors college’s mis-
sion statement. ese outcomes represent the skills, knowledge, and
attitudes central to an honors education, which include an intellec
-
tual environment informed by multiple disciplinary perspectives, an
emphasis on leadership theory and practice, and a commitment to
civic engagement.
Qualied students can participate in honors through one of two
tracks: 1) entering rst-year students in the honors living-learning
program, and 2) upper-class students and external transfer students
through the honors seminar program. From the fall of 2000 through
2015, honors accepted an entering class of 40 students from 170 inter-
viewed candidates. With institutional support, honors accepted the
challenge of expanding the program to 80 entering students in fall
2017, drawn from over 300 applicants. Approximately 350 students
constitute current membership in honors.
Current students in honors reect academic diversity, representing
51 academic degree programs. e honors college has a 30:70 male-
to-female ratio, and 27% of students identify as Black, Indigenous, or
People of Color (BIPOC). Students must maintain a minimum 3.25
cumulative GPA to remain in good standing with the honors college;
the average GPA for all honors students is 3.87. All rst-year students
entering the honors college reside in dedicated honors housing, where
students can retain space throughout their undergraduate experience.
e WCU Honors College met the university’s fall 2019 mandate to
provide all students with a rst-year seminar (FYS) by creating HON
100: Self-Awareness and Development. is three-credit, extended-
orientation, rst-year seminar for entering honors students runs in
185
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
the fall semester. e seminar gains depth by building on a weeklong,
intense summer immersion experience, a mandatory prerequisite for
HON 100.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Between 1995 and 1999, direct interaction with leadership workshops
and curriculum designers from the Gallup Institute, Disney Corpo-
ration, and Kellogg Foundation inspired the focus of WCU’s honors
FYS. e consultancy opportunity conrmed a critical rst step for
leadership development: individuals seeking leadership opportunities
must critically and honestly self-reect. Despite students navigating a
busy society lled with countless distractions, creating time for per-
sonal rejuvenation and space for sharing insights with others is central
to developing and practicing reection strategies. us, as the honors
college sought to prepare student leaders, it was tting that the FYS be
titled HON 100: Self-Awareness and Development. Aer determin
-
ing the focus of the FYS, a professor of kinesiology and a second from
psychology brainstormed content, experiences, and course objectives
valuable in engaging and inspiring self-reection.
e honors college functioned as a pedagogical laboratory for a
university-wide FYS because it was delivered annually for nearly two
decades before the university decided to provide a related experience
for all students. In the fall of 2017, the university’s Curriculum and
Academic Policies Council (CAPC) voted to pilot an FYS for all enter-
ing exploratory studies (undeclared) students in the fall of 2018. ey
also mandated an FYS course for all entering students beginning in the
fall of 2019. HON 100 gained ocial sanction in the spring of 2018 to
count as the university’s FYS for honors students.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
Until 2016, a team of two faculty members co-taught two sections
of the original honors FYS course. Faculty engaged students in small
rotating groups. Frequently, faculty selected and mentored upper-
class student leaders who assisted with activities. e current version
of HON 100: Self-Awareness and Development involves four faculty
who each teach approximately three-week modules to groups of twenty
186
Dean and Wooten
students. e modules include team building, diversity and inclusion,
family dynamics and social-emotional leadership, and nancial liter-
acy. Aer a little over three weeks, the groups of twenty students rotate
until all students complete each of the four modules. Assisting with
the class is a senior peer leader who holds the position of Involvement
Coordinator (IC). e IC holds two formal meetings with each student,
the rst occurring near the start of the term and the second near the
end of the term. ese meetings provide students an additional avenue
for orientation, information, recommendations, and guidance regard-
ing campus engagement.
From its inception, our community learning model of honors edu-
cation prioritized an on-campus overnight summer experience before
the ocial start of the fall term, bringing students together in a wel-
coming environment to gain familiarity with each other, the honors
faculty, the campus complex, the honors residence space, and food
services. From 2000 through 2016, the program occurred as a two-day
and one-night event in July, culminating with a celebration dinner for
students and two family members. Increased enrollment in 2017, as
well as the pedagogical shi needed to properly run the outdoor adven-
ture activities for HON 100, justied the inauguration of the Summer
Honors Symposium, a four-night and ve-day program that serves as
a prerequisite for HON 100.
187
Kevin W. Dean and Zachary Wooten
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
F
or more than a century, American pedagogues have used reection
as a vehicle for learning. One of the most inuential scholars in
this area is John Dewey, whose position has achieved a certain apho-
ristic clarity in the frequently shared sentiment that we do not learn
from experience—we learn from reecting on experience. Leadership
educator Cynthia Roberts understands reection as “the process of
critically thinking about behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and values” (117).
In short, reection represents a crucial and deliberate suspension of
action. As educators, we intuit this notion; unfortunately, many rst-
year honors learners do not.
In the 1964 Disney classic lm, Mary Poppins uses a special mea-
suring tape to give her insight into the personalities of the Banks
children. To their dismay, Michael is labeled “extremely stubborn and
suspicious,” and Jane is identied as “rather inclined to giggle, doesn’t
put things away.” Upon learning these results, Michael quips, “how
about you?” Poppins obliges and proudly proclaims the result of her
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measurement: “Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way.” First-
year honors students oen come to college groomed as the next Mary
Poppins, feeling they must be practically perfect in every way. Students
assume perfection is performing in the right way. ese students arrive
laden with prior academic accolades. Cohorts include valedictorians,
national merit scholars, and high performers in virtually every area,
from the arts to athletics. A particular challenge for these students
includes transitioning away from embodying a “Poppins” personi-
cation, someone who (1) solves all problems solo and (2) cannot
admit to any standard shy of perfection. For such people, any notion
of close examination of personal ideas and knowledge generates anxi-
ety because such practice might lead to an awareness that they are not
perfect or that the carefully applied veneer of accomplishment might
show some cracks upon close inspection. Sadly, fear of self-discovery
can cause students to heed the advice given by Prince Fiyero in the
Broadway production of Wicked, who dismisses formal education and
champions living the “unexamined life,” oering the following advice:
e trouble with schools is
ey always try to teach the wrong lesson
Believe me, I’ve been kicked out
Of enough of them to know
ey want you to become less callow
Less shallow
But I say: Why invite stress in?
Stop studying strife
And learn to live “the unexamined life”
Dancing through life
Skimming the surface
Gliding where turf is smooth
Life’s more painless
For the brainless
Why think too hard?
When it’s so soothing
Dancing through life
No need to tough it
When you can slough it o as I do
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Reflection
Nothing matters
But knowing nothing matters
It’s just life
So keep dancing through (Butz)
An honors education must demand more from students than allowing
them to slide through their undergraduate careers without providing
a structured environment and professional guidance on how to mean-
ingfully reect on, analyze, and test their beliefs and values based on
knowledge.
Learning from experience implies a sense of vulnerability, which
can prove perplexing to honors students who come to college with
preconceived external and internal pressures to perform and excel
without failure. For far too many, academic success embodies this man-
tra: It doesn’t matter what I think; it only matters if I’m right. Reection
holds an inherent risk. Engaging in reection challenges individu-
als to impugn seemingly right answers in favor of understanding the
complexities of issues in our communities. While no honors educa-
tor would dispute the value of reection, when tasked with planning
curriculum, instructors must be explicit from the very rst days of
the college experience: time spent in critical reection represents time
well spent and serves as a valuable and overt element of a rst-year
seminar (FYS).
In this essay, we present strategies for prioritizing reection, draw-
ing illustrations from the FYS designed for honors students at West
Chester University of Pennsylvania (WCU). Beyond advocating for
the overt incorporation of reection into the FYS and observing how
reection inuences students’ insights, the chapter also presents peda-
gogical practices used to maximize student learning outcomes from
the reective process.
OVERVIEW OF HONORS FYS
e university-sanctioned FYS for honors students—HON 100: Self-
Awareness and Development—with its prerequisite weeklong honors
summer symposium, targets rst-year students admitted to the hon-
ors college. A signicant component of HON 100 draws from the
team-building pedagogy of adventure-based learning through models
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championed by Outward Bound. Outward Bound is a particularly
functional model for our purposes because it provides an exceptional
platform for building community by prioritizing team over individual-
ity. Adventure educator Joseph A. Reynolds emphasizes the importance
of a hallmark Outward Bound component—a “wilderness” experience.
He notes the value that an “unfamiliar social environment comprised
of learners who don’t yet know each other” can provide in terms of
personal development. e tension such situations create forces par-
ticipants to recognize that “success is possible only with the group’s
eort” (21). e Outward Bound webpage celebrates the pioneering
work of Kurt Hahn and Marina Ewald. It chronicles the program’s his-
tory, which started nearly a century ago and has its roots in Germany.
Josh Minor, drawing upon the philosophies of Hann and Ewald, holds
credit for founding Outward Bound in the United States in 1962 (“Our
History”). While their signature wilderness programming remains in
the Colorado mountains and on the Maine seacoast, they now provide
ocial oerings in the wilds of corporate campuses and metropoli-
tan centers. ey recognize these spaces can prove conducive to their
pedagogical aims.
We begin our process by requiring students to come to what most
privately admit is a high-anxiety “wilderness” that they must face in
the fall: our campus. For ve days and four nights, eighty incoming
students, most of whom have never met each other, join in a highly
programmed communal experience designed to introduce them to one
another, the faculty, the structure and philosophy of honors education,
the campus complex, residence life, and dining services. It also holds a
primary goal of beginning the process of breaking down self-imposed
expectations of individual superiority and promoting the value of col-
laborative learning. A particular asset of Outward Bound rests in its
ability to function as a great equalizer, where individuals of all phe-
notypes can encounter challenges and success. Both the stereotypical
“jocks and bookworms” learn to embrace their gis and the gis that
others bring that enable personal and communal growth. Mark M.
Brown, a chronicler of the history of Outward Bound, recounts the
comments of author and conservationist Liz Cunningham, whose great
uncle Kurt Hahn founded the program. A self-proclaimed “scrawny
kid and not particularly healthy,” Cunningham viewed her unlikely
involvement according to Brown, in an Outward Bound program as a
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Reflection
penultimate accomplishment in gaining life perspective. In recalling
her anxiety about heights and questioning her ability to cross a high
rope successfully, she recalled those who became her community of
support, encouraging her onward: “My experience at Outward Bound,”
states Cunningham, “was about staying in the moment. I told myself if
I can take the next step, then I’m good. I can take the next step” (Brown
7). Our students echo these sentiments.
e summer is critical to this program for three reasons. First,
during the summer our campus exists as a relative “wilderness” in that
the campus population is dramatically reduced to the extent that our
students can experience the campus much as if they were isolated from
the outside world. We further promote the Outward Bound spirit of
“focus on the moment” by doing our best to eliminate social media use
during the symposium. Second, the summer eliminates the pressures of
academic performance. While students do indeed interact with faculty
in rotating modules throughout the day and in evening programming,
they receive no grades during this week. Further, we encourage them to
bring a journal and a pencil or pen to all sessions and aord them, as we
will discuss later, multiple opportunities for reection. To our delight,
we notice students oen taking notes during their various sessions, and
in the fall course we hear them make references that harken back to
a specic summer activity. Finally, the summer oers sustained time
to engage in activities that, because of their intensive nature, can push
time boundaries that are hard to violate in a traditional semester. While
a schedule is essential for our program, exibility is also required. If a
group of een students prepares to climb a thirty-foot pole and then
walk a rope of y feet before descending, and the rst few individuals
take a little longer than a traditional class period allotment might allow,
the anxiety of those waiting their turn dramatically intensies. Summer
oers students the greatest possibility for an “in the moment” experi-
ence void of external distractions and demands because a chemistry
student worried about a lab beginning on the other side of campus in
twenty minutes or the instrumental music major who must perform a
recital is not anxious about being on time and warmed up.
In addition to wilderness, a vital component of Outward Bound
that we wholeheartedly embrace in our programming involves
intentional and dedicated time to reect. In Processing the Adven-
ture Experience, psychologist Reldan S. Nadler and educator John L.
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Luckner maintain that “planning time for processing [reection] and
appropriately structuring those sessions provides the greatest oppor-
tunity for the experience to have long-term personal eects” (xii).
Students begin with ground-based activities such as walking through
a maze blindfolded and attaining success only when depending on and
trusting the voices of peers. Next, students progress to climbing thirty
feet and walking a y-foot rope while a colleague securely holds the
belay ropes below as other peers oer armation. Students quickly
learn they cannot achieve their maximum potential alone; success
comes only with collaboration and mutual trust within a community.
e sustaining power of student learning, however, comes not from the
ropes as much as from pre- and post-debrieng and reection (both
communally and individually) that accompanies each activity.
rough these activities and subsequent reection, HON 100
seeks to break the exhaustive behavior pattern of exclusive self-reli-
ance. We emphasize the theme of collaborative learning throughout the
fall semester FYS course in each of the four modules students experi-
ence. Student Aairs professionals Brett Middleton and Chris Storath
report that one of college students’ greatest diculties is asking for
help. Because they are afraid or ill-equipped to ask for the help they
need, students too oen experience overwhelming hopelessness. is
desire to navigate college independently leads Middleton and Stor-
ath to observe the “devastating eects on their physical, mental, and
academic well-being” (1). rough various hands-on activities and
case-study reections, students use critical thinking to grapple with
challenges that elude a single correct answer. Of particular impor-
tance, notes kinesiology Professor Brent J. Bell and his colleagues at
the University of New Hampshire, who conducted an extensive review
of FYS programs with an outdoor/adventure-based component, is the
ability of adventure-based learning to instill mechanisms for building
trust between participants who can then transfer that experience into
a wide array of community-building ventures in future contexts (Bell
et al. 38). In a subsequent study, Bell and colleague Hong Chang found
evidence indicating outdoor orientation and rst-year programming
had a positive impact on student retention, based in part from the
interpersonal connectedness formed through the various experiences
that promote trust and vulnerability.
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Reflection
Additionally, students learn to identify their strengths and passions
and to dene and confront their limitations. Former CEO and Presi-
dent of the Gallup Institute Donald O. Clion and co-author Paula
Nelson assert how infusing a culture with accolades toward individuals
for playing to and developing strengths versus perfecting limitations
provides greater work productivity, enhanced motivation for risking
new challenges, and increased personal satisfaction. Indeed, building
upon Clion and Nelson’s work, research from the Gallup Institute
suggests that rather than spending time in remediation of skills outside
of their strength area, learners are better served when they understand
the value of devoting energy toward seeking out peers with comple-
mentary gis and recognizing the benets from pooling talents and
sharing workloads. Rev. Dr. Albert L. Winseman, a Senior Learning
and Development Consultant at Gallup, and his colleagues describe a
strength as “the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance
in a given activity. is ability is a powerful, productive combination of
talent, skill, and knowledge” (7). Given this denition of a strength, no
one person can be “near-perfect” in everything. us, in his writings,
consultant Tom Rath elaborates on thirty-four themes that “create a
common language or classication of talents” (Strengths 16). Discern-
ing these uniquely personalized talents occurs in a process that Rath
and the Gallup Institute call StrengthsFinders, a program that provides
learners a reective opportunity for deep self-exploration that will
assist them in knowing the abilities they bring to any group situation.
Such a foundation serves rst-semester college students well. Students
begin to understand the inevitability of change and how change holds
opportunities for new growth and development. Students experience
how collaboration—returning to the initial example, between one part-
ner on the ground holding the ropes and belaying as the other partner
climbs a thirty-foot pole—builds trust and provides strength to face
daunting risks. Reection oers opportunities for students to consider
pathways for transferring these lessons to other facets of their lives.
e life experience as a poor speller, faced by one of this essay’s
authors, illustrates the value of delegation over remediation. Identied
in fourth grade as a decient speller, he received countless dictionar-
ies as holiday and special event gis from relatives, family friends,
and former teachers. Having learned to read by sound, no amount
of remediation through dictionaries would allow him to discern the
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spelling of a landmass surrounded by water as island vs. iland or dif-
ferentiate between angel and angle, meat and meet or lab-rah-tory and
laboratory. Spelling matters, but the author discovered in college how
collaborating in groups where he could focus on producing rst dras
and surrendering the edits for spelling to a peer dramatically enhanced
performance and reduced stress. By sharing this story with rst-year
students, the faculty member models intellectual humility and reec-
tive awareness of his gis and growth areas, encouraging students to
do the same. For honors college students who can simultaneously be
terrible self-critics and reject external criticism, sharing this story
with students demonstrates that one’s weaknesses are not worthy of
shame but rather are opportunities for teamwork, collaboration, and
interconnectedness.
All four modules of the FYS expand lessons presented in the sum-
mer symposium and emphasize the programmatic goals of the honors
college, using reection as a primary pedagogical method to address
student learning. e most overt unit in expanding the summer expe-
rience devotes additional time to emphasizing team building over
self-reliance. is lesson is achieved through common readings and
enactments of problem-solving case studies drawn from various con-
texts. For each exercise, the professor reinforces the value of critical
thinking from an interdisciplinary perspective, challenging students
from dierent majors to explore how someone with a diering major
might tackle a common social challenge by infusing rather than dis-
tilling the various disciplinary perspectives.
e curricular content of HON 100 also addresses the impact of
family systems on shaping individuals, issues of diversity and inclu-
sion, and responsible personal nance and global scal stewardship.
In each area, reection proves essential. For example, in the module
about family systems and social-emotional leadership, students read
an excerpt from family communication scholars Lynn H. Turner and
Richard L. West about the signicance of stories and meaning-making
practices in families. e authors acknowledge that although “individ-
ual cultures may enact storytelling dierently or may interpret stories
dierently based on unique cultural mores, family stories persist across
culture” (209). Students reect upon and share stories within their cho-
sen families or families of origin, reecting upon how the people they
call family impact their identities.
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Reflection
In another of our FYS modules, a powerful assignment in part-
nership with National Geographic invites students to view a TEDx talk
by media scholars Anita Foeman and Bessie Lawton before exploring
and reecting on their cultural ancestry drawn from analysis of their
DNA (“Our”). When a male who identies as white discovers that he
is 10% Asian, and a woman who identies as black learns she is over
20% Caucasian, the results cause introspection for both about their
cultural heritage, and that aords them both a more empathetic view
toward the “other” who now becomes more visible within themselves.
Such lessons extend well beyond the traditional classroom. For
example, one student had an unexpected opportunity to study in
Poland. From her DNA project, she learned of her previously undoc-
umented Polish heritage and how relatives she had no prior awareness
of were transported to concentration camps during the early years of
World War II. At a museum, she had the unprecedented opportunity
to read a list of names that included some of those relatives. Another
student, learning of his German heritage from the class project, trav-
eled to a small ancestral town two years aer he graduated. Motivated
by the FYS six years prior, he traced records to nd the gravestones
of ve generations removed in a small churchyard. Reecting on his
experience, he shared that “I could never have imagined my larger
place in the world and that I would nd a place so distant that I would
now view as home” (Leinhauser). e ability to achieve such cultural
awareness becomes magnied when given incubation time through
reection in the classroom and beyond.
Finally, throughout our FYS course, we prioritize the importance
of managing resources, including physiological and psychological self-
care and nancial literacy issues. We are particularly proud of our over
twenty-year sustained programming in South Africa. e economics
professor who teaches the nancial literacy module has traveled twice
to South Africa and, most recently, is involved in collaborative work
in a highly impoverished township outside of Wellington with a com-
munity-based jobs-creation and skill-development center serving high
school students on the verge of matriculation. We use this module to
introduce students to some of the sustained partnership work we do
in South Africa and confront them, many for the rst time, with the
consequences of abject poverty, the distribution of resources, and the
value of informed philanthropy.
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Dean and Wooten
In its entirety, this FYS model, with its immersive summer sympo-
sium, sets the stage for the full-semester, three-credit course that serves
the transitional needs of rst-semester college students. Furthermore,
the course aligns with the overall mission of the honors college: train-
ing leaders for the coming century and critically examining leadership
theory and practice in action through community service and civic
engagement. While the course content holds value, it is the pedagogical
delivery emphasizing reection that engages students and gives them
the tools to carry the lessons learned with them throughout their col-
lege careers and beyond.
REFLECTION AS A DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS
We now turn attention to the reective process and strategies we uti-
lize to integrate this pedagogy into our course and, subsequently, our
institution’s broader honors educational experience. e incorporation
of reection in the learning process has been the subject of extensive
debate and analysis based on the work of pedagogical heavyweights,
including educational philosophers John Dewey and Donald A. Schön.
While scholars generally agree upon understanding reection as a
critical thinking process, what counts as good reection oen eludes
consensus.
Leadership educator Cynthia Roberts writes about the role of
reection in the classroom, especially its impact on developing future
leaders. Positing that “reection has been named as one of the key
competencies needed for eective leaders particularly as the work-
place grows more complex and multicultural,” she asks this question:
“How does one develop reective skill in college students, the leaders
of the future?” (116). Oering strategies for implementing and assess-
ing reection, Roberts contends that pedagogues generally agree that
“experience leads to observation, reection about that experience,
and ultimately the development of new insights or conclusions which
shape dierent action in the future” (117). Roberts further reports that
scholars who champion the prioritization of reection see it as a valu-
able tool for promoting a student’s ability to develop a “comprehensive
understanding of the whole person” (118–19).
By “whole person,” researchers such as educational theorist Keith
Morrison advocate for reective practices that correlate to developing
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Reflection
more than just academic or professional competency (317). Spe-
cically, attending to the whole person means developing students’
self-awareness of their strengths, limitations, and self-condence in
risk-taking and seeking support from others. Such learning comes
through reective activities such as journaling, engaging with question
sets containing application prompts, and participating in debrieng
sessions.
Honors educators Bernice Braid and Gladys Palma de Schryne-
makers view the effective examination of connections between
coursework and experiences as essential components to learning (26).
Attention to this intersection of knowledge and action not only puts
theory into practice, it oers students insights as to why and how prac-
tices hold meaning. Braid emphasizes the layered insights students
can draw through observation, writing, and subsequent reection in
a separate essay tracking the history and theory of recursive writing.
Early in the process, she instructs students to carefully note all they
experience in any given context through their multiple senses. Later,
Braid encourages students to create a descriptive narrative of the given
experience and then reect on “the lens of the writer,” those personal
characteristics unique unto each individual that can inform percep-
tions (“History and eory” 7).
As a best practice in learning, the power of reection enjoys a rich
history of support within the honors community. e utility of reec-
tion is most dramatically witnessed through City as Text® (CAT), a
highly celebrated experiential learning model. Envisioned and imple-
mented in the mid-1970s by Braid, CAT exists as a signature program
of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), and it is a featured
and central event at the national conference for over four decades.
Indeed, four NCHC monographs contain essays devoted to elaborat-
ing, applying, expanding, and innovating CAT or CAT-inspired theory
and practice. In the introductory essay to one of these texts, Writing
on Your Feet: Reective Practices in City as TextTM (2014), Ada Long
succinctly states how CAT is “not just about place but also about self
and about the dynamic relationship between place and self, a relation-
ship that requires private examination in the act of writing and then
public expression in sharing the writing with the whole group” (x).
Long distinguishes between two distinctive reective practices: “private
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examination” and “public expression in sharing” (x), both of which
have an important role to play in any FYS.
Honors educators Ron Weerheijm and Patricia Vuijk also embrace
a developmental model of reection and utilize the concept of onion
layers to represent an awareness that “our inner context strongly
determines how we reect on external cues and that we are frequently
unaware of the impact these internal processes have on our com-
munication with others in daily life” (60). ey envision six layers of
depth where environment, behavior, and competencies comprise the
outer three levels and are oen the easiest for individuals to name and
describe to themselves and others. Weerheijm and Vuijk posit that the
inner levels (mission, identity, and beliefs) “determine how a student
performs on the outer levels” (77). From this theoretical perspective,
educators play a key role in formulating questions that move students
to reect on their inner layers with specic attention to how they create
a lens through which individuals react to their given context.
Focusing further on the intersection of theory and practice, honors
educators Kevin W. Dean and Michael B. Jendzurski note the central
importance regular debrieng sessions play in international contexts,
where “faculty serve as cultural brokers who help students interpret
cultural dierences” (“Interpersonal” 112). In our research-service
project, oered since 2001 when we rst traveled to South Africa, our
students experience poverty on a massive scale: townships crammed
with corrugated structures lacking water and electricity for as far as the
eye can see; mothers ravaged by HIV-AIDS; malnourished children;
desperate adults who queue at sunrise with oen dashed hopes of being
chosen for day labor. Such images viscerally impact American students,
who live lives of comparative privilege, with emotions of anger, sorrow,
and guilt. Some of the most challenging experiences come through the
juxtaposition of palpable poverty with joyful delight beaming from a
child’s face during play or from the optimism of a grandmother who
shared, “I don’t have many choices in my life, but every day I do choose
to smile.” Situations like this cry out for opportunities to debrief lest
those who experience such encounters succumb to what educational
theorist Carol R. Rogers refers to as Kahnemain’s Rule: “what you see
is all there is” (85).
From our two decades of sustained engagement in South Africa,
we know regular debrieng, facilitated by empathetic and informed
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Reflection
faculty, proves critical in helping students process their experiences. In
the grandmother’s case, the students engaged in a powerful conversa-
tion facilitated by faculty who armed the students’ admiration for the
inner strength and optimism they gleaned from the older woman. e
reection facilitators refused, however, to let students comfort them-
selves by summarizing the encounter with the trite “poor but happy”
cliché. Kahneman’s rule is inaccurate in this instance: what the students
saw in that moment was not “all there is.” When students took a step
back and recalled the full context from which the woman spoke, they
recognized the pain and hardship remaining in this post-apartheid
world. eir reection led to conversation focusing on what we can
learn from the collective past and recommending better assistance for
future action (Dean 49–51).
Another particularly memorable debrief occurred in 2012 in rela-
tion to comments made by a high school principal in South Africa
where our students had been invited to work with the Dreamcatcher
Project, which Dean, Loedel, and Tischio have discussed in detail in
Journey to South Africa: Reecting on 20 Years of International Ser-
vice-Learning. e Dreamcatcher Project, stemming from the work
of Dr. Ansie Kitching, formerly professor of educational psychology
at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa, sought to
address the needs of adolescent youth, particularly girls, concerning
their vocational prospects. Kitching, convinced that poor children have
concrete dreams for productive futures, hoped her research would help
to erase the impression held by senior educators that their disadvan-
taged students could not somehow envision optimistic dreams about
their future. In short, our students were asked by the South African
scholar to collect data through ethnographic interviews with high
school students about the dreams and hopes they held for their future
selves. Before the interviews began, the school principal greeted us
as a group and said very kindly and apologetically that he hoped we
would not be disappointed in what we found. He cautioned that we
should not expect much from these children because they have not
considered their dreams for the future. We immediately sensed the
students’ discomfort in hearing these words, which only became mag-
nied as the day progressed, when interview aer interview revealed
contrary evidence to the principal’s assertion. ese young women did
indeed have dreams, which they vividly described: a teacher, a doctor, a
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cosmetologist, a performer. We presented our ndings to the principal,
who graciously accepted our observations. As we prepared to depart,
the principal pulled one of us aside and noted how it was a shame that
so few of the students would ever attain their goals. Once again, our
reection time was lled with emotions ranging from vindication to
sadness, from joy to despair.
Most of our students shared how their own high school principals
lled roles in their lives as cheerleaders and champions for their future
selves. ey expressed indignation at the South African leader’s lack
of optimism. is perspective of targeted anger was then countered
when Kitching shared that the principal was indeed a good man but
was responding to a problematic context. Our host asked: how could
he achieve trust with the students if he set them up for failure, if he
set them up to believe in unattainable realities? Our discussion then
quickly focused on what action could address this unmet opportunity
in the high school community to help these young women attain their
dreams. Kitching told our students their work that day was a rst step,
providing her with data that would enable her to submit a proposal
for the school district to explore using guidance counselors, a concept
foreign to that particular setting. Reection, Rodgers says, must “go
beyond what worked well and what didn’t work,” to a conversation
about a given situation’s underlying causes and eects (91).
us, scheduled reection time allows students the opportunity for
a vulnerable deep-dive into their own values and gives them language
to explain inequities in the world. It causes them to wrestle with the
complexities of a given topic and realize no quick xes exist. Reec-
tion provides a cornerstone in the process of critical thinking, a skill
set that holds great value across any disciplinary boundary.
REFLECTING IN AND ON ACTION:
TWO CRITICAL COMPONENTS FOR REFLECTIVE LEARNING
Donald A. Schön (“Reective”) and countless other scholars who
built upon his work distinguish between reection-in-action (reec-
tion during and/or immediately concurrent to a learning event) and
reection-on-action (retroactive reection on a learning event aer
the passage of time). Both types of reection prove essential to the
personal development of rst-year students. Reection-in-action
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Reflection
challenges students to analyze a current situation and pay attention
to the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a group and within them-
selves that they might ordinarily ignore or fail to consider. rough
opportunities for immediate analysis, students develop an ability to
focus in the moment and sharpen their attentiveness. Adventure edu-
cators Reldan S. Nadler and John L. Luckner emphasize the need for
learners to develop “attending behavior,” skills indicating “the listener
is physically and emotionally present” (Processing the Adventure 27).
In-the-moment attentiveness holds particular importance with respect
to Nadler and Luckner’s work since it could literally result in a life-
or-death reality. For example, if the climbing partner who secures the
harness falters, the results could prove disastrous. Exploring how both
individuals in such partnerships reect on deep-seated beliefs in trust
and dependability can inuence future calculations for healthy risk-
taking behavior. In subsequent scholarship, Nadler and Luckner extend
experiential learning accompanied by reection in wider educational
contexts (Processing the Experience).
Reection-in-action occurs through two primary channels. e
rst involves a particularly close observation point between an edu-
cator and a student. e educator literally disrupts or breaks into a
given experience at a critical juncture to identify an opportunity for
improvement in a particular act. e educator then invites the student
to immediately reattempt the action and repeat it, oen several times,
to enable the student to transfer the moment-in-time reection into
behavior. Such processes are intensive and require patience and focused
attention, yet the rewards are vast. Accomplished athletic coaches and
artistic directors oen use in-the-moment critiques to motivate their
learners to internalize behaviors and actions. Guidance like the fol-
lowing—the type of learning that comes when learners reect in the
moment and do the action repeatedly until they can sense they are
doing it correctly: “Freeze. Where is your hand? Raise it higher. Now
do it again.” Or this one: “Stop! I’m not hearing the strings on that sec-
ond beat. Let’s take it from the top.” Exploring the how and why of an
issue enhances students’ self-reliance as they recognize the motivations
and implications of their actions.
A second channel involves immediate debriengs following a given
activity. ese qualify as in-the-moment events because they occur
within an act’s immediate context rather than following an extended
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lapse of time from the actual event. Reection-in-action demands
immediacy because learning from reection happens best in real time.
e challenge many educators face involves allocating ample class time
for such debrieng sessions. Many fear such prioritization might cut
into crucial material in a prepared lecture or decrease the time needed
for an exercise. Champions of reection, however, know the power of
learning is not in the exercise but in the reection. When students must
address questions such as “what just happened here?” and “so what?”
they are put in positions demanding they draw connections between
theory and practice. Devoting time to such integrative learning oppor-
tunities aords students an opportunity for internalized learning.
Conversely, reection-on-action grants students time and distance
to consider the impact of a learning experience. Reection-on-action
provides a distinct learning opportunity when individuals removed
physically and temporally from an experience examine perceptions
gleaned from that experience. As Harvard leadership theorists and
practitioners Ronald A. Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky
note, the act of moving o the court, oor, stage, or epicenter of activ-
ity and into the balcony provides a unique vantage point for critical
analysis. As participants remove themselves from the immediate event,
they can oen visualize the larger experience and draw more holistic
insights (32–35). Sociologist Jack Mezirow concurs, emphasizing the
critical importance of post-experience reection to the adult learning
process. While acknowledging the value of in-the-moment analysis,
Mezirow asserts that true critical reection “requires a hiatus in which
to reassess one’s meaning perspectives and, if necessary, to transform
them” (“How” 4–5). Mezirow maintains that distance enables indi-
viduals to experience deep critical reection that moves beyond the
“how or the how-to of action . . . [to] the why, the reasons for and the
consequences of what we do” (“How” 5).
Post-event reection helps synthesize and codify essential elements
to remember and apply in future contexts. ree valuable strategies
for reection-on-action include private journaling, preparing reec-
tive responses to question sets presented both orally and in writing,
and constructing an electronic co-curricular portfolio. Individual jour-
naling outside of class provides the primary vehicle for retroactive
reection. Adult educator Edward W. Taylor explains how “writing
strengthens the reective experience by creating artifacts of ideas of the
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Reflection
mind” (9). Such artifacts, maintains Taylor, “externalize” an individ-
ual’s internal reections, enhancing the opportunity for sensory-rich
self-exploration at a later time. Furthermore, these artifacts provide
valuable communication tools for sharing insights with others.
Management educators Donna Varner and Sharon R. Peck, con-
curring with previous scholarship published by fellow management
educator Marcia Salner, note that journaling is especially eective in
higher education because it develops critical thinking skills and helps
students understand organizational behavior concepts. Moreover,
according to Varner and Peck, journaling (1) develops valuable lead-
ership and managerial skills (e.g., written communication, attention
to detail, and intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics); (2) caters
to the needs of college learners (e.g., those who prefer self-directed
learning tend to nd motivation internally, and they desire to learn by
doing and participating); and (3) provides an “appropriate assessment
vehicle”—a way for instructors to see if students are making connec-
tions from the course to their own practice of leadership, including
ways they see themselves connecting with their larger communities
(68). Students exercise introspection when a period of time passes
between an event and the time they nally nd to put into words the
feelings they experienced, the insights they gleaned, and their ability
to answer the big “so what” question stemming from the experience.
Time aords perspective.
Reection-on-action allows insights drawn concerning past behav-
iors, values, and attitudes associated with a given event to occur in the
present. For many, the present context, because of its distance from the
event, oers a more relaxed environment for contemplation and can
yield valuable insights from an alternative perspective. Both modes of
reection give a unique lens for analysis and learning, and students
benet most when instructors employ both types throughout a course.
Both approaches yield valuable learning experiences for students in
our FYS.
In-the-moment reections involving mid-activity analysis and imme-
diate debrieng constitute core elements of the honors FYS. Such
reections are coordinated through physical activities and small-group
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discussions with real-time relational interactions between rst-year
students and upper-class mentors immediately following each physical
activity. To dispel the idealization of Mary Poppins, HON 100 places
students in contexts where they must work collaboratively to succeed.
As educational theorist Gemma Jackson comments, working as
a team—especially an interdisciplinary team of diverse viewpoints—
may result in dissonance that “serves to deepen reection” (68). Taylor
highlights research demonstrating how “intense experiential activities
oer experiences that can be a catalyst for critical thinking and can
provide an opportunity to promote transformative learning” (6). While
involving multiple voices, inherently producing multiple viewpoints,
demands time, Mezirow discusses the enhanced benet collabora-
tive reection can yield in nding reliable solutions to life challenges.
Mezirow emphasizes the importance of individuals carefully listen-
ing to and evaluating feedback from others. Not all learning involves
learning to do. Of even greater signicance to most adult learning is
understanding the meaning of what others communicate concerning
values, ideals, feelings, and moral decisions (“How” 5). By working
with a team, students encounter multiple perspectives, increasing the
likelihood of nding valid resolutions.
e critical element of trust nds its roots in our honors summer
symposium. rough outdoor activities where solutions rest in group
collaboration rather than individual achievement, students learn to
value the gis and support of their peers. While students can claim
to embrace the value of trust and reliance on others in a traditional
classroom discussion, HON 100 exposes students to whole new levels
of dependence on the group when they nd themselves een feet o
the ground, listening to the group members’ instructions of how to get
from point A to point B without falling. While physical activities are
powerful learning tools, substantial learning comes from processing in
the moment as the instructor repeatedly has pairs of students put on
and secure safety equipment and feel the tug of the rope on the ground
before they begin to climb. e instructor calls out safety violations,
bringing them to the attention of the learners. Learners are then chal-
lenged to share why a particular step proves critical to safety and how
they will proceed dierently. is reection is followed by the instruc-
tor requiring learners to repeat the task until they master the skill. e
professor’s goal involves preparing students well enough to face their
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Reflection
fears before they nd themselves beyond a mentor’s immediate reach,
perhaps in an area where they must make in-moment judgments for
themselves. Many of the physical activities produce a panoply of stu-
dent responses, including gasps, sighs, squeals of delight, expletives,
words of encouragement, and words of gratitude. Such pre-reective
and oen pre-linguistic reactions provide excellent material for reec-
tion-in-action immediately following the activity because they oen
reveal a student’s gut-level reactions.
Reection also plays a key role in the immediate debrieng follow-
ing each activity. rough verbal processing during this post-activity
reection, learners confront limitations and fears, discern undiscovered
strengths, and begin to embrace the value of others. Reection-in-
action proves especially eective when students struggle to complete
an activity or face personal fears, which oen happens on the ropes
course. Debrieng immediately following each activity encourages stu-
dents to create a language for describing what they just learned.
Authors and business consultants Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer
Johnson write extensively about the value of extending armation to
others during the process of strengthening communities and building
teams. eir work includes strategies for maximizing the eects of
praise; one such technique comes from immediate feedback. Individu
-
als may be oblivious to the quality of their actions in the moment until
positive feedback from others in real time enables them to recognize
their strength and potential at the given task, which then reinforces the
behavior (33). Being in the moment allows the professor/facilitator to
observe a student’s in-time reaction and decide whether the student
grasped a particular concept. is type of reection oen takes the
form of a group discussion with guided questions and challenges from
the professor. By design, professors facilitate all reection-in-action
for all activities in HON 100 and take care to aord students ample
in-class processing time.
Faculty utilize in-the-moment reection as a starting point to
question students in small group discussion sessions. Group processing
begins in the summer symposium and intensies during the various
course modules as students become even more trusting with and
attuned to perspectives directed toward them from their peers. Part
of the learning process in HON 100 involves having students improve
their ability to oer concrete illustrations to support their claims. As
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Dean and Wooten
the course progresses, faculty overtly prompt students, in the moment,
to elaborate more fully. e phrase “say more about that” does wonders
in eliciting greater depth of feedback. Class sessions intentionally dedi-
cate time for the rst-year students to reect in the moment on how
college life is progressing. One strategy, protecting anonymity when
dealing with delicate topics such as substance abuse, mental health,
and personal relationships, involves having students write responses on
index cards and putting them in a center pile that the faculty member
then shues before randomly reading a card and then inviting imme-
diate reection on the topic it raises. Additionally, students oen nd
value in moments of relief (“I’m not alone!”) as they discover their
trepidations and anxieties are oen shared by others: their peers are
not clones of Mary Poppins.
Benets exist when professors challenge students to compare and con-
trast their in-the-moment and on-action reections. Sometimes, the
dierences are subtle, while other times, they present themselves in
quite a dierent light. e distinction is particularly palpable when
students reect on their high-ropes experiences; students nd their
reection-on-action existing in a less stressful environment than the
one they experienced when tasked to provide reection-in action. e
ability of students to recall past events, identify the signicance of a les-
son learned, and then apply the insight to new contexts demonstrates
internalized learning and a deep level of reasoning. rough posing
questions related to personal decision-making—such as “What would
you do if you were not afraid?—faculty encourage students to engage
in what Mezirow terms “critical reection of assumptions” (“On Criti-
cal” 185).
Exercises that invite students to forecast a future oen hold added
value when initially grounded in reection-on-action relating to past
experience. Reection in such instances provides evidence students
can use to debunk unfounded assumptions. Such practice represents
the antithesis of the unexamined life and provides learners with the
empowerment that comes from clarity. Although many strategies exist
to elicit post-event reection, we nd four particularly useful in our
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Reflection
FYS: prompted journal entries, question sets, creation of a co-curric
-
ular portfolio, and use of peer mentors.
Our honors professors encourage students to respond to provided
prompts between 24 and 72 hours aer an activity. When adrenaline
spikes return to normal levels, whether that is aer a ropes course
experience or a vibrant class discussion, professors call upon students
to recall their initial reaction and consider their current perceptions
of the experience, what insights they gleaned about themselves from
the activity, and what lessons they will take from the activity to other
contexts, including both their academic and personal lives. Journals,
collected weekly, remain condential between student and professor.
Communication scholars Karen Kangas Dwyer and Marlina David-
son explain that journaling provides a way to document and concretize
what might otherwise become quickly forgotten glimpses of learning
(192). Given how distracting students’ worlds can be, consistently shar-
ing with one’s professor requires synthesis and accountability, thereby
improving students’ engagement and long-term memory.
A second strategy or reection-on-action comes through periodic
question sets. A desired outcome for an honors FYS involves knitting
students into the larger community by creating incubators for forming
healthy relationships. Achieving a sense of community comes through
constant reordering of groups for in-class activities as well as intro-
ducing students to important elements of college life: the plethora of
campus resources and opportunities for engagement, involvement with
upper-class peers, and a requirement for community service with sub
-
sequent reection. All such activities gain greater learning value when
students provide written post-event reections addressing the purpose
and value of the event for the honors community.
Professors in HON 100 place a premium on dedicated in-class
time for reection and analysis of out-of-class service opportunities;
doing so solidies the educational link of making service a learning
experience. Students must clock ten hours during the semester using
any division of time that works best for their passions and schedules.
Students submit responses within a week of a given service event to
the following prompts:
1. Briey discuss the goal/purpose of the event.
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Dean and Wooten
2. Did the event reach its goal/purpose? How was the
community served? Make specic note of any under-
represented or marginalized populations whose needs
were addressed.
3. Briey indicate your specic contributions, both tasks
accomplished and gis/skills used. Service is oen inter-
disciplinary. Address how someone from your major
could add uniquely to the project and how individuals
from two additional disciplines could provide value.
4. What did you gain from the experience that enhanced
your sense of community?
5. If you oversaw this event in a leadership position next
year, what possibilities can you suggest for growth/
enhancement?
Dedicated class time also allows for periodic full-class or small
breakout group discussions based on student reections on these
events. During those conversations, the professor or small group facili-
tator challenges students to nd commonalities in their perceptions
and take the reection process to the next level by focusing on the nal
question about possibilities for growth/enhancement. ese conver-
sations help students cement the vitality of the reection process to
inform future action.
is emphasis begins during the rst formal meeting with the FYS
students when the professor elicits extensive applause by oering a
simple truth: “From now forward, no one will ever have an ocial
need to know your SAT/ACT scores, which for several months have
almost solely dened you.” Following a dramatic pause, the professor
continues: “But neither will an ocial need exist to know about all of
your high school awards and accolades that for several years dened
you. All your laurels are now part of the past and your slate is clean; it
is time to begin anew!”
To build their professional identities, students establish a Co-
Curricular Portfolio (CCP) where they record and reect upon their
leadership and educational experiences during their time at the uni-
versity. e CCP facilitates a new start by developing student resumes.
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Reflection
Housed and operated through the Division of Student Aairs, the CCP
exists as an electronic document students can periodically update with
any awards, leadership, experiences, and/or service activities. Beyond
simply listing items, the CCP allows students to insert short reections
concerning skills learned and contributions made. ese reections
prove invaluable when students write admissions essays to graduate
and professional schools, which oen ask for reective accounts of
life lessons learned as undergraduates and/or motivation for further
study. Well over 60% of students in our program seek graduate/profes-
sional school opportunities following their baccalaureate degree. In an
increasingly competitive market, providing students with opportuni-
ties for professional academic development holds merit and provides
appropriate content for the FYS. When seniors revisit reections they
chronicled from their rst year, they gain powerful personal insights.
Faculty in the honors college were the rst within the campus com-
munity to put the establishment and maintenance of a CCP on their
syllabi as part of class evaluation. In 2020, the university moved to
formalize the CCP document by rebranding it as the Co-Curricu-
lar Transcript (CCT). Like an ocial academic transcript, the CCT
functions as an ocial university document chronicling student co-
curricular learning.
A key factor in building a classroom as both a safe and brave space
to share insights from reection comes through the involvement of
upper-class peer leaders who model quality communication and rein-
force the value they both found and nd in writing journal entries,
responding to question sets, and maintaining a co-curricular portfo-
lio. Too oen, students view the courses within their curriculum as
boxes to check o and fail to maximize the value of extending learning
beyond individual courses, including the FYS, into future classes. Our
approach attempts to model the power of reection-on-the-moment
through the participation of an involvement coordinator (IC). Multiple
authors highlight the pedagogical advantages of peer-assisted learning
(PAL). First-year-experience scholars Fiona M. Black and Jane McKen-
zie note that PAL promotes condence in rst-year students, equipping
them with the courage to risk vulnerability by questioning unfamiliar
concepts or ideas (10). is condence boost oen comes from PAL
leaders sharing reections on their experiences as rst-year students
in the program. Such interpersonal disclosure builds trust and oers
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assurance that honors provides an environment where students can
be open to vulnerability and risk. Stuart Capstick touts the benets of
PAL, especially through enhancing students’ ability to make meaning
out of their experience. us, reection coupled with PAL advances
rst-year students’ abilities to answer “so what” questions when applied
to activities within the college experience.
A senior honors student, oen the immediate past president of
the honors student association, assumes the IC position and meets
twice per semester with each rst-year honors student. e sessions,
generally een minutes in duration, typically happen in the third
and fourth weeks of the sixteen-week semester and then in the thir-
teenth and fourteenth weeks as the semester concludes. e sessions
oer feedback that is critical to building community, promoting self-
condence, and giving voice to emerging adults who transition their
identities from high school seniors to rst-year college students. Feed-
back from the entering students at the end of each term consistently
provides high commendation for the role of the IC and the transitional
support the IC provides. “What an amazing sounding board the IC
provided for dealing with both academic and campus life challenges
in this new place,” wrote one student. Another oered, “e IC created
a safe space where I could ask a question and/or oer an opinion and
know it would be heard with respect.”
Such thoughtful outreach helps to mitigate the “Poppins” princi-
ple of determined self-reliance; students learn that seeking assistance
is acceptable and valued. Learning how to approach appropriate role
models and mentors is a life skill proudly promoted by the honors
FYS. Honors benets because strong relationships build community
and support retention. e IC follows up with students in the spring
semester to take a simple pulse check of student progress and success.
During this challenging transition year, contact with a student leader,
the IC, is an opportunity to engage in reective dialogue that chal-
lenges them to think critically about their experiences.
EXTENSIONS OF REFLECTION BEYOND THE FYS
Carol R. Rodgers emphasizes the critical need for action as part of the
reection process, noting that mere compilation leaves an individual
with no tangible growth (98). Reection time connected to action is
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Reflection
sacred in our FYS, and its impact resonates well beyond the course.
We see this impact in the curricular and co-curricular components of
our students’ education and in their interest in global citizenship. We
strongly believe that our FYS contributes to our honors student reten-
tion rate of over 95%.
A strong commitment by all faculty teaching in honors to pri-
oritize reective activities throughout a student’s academic journey
underlies the benets students gain from having reection highlighted
in the FYS. A particularly valuable way this commitment is sustained
comes through faculty in subsequent courses utilizing assignments and
activities from the FYS by providing them as foundational examples or
even exercises that students build upon and rene. For example, one
assignment our FYS students complete is a modied activity one of this
article’s authors experienced in 1996 at a workshop run by the Gallup
Institute in Lincoln, Nebraska, entitled “Board of Directors” (BOD).
Just like major corporations and institutions have a board that pro-
vides guidance, advice, advocacy, and sometimes hard-to-hear honest
feedback to the entity they serve, individuals also have a life BOD. An
individual’s life board aords seats to those who inuence us most and
from whom we seek guidance during our life’s journey. e assignment
asks rst-year students to identify seven board members, indicate their
relationship with the member, and describe the unique contribution
each individual oers. Aer the people and their skill sets are identi-
ed, students are then challenged to reect on their choices to see what
overlaps exist, where voids might present themselves, who should be
retired, who should be recruited, and if the individuals realize they are
on the student’s board. e students discuss the assignment in small
discussion groups during class and as a larger community to identify
various categories of board members. Most typical are parents, siblings,
an older relative, and myriad high school best friends.
When students enter the spring of their sophomore year, three
semesters aer the FYS, the professor of the common class they take
that term, HON 310: Community and Change, returns their BOD exer-
cises and invites them to engage in a reective exercise that asks the
following: “Has your board changed? If so, how? If so, why? If not,
why?” Students then provide written responses to the initial questions
about overlap, voids, retirement needs, and additions. Finally, the pro-
fessor reminds students they are now at the crossroads of their college
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undergraduate career and asks them to consider whose advice, exper-
tise, advocacy, and honesty will best help them achieve the goals they
will hold for themselves when they graduate in two years. We have
used this exercise for over twenty years. It never fails to elicit a vibrant
conversation, delight over the surprise of revisiting an experience, and
an overtly expressed appreciation for the opportunity to reect on the
past and envision the future.
Another FYS activity woven throughout the students’ academic
journey involves maintaining their Co-Curricular Transcripts (CCT)
and developing a robust curriculum vitae (CV). We teach students the
distinction between a content-restricted resume and an expanded CV;
this focus leads to greater condence and student success as they seek
educational opportunities beyond the baccalaureate. In subsequent
semesters beyond the FYS, students receive prompts and encour-
agement from honors faculty to continue the practice of adding to
these documents. Formally updating the CV is a graded activity in
the honors course (HON 310) that students take in the spring of their
sophomore year. Beyond updating content, students write a reection
about what they consider their most valuable experiences to date, what
goals they have to enhance their CCT and CV, and why those goals
exist. e exercise, of course, includes small group peer discussions
facilitated by an upper-class honors student and time for individual
reection with the professor.
e curricular impact of reective practice is most vividly dis-
played in HON 490, the honors capstone course. One capstone element
requires students to reect on their honors coursework and articulate
how lessons learned in prior coursework inuence their nal project.
Concepts such as taking risks, dreaming big, and building and trusting
teams are oen cited as critical lessons learned, lessons students attri-
bute to HON 100. We hold pride in this model of integrative learning
that our students experience.
Student reection, of course, most immediately benets the student;
however, reection can also serve a powerful role in program develop-
ment. In these contexts, students nd that their reections function as
an internal catalyst, inspiring them to act and engage within their com-
munities. A vibrant component of our honors educational experience
comes through our co-curricular Honors Student Association (H.S.A.),
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Reflection
which we view as a laboratory for practicing the theoretical lessons of
leadership and community building learned in the classroom. To that
end, FYS professors collect student reections from their engagement
in various programmatic elements sponsored by the H.S.A. and share
feedback with the honors student leader who ran the event. From the
FYS student reections, the event leader shares insights with the H.S.A.
Executive Board. Where possible, the leadership of the H.S.A. attempts
to inform the community when student feedback results in change.
Student engagement in the organization deepens when students see the
recommendations they make implemented—or at least addressed with
an explanation as to why a change could be problematic.
Post-event reection, for example, is central to international pro-
gram development and honors’ commitment to serve as ambassadors
for the internationalization of the campus community. Indeed, we
place as much attention on post-international travel programming as
we do on the planning or even execution of the international experi-
ence (Dean and Jendzurski, “Keeping”). Post-programming aords
participants opportunities for deeper learning as they intentionally
and widely share their experiences with people on campus who did
not directly benet from travel. Reection educates and oen inspires
those who hear these presentations to pursue such opportunities. We
see international study not as a “senior reward trip” but as a high-
impact program students should engage in at their earliest opportunity.
Every fall, our FYS honors students hear the reections of faculty and
peers who lived the experience; nothing motivates engagement more.
Finally, a goal of many FYSs involves community building with an
eye toward student retention. Identifying a student’s sense of purpose
within a group, as noted by Dean and Jendzurski, is a powerful force
in building student engagement because students realize that presence
matters (“Interpersonal”). Sociologist Peter Block arms that commit-
ment to community intensies as people donate resources, particularly
time through hands-on service, and take advantage of opportunities
for community engagement (133–36). Meaningful reection from rst-
year students concerning these practices of the honors community
provides a vehicle for integration into the honors community. Indeed,
we nd that students are more likely to provide thoughtful responses
when they understand that their commentary goes beyond a class exer-
cise; reection oers an opportunity for their voice to be heard.
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Dean and Wooten
CONCLUSION
Learning theorists and leadership educators alike sing the praises of
reective learning. Still, it does not always come easily to students who
feel pressure to be “practically perfect in every way.” ese educators
realize that while experiences can oen thrill students, learning from
the experience comes through reection. Promoting reective practice
in honors FYSs equips students with tremendously valuable tools to
assist them in their academic and professional journeys and provides a
framework for healthy collaborative learning. Faculty, of course, must
model reection and provide feedback along the way. From Schön’s
writings, we know that experiential reection can occur in two dis-
tinct timeframes: reection in the moment and reection on the event
aer it passes. Skills to handle activity interruption and immediate
debriengs facilitated by professors or trained peers enable students
to be present in the moment and take responsibility for the immediacy
of their actions. Other skills such as journaling, preparing reective
responses to pre-class questions, and constructing an electronic/co-
curricular portfolio oer overt practices directing learners to recognize
which lessons attained through experience remain salient over time.
Existing scholarship suggests that intentional reection, during
or shortly following an event, can impact future vocational choices
and generate memories that participants can recall years aer the
undergraduate experience. Inspiring accounts of reection, decades
following honors City as Text experiences, demonstrate the inuence
that reective experiences played in vocational formation (Daniel;
Schock). Given the community focus of an honors FYS, studying the
long-term impact of that experience on alums would be interesting.
While modeling from faculty remains essential, honors directors
are wise to seek avenues for their upper-class students to contribute
leadership gis to inspire the next cohort of honors learners. Peer inu-
ence can yield positive outcomes. Honors directors will discover that
time dedicated to identifying, recruiting, and training honors juniors
and seniors to forge healthy bonds with students enrolled in FYSs is
well spent. By prioritizing reective learning in honors education, par-
ticularly in the important rst year of undergraduate studies, honors
educators assist students in gaining increased self-awareness, resilience,
and assurance (Morrison). Upon their rst meeting, Mary Poppins
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Reflection
used her measuring tape to “size up” Jane and Michael Banks. She
found them “short” of attaining the ultimate achievement of measur-
ing “practically perfect in every way.” Rather than grasping for a sense
of perfection, students emerge from our honors FYS equipped for life-
long learning and reection.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
e authors wish to celebrate the vision and passion of Dr. John Helion, Emeriti
Professor of Kinesiology and Honors, who for over two decades prioritized and
nurtured Honors 100, a course that touched countless lives.
We also want to express our appreciation to contemporary colleagues for
their dedication and collaborative spirit in building a vibrant FYS for the next
generation: Megan Ramick, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology; Matt Saboe,
Professor of Economics; and Maria Urrutia, Associate Professor of Dance.
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Kimberly Baldus
University of Missouri–St. Louis
e University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) is a large pub-
lic research institution located in a diverse metropolitan region.
e university has approximately 16,000 students, including over
9,000 on-campus undergraduates; the student-to-faculty ratio is
19:1. In fall 2023, on-campus minority enrollment was 40%, and
75% of undergraduates received aid. UMSL is part of the Uni-
versity of Missouri land-grant system and is classied as RU-H
(high research activity) and as a Community Engaged Campus
by Carnegie rankings.
PIERRE LACLEDE HONORS COLLEGE
T
he University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) launched a Sopho-
more Honors Program in 1978 before founding the Pierre Laclede
222
Baldus
Honors College (PLHC) in 1989. e PLHC has a liberal arts mission
fullled through innovative seminar courses, full-service academic
advising, a rst-year seminar (FYS) program, a writing program, and
an internship/independent study program for approximately 550
students from all majors; students earn an Honors Certicate upon
successfully completing the curriculum. Roughly 70% of the typical
incoming rst-year class of 160 students enter with an average 3.6 GPA
and a class rank of 86%. e program awards certicates to approxi-
mately 115 students each year.
Students completing the four-year plan take forty credit hours;
those pursuing the two-year plan complete twenty-two hours. First-
year students take four or ve honors courses in their rst year and
then enroll in an honors seminar each semester until graduation;
students in the two-year plan take ve honors classes. To complete
these required hours, PLHC oers roughly forty-ve to y courses
per semester, most with enrollment limited entirely or predominantly
to honors students. e PLHC does not oer contract courses, but
many honors seminars (typically capped at seventeen students) are
cross-listed with courses in various departments. In addition to these
seminars, all honors students complete six credit hours of designated
independent study work that can be fullled in several ways: intern-
ships, research, and specic capstone courses within majors.
PLHC sta includes a dean, associate dean, director of student ser-
vices and alum relations, six non-tenure-track faculty and one tenured
faculty, an academic advisor, a student recruitment specialist, and an
oce administrative associate.
CULTURAL TRADITIONS I AND II
First-year students are required to enroll in two semesters of the FYS
course entitled “Cultural Traditions I and II,” which total six credit
hours. ese classes have functioned since 2005 as a common academic
experience and are taught as academic seminars with uniform content
across sections. In recent years, the courses have incorporated more
focus on practical topics, including UMSL collegewide requirements
such as tips on registering for courses or deciding on careers, thus
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University of Missouri–St. Louis
transforming the class into an FYS hybrid that draws upon elements
of an extended-orientation focus. e rigorous learning environment
of an academic seminar remains the foundation of the class.
Six to eight sections each semester are staed primarily by full-
time honors faculty, with an occasional section led by an experienced
adjunct faculty member. Each section is capped at seventeen students
and has an assigned peer mentor. PLHC also oers a Living and Learn-
ing Community experience tied to Cultural Traditions I and II.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Cultural Traditions has remained largely independent in its approach to
the FYS on the UMSL campus. While collaborating on FYS initiatives
with campus partners, PLHC chose not to pursue the one-credit-hour
extended-orientation format developed through the College of Arts
and Sciences and widely used by other colleges on campus. Rather
than requiring honors students to take an additional credit hour dur-
ing an already packed rst year of honors courses, the PLHC found
room within our academic seminars to incorporate campus-required
FYS elements such as attending campus events and reecting on poten-
tial careers.
In the fall of 2013, UMSL created an FYS committee to ensure
that courses across all the colleges met three important cornerstones:
campus connections, academic engagement, and developmental sup-
port. UMSL also identied several core features for all campus FYS
programs, including incorporating peer mentors and using a career
interest assessment overseen by Career Services. An honors faculty
member participates in the campus FYS committee, and the PLHC
receives partial funding from the university to help cover additional
costs for running the FYS courses. ese funds pay for a team of peer
mentors as well as signature events for all students each semester. e
honors FYS develops its own versions of FYS topics, operates its own
peer mentor training, and designs distinctive responsibilities for its
peer mentors, mainly because they support the learning environment
of Cultural Traditions I and II classes.
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Baldus
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e two-semester sequence of Cultural Traditions has two essential
objectives: 1) To help students reect on their educational goals while
developing themselves as scholars and future professionals; and 2)
To analyze inuential texts from Western and non-Western cultures
to develop cultural awareness. During the rst semester of Cultural
Traditions, students study texts from the ancient and early modern
world; in the second semester, students study global texts from the last
three centuries that have transformed humanity. Students also partici-
pate in honors college events, take part in service opportunities, and
explore career and professional development opportunities. Added to
the program in fall 2014, peer mentors lead class discussions, create
research posters, and make in-class presentations on issues such as
campus involvement. ey also meet individually with students, main-
tain regular contact with their class, and provide one-on-one tutoring
on essays and other major assignments.
225
Kimberly Baldus, Gerianne Friedline,
and Ann Torrusio
University of Missouri–St. Louis
O
ur decision at the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) to
develop a peer mentor program in the Pierre Laclede Honors
College (PLHC) First-Year Seminar (FYS) began in a spring 2014 cam-
puswide FYS committee meeting. Having previously developed three
essential cornerstones that all variations of the FYS on campus would
need to include—campus connections, academic engagement, and
development support—university leaders decided that best practices in
FYS courses demanded the inclusion of peer mentors in all versions of
the course. As honors faculty, we had frankly never contemplated this
addition to our fully developed and successful academic FYS program.
In fact, without such prompting from the university, the faculty mem-
bers teaching the course would have undoubtedly questioned the need
for mentors or perhaps even actively lobbied against the signicant
work and intrusion into class time that such an initiative could cre-
ate. Because the faculty team realized that our continued independent
226
Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
control of the honors FYS and university funding to support its activi-
ties and events depended on our use of peer mentors, they agreed to
fashion a role for peer mentors within our academic seminar FYS.
Despite this challenging beginning, we now consider this peer mentor
program one of the highlights of our FYS and a signicant source of
innovation, academic improvement, and community building within
our honors college.
Our hesitation to include peer mentors in an academic seminar
FYS speaks to a challenge many honors programs face as they develop
classes uniquely suited to their programs’ academically rigorous cul-
ture. As the survey of honors FYS programs by Anton Vander Zee
and colleagues discovered, honors communities have embraced the
academic seminar as the primary pedagogical format for their FYS
courses. In fact, the two most popular formats of the FYS in honors
programs are uniform and varied academic content seminars, which
account for 61% of all honors FYS courses (Vander Zee et al. 125).
In contrast, Dallin George Young and Jessica M. Hopp, reporting on
the results of a 2012–2013 survey from the National Research Center
on e First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, determine
that academic content seminars account for 38.2% of campuswide
FYS courses; the extended-orientation seminar is equally as popu-
lar at 39.1% (9). In the last decade, however, higher education has
shown increasing interest in using academic seminar formats as the
primary structure of FYS courses (Friedman and Marsh 30; Skipper
11). Reecting on trends in the format and content of the FYS, Young
and Hopp point to evidence of “a shi toward traditional academic
content” (2). ey contend that this “growing prevalence of academic
rst-year seminars signals an increase of rigor in the rst-year cur-
riculum” (49). Honors units, with their commitment to developing
innovations in pedagogy, are poised to lead the experiments needed to
help create blueprints for more academically focused FYS courses. Such
innovations can benet from honors’ student-centered approaches to
learning, particularly our dedication to building strong communities
and collaborations among students and faculty.
For honors units, relying on students as peer leaders to help trans-
form the FYS into a more academically rigorous approach seems like
a natural t; however, peer leaders or mentors have traditionally been
incorporated in less academically challenging versions of FYS courses.
227
Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
In a 2012 review of the literature examining the benets of peer leaders
in higher education, Jaime Shook and Jennifer R. Keup, the Director
of the National Resource Center for e First-Year Experience and
Students in Transition, observe that “peer leadership rst emerged in
residential life and orientation programs, and the literature shows that
it remains prominent in those settings” (6). In fact, they continue, “peer
leaders are least oen used in an instructional capacity,” although they
appear more selectively in academic roles as supplemental instruc-
tors and tutors across campuses (6). ese lingering associations of
peer mentors with less academically rigorous FYS roles may inu-
ence their relative neglect within honors FYS courses. As the survey of
honors FYS programs notes, peer mentors have been incorporated in
less than 40% of these classes (Vander Zee et al. 129). In contrast, the
national FYS survey found that 46.3% of these classes have undergrad-
uates sharing the pedagogical load, and 57.8% of four-year institutions
employ undergraduates to assist or help instruct their courses (Young
and Hopp 32). is lagging interest in peer mentors in honors FYS pro-
grams contrasts with the national trends observed by Shook and Keup’s
literature review of peer leader programs, which show an increased use
of peer leaders in instructional roles as tutors, supplemental instruc-
tors, and even “co-instructors” for FYS programs (6).
Research conducted on college campuses has touted the academic,
psychological, and social benets experienced by both the peer men-
tors and mentees, and several honors publications, which we discuss
below, have also made the case for peer mentors in the FYS. Despite
this substantial and growing evidence for the positive impact of peer
mentors, over 60% of honors FYS courses do not include peer educa-
tors. How can honors units tap into this powerful intellectual resource
by designing more meaningful roles for peer educators in FYS courses?
And how can we best utilize this student support in the academic semi-
nar format favored by honors units?
Our honors college has grappled with these questions for the
last several years as we have developed a successful peer mentoring
program in our FYS courses: Cultural Traditions I and II. is new
program has also transformed our academic seminar into a hybrid
format incorporating elements of an extended-orientation approach
while maintaining the critical engagement that marks an academic
seminar. Our approach to the peer-mentor role has been shaped by
228
Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
studies we have conducted through targeted student evaluations, men-
tor reports on their interactions with students, and a training program
that emphasizes reective assessment of the program and performance
of our students. e faculty of these Cultural Traditions courses faced
initial concerns about the problems associated with peer mentors,
including decisions about the roles mentors would play in and out
of the classroom. roughout, we centered our eorts on using peer
mentors as academic partners who would actively participate in devel-
oping the critical thinking skills that enhance our students’ learning.
Specically, our chapter examines how our mentors have enriched
the academic components of our seminars through a distinctive com-
bination of classroom presentations, workshops, and one-on-one
interactions with the students. Our student surveys suggest that our
rst-year students see their peer mentors as essential to the success of
our FYS goals. And we agree. eir contributions have transformed
our understanding of the academic challenges experienced by our
students and have given us new tools to strengthen their intellectual
development.
Although the process of including peer mentors in the honors
FYS classrooms was neither quick nor comfortable for us as instruc-
tors accustomed to conducting our own discussion-based seminars,
we have learned to welcome these peer educators into what we previ-
ously considered our exclusive territory. In doing so, peer mentors have
crucially enhanced the central academic focus of the course, even as
their presence has helped us develop the course into a hybrid FYS that
integrates extended-orientation elements in intellectually substantial
ways into our academic seminars. As we have learned, by addressing
the challenges of incorporating peer educators into FYS classes, honors
units can create transformative experiences for students, faculty, and
the honors community as a whole. Such innovations can help honors
units serve as models for developing FYS programs throughout higher
education that support the role of peer mentors as substantial, criti-
cally engaged co-educators.
PEER MENTORS AND THEIR VALUE IN FYS PROGRAMS
Nationally, mounting evidence indicates the benets of peer educa-
tors and the growing enthusiasm for the roles they play on campuses.
229
Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
Numerous studies have identied various ways in which peer men-
tors positively aect students socially and academically. ese areas of
impact correspond to the denitions of the undergraduate peer men-
tor role as being multi-faceted. As Gloria Crisp and her colleagues
explain in their 2017 Association for the Study of Higher Education
(ASHE) report, Mentoring Undergraduate Students, undergraduate
peer mentors’ roles include providing psychosocial or emotional sup-
port, assisting students with academic development, and serving as
role models (21).
Researchers have frequently noted the important social and emo-
tional benets experienced by students in peer mentor programs. In a
literature review examining research on the eective qualities of peer
mentors, Jenepher Lennox Terrion and Dominique Leonard note that
psychosocial support provided by peer mentors depends on personal
qualities such as communication skills, supportiveness, empathy, and
enthusiasm (150; 156–160). e impact of these psychosocial skills on
the students is a particularly vital feature of the peer mentoring rela-
tionship, as Terrion and Leonard state: “Several studies have shown
that the psychosocial function of mentoring may be more important to
younger student mentees than the career-related function” (156). Other
scholars point to the signicance of the emotional support provided
by peer mentors for students’ well-being and their sense of belonging
to the university. In his handbook for creating strong peer mentoring
programs, Peter Collier discusses the numerous studies demonstrating
that participation in peer mentoring increased students’ condence in
their new role at the university and diminished their fears in navigating
this transition (11). In a study comparing the perceptions of the men-
toring process of nearly 500 undergraduates and their peer mentors,
Laura J. Holt and Clion A. Berwise note that research shows “men-
tors can enhance new students’ sense of school belonging through the
provision of acceptance, camaraderie, and emotional support” (20).
is sense of belonging and emotional support fostered by the stu-
dent-mentor relationship positively impacts rst-year students’ sense of
connection to the university as a whole and their identity as legitimate
university stakeholders. In a study comparing over 300 mentored and
non-mentored undergraduates, Dani Yomtov and colleagues deter-
mined that students with mentors “felt signicantly more connected
to the university, perceived signicantly more support at the university,
230
Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
and felt signicantly more like an active part of the university than stu-
dents without a mentor” (38). Recognizing the important impact of
peer mentors in this area, Yomtov and a team of researchers describe
peer mentors as a “form of social capital in the university setting that
can help students succeed” (39). Although the peer mentors’ emotional
and social roles are not directly linked to academic skills or knowledge,
they have been recognized as playing a crucial role in strengthening
academic outcomes.
Such academic outcomes are a primary focus of much research
about peer mentors. ese studies have examined peer mentors’ impact
on academic success measures, including grades, course completion,
and retention. Susan Gershenfeld’s 2014 review of undergraduate men-
toring between 2008–2012 examines 20 studies of formal mentoring
programs, pointing to many ndings related to academic success. e
research examines improvements in grades, dierences in academic
performance between mentored and non-mentored students, increased
participation in undergraduate research, and positive correlations with
retention and persistence (369–74). In his handbook on peer men-
toring, Collier points to numerous studies that document improved
retention rates (10), and other scholars note that research indicates
improvements in retention and grades when students have the support
of peer mentors (Yomtov et al. 26). Other studies cite improvement in
overall GPA and, more specically, improvement in the grade of the
course in which a student is being mentored (Collier 10–11; D’Abate
66). In addition, myriad studies have linked peer mentors to impor-
tant improvements in academic performance, retention, and increased
numbers of college credits earned for particular groups of students,
such as African American students, Native American students, or rst-
generation students (Collier 12–13).
While the varied academic benets of peer mentoring have been
frequently noted in publications, scholars have raised concerns about
their methodologies and the lack of robust conclusive evidence. Ger-
shenfeld’s review of undergraduate mentoring research, for instance,
points to the limitations in the researchers’ methodological approaches
and the relatively small number of empirical studies (385). Collier
points to another concern about the scholarship on peer mentor-
ing, noting that studies have not shown a “direct causal relationship
between students’ participating in a peer mentoring program and
231
Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
mastering specic content material or completing a particular degree
program” (69). More focused research is needed to assess the direct
and specic impact of peer mentoring programs on features like course
content, an issue especially relevant for academic seminars with their
signicant engagement with course materials. Ample evidence exists,
however, about peer mentors’ impact on multiple qualities that are
known to improve learning. As Collier notes, “ere are positive
associations between participating in peer mentoring programs and
students’ college success and persistence. What peer mentoring can do
is directly aect key intervening variables that have been associated
with a greater likelihood of college student success and persistence”
(69). Research on these “variables” shows positive correlations to aca-
demic success when mentors engage mentees in the learning process,
increase students’ sense of connection to their campus, help mentees
use campus resources, and assist with adjustments to college life (69).
ese roles of the peer mentors also provide important benets to
the peer mentors themselves. Such benets, however, are not always
recognized by the peer mentors or even by the faculty supervising
them. In a study comparing peer mentors’ perceptions of their roles
to ratings of their eectiveness by undergraduates, Laura J. Holt and
Melva J. Lopez note that peer mentors are oen unaware of the poten-
tial academic and psychosocial benets they may gain through their
responsibilities (429). A growing body of work documents these posi-
tive outcomes, including in areas of academic success. Peer mentors
have reported academic gains, for example, in areas such as critical
thinking, writing, study skills, and oral presentations (417). Studies
have documented peer mentor benets in overall academic perfor-
mance, communication skills, self-condence, the development of
social networks, and leadership (Collier 13; Noufou et al. 144). Brad V.
Harmon, an Assistant Dean for the First-Year and Second-Year Experi-
ence at Furman University, examines peer mentors’ perceptions of their
learning through interviews that capture how their mentoring experi-
ences have impacted them. Harmon identies the importance of the
mentors’ process of reection as critical in contributing to outcomes
such as strengthened planning skills, enhanced communication and
interpersonal skills, and new perspectives on attaining career goals. He
also notes that mentors experience “signicant growth and develop-
ment, especially in areas related to identity and sense of purpose” (58).
232
Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
Despite the many recognized benets of peer mentor programs,
the literature primarily highlights broad positive correlations between
peer mentoring and improved academic performance. Overall, aca-
demic improvement is discussed mainly as a side eect of the many
roles of the peer mentor rather than being the central focus. As a result,
educators have had little direct guidance about how to create roles for
peer mentors in FYS programs that center on various ways in which
peer mentors shape students’ intellectual experiences.
ADDRESSING THE UNIQUE ROLES OF PEER MENTORS IN THE
HONORS FYS
Honors education is uniquely poised to tackle the challenge of den-
ing and expanding the academic role of peer mentors in the FYS. In
particular, the popularity of the academic seminar format in honors
units directly aligns with best practices for academically engaged,
high-impact rst-year experiences. George D. Kuh, the founder of
the National Survey of Student Engagement and author of an inuen-
tial 2008 report on high-impact educational practices, describes these
characteristics of the FYS: “e highest-quality rst-year experiences
place a strong emphasis on critical inquiry, frequent writing, infor-
mation literacy, collaborative learning, and other skills that develop
students’ intellectual and practical competencies” (9).
While Kuh is describing qualities central to honors seminars,
these practices may not easily be incorporated in peer mentor pro-
grams for FYS courses using extended-orientation formats. The
extended-orientation format emphasizes issues such as the explora
-
tion of campus resources, time management, and study skills, and
many published descriptions of peer mentors in FYS courses link the
tasks of the peer mentors to the issues that dominate extended-ori-
entation formats. Honors FYS faculty may be particularly reluctant to
incorporate peer mentors given the association of peer educators with
these kinds of extended-orientation tasks. Melissa L. Johnson, honors
associate director at the University of Florida and author of numer-
ous articles on honors education, argues that peer mentor roles may
seem trivialized when centered primarily on tasks such as “facilitat-
ing ‘fun activities,’ managing icebreakers and [organizing] out-of-class
activities” (195).
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
It follows that scholars focused on supporting the role of peer
leaders in honors FYS programs describe courses that create more sub-
stantial intellectual and social roles for their peer mentors. Johnson, for
example, advocates a more signicant role for honors FYS peer edu-
cators, describing a one-credit professional development program in
which an honors advisor partners with peer leaders to teach sections
of Introduction to Honors Professional Development (192). She refers
to these peer mentors as part of the “teaching teams,” and she describes
substantial peer mentor roles, such as managing online discussions,
selecting panels of experts on topics like undergraduate research, and
conducting individual meetings with students (192–193). Alvin Wang
and members of his honors team at the Burnett Honors College at the
University of Central Florida also describe a role for peer mentors in
the honors FYS in their “Team Leaders” program. ese student educa-
tors assist with the Honors Symposium, a course their article describes
as a weekly “speakers series” featuring the university’s top faculty (130).
In addition to meeting with students on their teams and organizing
social or educational events, their peer mentors lead breakout discus-
sions linked to each symposium to encourage critical assessments of
the speakers’ presentations (132).
Other honors units, such as the peer mentor program at the David-
son Honors College at the University of Montana, describe similarly
important roles for peer mentors. Betsy Bach and colleagues discuss
this one-credit course as focused on having students explore the goals
of liberal arts education, take part in an activity, and create a sense
of community (140). Its peer mentors, Bach and her associates note,
“assist with leading discussions of course readings, help organize in-
and out-of-class activities, and serve as guides to assist new students
with their ‘sensemaking’ of academic life in general and Honors educa-
tion in particular” (142). Marie E. Leichliter’s 2013 study examines the
various roles for peer leaders that have been created at West Virginia
University. One of those roles includes the position of “co-mentor” in
an honors FYS course. Aer participating in training and enrolling in
a practicum, these co-mentors work in an orientation format to “assist
students as they transition into life at the university and specically the
honors college” (156). Aer receiving training in a practicum course
on approaches to learning and teaching, two peer mentors jointly lead
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
each section of this FYS course through discussion, debate, and col-
laborative learning (156–57).
e literature on honors peer leaders endorses roles for these men-
tors that are described as substantially engaged in the learning process
and design of honors FYS programs. e reports from these honors
units indicate the success of peer mentors in these roles as well as
positive assessments of the mentors by students. But these sources
also indicate the absence of models for mentoring programs situated
within academic seminar FYS courses. While these approaches in
honors share our commitment to developing academically engaged
roles for peer mentors, none of the programs describe incorporating
mentors into an academic seminar format. Developing a blueprint
that integrates peer mentors in academically meaningful ways within
the academic seminar format requires reconceiving the mentor roles
while remaining cognizant of the distinctive challenges and signicant
rewards of opening up that pedagogical territory.
PUTTING PEER MENTORS INTO PRACTICE:
Although we anticipated challenges in developing a program that would
maintain the academic standards of our seminar while also requiring
innovations in pedagogy and practice, we were committed to creat-
ing an FYS model that would be fully integrated into our seminar and
would provide expanded roles for mentors in achieving seminar goals.
Creating new pedagogical spaces for peer mentors in our Cultural Tra-
ditions courses required rethinking issues such as course content and
utilization of our classroom. roughout these transformations, faculty
remained focused on keeping mentors signicantly engaged in the aca-
demic work by developing peer mentors’ roles as critical co-educators.
is section addresses ways in which our academic seminar content
changed to make pedagogical space for the peer mentors while also
developing a stronger focus on developing essential academic skills that
would impact student success outside our classrooms.
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
Since 2005, the two-semester Cultural Traditions course has been
dedicated to exploring important texts of Western and non-West-
ern cultures from ancient to modern times. When the honors faculty
decided to include peer mentors in the fall of 2014, these classes had
functioned for several years as the honors college FYS. e decision to
include peer mentors ultimately provided an opportunity to reexamine
the role of our courses as designated FYS experiences. Until our reas-
sessment of the course in 2014, Cultural Traditions operated primarily
as a traditional survey course that occasionally interspersed require-
ments such as attending and reecting upon on-campus events or
assessing career interests. At certain moments throughout the semes-
ter, students would shi from discussing texts like Dante’s e Inferno
to participating in a session on learning how to register for classes.
Such shis oen felt jarring to faculty and students. Ultimately, we
recognized our approach was isolating our discussion of topics like the
broader skills of personal and intellectual development from what we
still identied to ourselves as the “real” academic content of the course
centered on the cultural texts. Rather than simply dropping in these
topics, we recognized the need to reimagine our understanding of the
academic goals of the course while also explicitly identifying and inte-
grating the broader academic, social, and professional skills as central
to our students’ experience in Cultural Traditions.
is shi toward greater intentionality in our FYS goals ultimately
changed the course content. In particular, opening space in our sylla-
bus for broader topics like critical reading in honors, academic writing
strategies, and library research meant diminishing the breadth of the
cultural texts covered—in our case, by nearly 20%. Faculty worked on
reconceiving some of the course’s foundations, an adjustment period
that took several semesters. e most signicant cuts, however, were
in the volume of assigned readings rather than on essential themes and
topics, and faculty still maintained primary control for choosing where
cuts would be made. In many cases, these reductions oered the poten-
tial for a sharpened focus on course content, and mentor involvement
in seminar classes eectively reinforced connections between course
content and FYS activities.
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
Despite maintaining primary control of course content, faculty
nevertheless exhibited resistance to what was perceived as compro-
mising or shrinking the curriculum. In a review of factors that cause
resistance to change within higher education, Nick Chandler argues
that faculty members tend to create and ercely defend their “symbolic
territories” (247), those gurative spaces that are deeply associated
with a faculty member’s identity. Because of the highly fragmented
nature of higher education, a common byproduct of these symbolic
academic silos is a resistance to change, especially changes that alter a
faculty member’s syllabus, a product that typically takes several years
to develop and is sometimes even regarded by an instructor, Chandler
notes, as “an individual’s life work” (247). In a study of a 2005–2006
pilot program for incorporating peer mentors into a variety of liberal
arts classes in a Canadian research university, Tania Smith describes
similar faculty concerns about the perceived work and potential com-
promises needed to include peer mentors in courses. She also notes
that sta working to train the peer mentors at the University of Ari-
zona Teaching Teams Program recognized that “even when program
infrastructure exists to support peer assistants within courses, faculty
members may be concerned about the workload and risk involved in
integrating an undergraduate peer assistant” (54).
In our experience, such faculty concerns over shrinking course
content and increased responsibilities were warranted. Still, we decided
to shi our focus from our previous emphasis on breadth of content
to a model that instead prioritized helping students achieve the steps
needed for higher levels of learning. Including all of the faculty in
the deliberations on this process addressed some concerns about the
faculty’s sense of individual control over the course material and class
-
room dynamic. Although our course now covers fewer texts overall,
the discussions over the remaining texts allow more opportunities for
deep critical thinking and resources from both teachers and peer men-
tors to help students achieve these demanding intellectual objectives.
As we began the process of shiing our notion of essential content and
the learning goals of our FYS, faculty needed to nd an approach for
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
incorporating peer mentors that felt authentic and integral to our aca-
demic seminar format. at meant dening mentors’ work as dedicated
primarily to their contributions as academic resources and co-educa-
tors for the classes. Other typical approaches to the peer mentor role in
the FYS, including those on our campus, seemed to fall short of devel-
oping this central academic identity for our peer mentors by putting
mentors in classes as observers or asking them to design and appear
at events to foster community. While we valued and incorporated peer
mentors to fulll tasks that largely provided social and developmental
support, we wanted our students to see these peer mentors primarily
as valuable and unique academic resources.
We ultimately decided to give the peer mentors multiple ways to
interact with both the students and the course content. By layering the
methods through which peer mentors engaged with students, we built
a series of interactions with students that mutually reinforced the aca-
demic role and credibility of the peer mentors. ese duties included
5–6 longer in-class sessions where mentors taught and led discussions
on topics ranging from academic issues like writing eective essays to
more socially focused issues such as the benets of getting involved
on campus. We also wanted peer mentors to engage with students
outside of the classroom, and our program ultimately has grown to
include required one-on-one meetings with students each semester,
a feature since 2016 that has had a substantial impact on both stu-
dents and mentors. In addition, mentors plan events like essay-revising
workshops several times each semester, and they are important ambas-
sadors encouraging students to participate in events that relate directly
to the learning objectives in Cultural Traditions (Appendix A). Peer
mentors must also communicate with their classes regularly—typically
weekly—using emails, announcements, or apps like GroupMe.
As our program has grown, we have recognized the importance
of creating more frequent face-to-face time for the mentors to interact
with the students. As a result, we began requiring the peer mentors to
attend class weekly for short periods of time (typically 5–7 minutes) in
non-intrusive ways, such as arriving before or aer class to have infor-
mal conversations or make quick announcements. ese encounters
keep peer mentors accessible and prominent as resources for the stu-
dents, and we have seen a rise in the number of students reaching out
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
individually to the peer mentors for assistance on projects like essays as
we have incorporated these steps to facilitate regular and direct contact.
While recognizing the benets associated with peer mentors as we
initially developed our new structure, the faculty team responsible for
the FYS academic seminars acknowledged several concerns that made
the transition challenging. When the peer mentor component was rst
proposed to the FYS faculty, all the instructors were generally willing to
tackle the addition; however, they expressed signicant concerns about
how integrating this component would work in practice. By far, the
biggest challenge we faced in this multi-faceted approach to the peer
mentor role was the issue of negotiating the classroom space in order
to invite peer mentors in as active participants in the learning process.
Our faculty’s concerns over the new classroom dynamic for inte-
grating peer mentors as active agents in the learning process were not
without precedent. In Janet W. Colvin’s study on peer mentoring in
an FYS classroom at Utah Valley University, she asserts that although
instructors rarely exhibited “overt resistance” to peer mentors, several
faculty members in her study were hesitant to participate in the new
peer mentor program, thus demonstrating a degree of resistance at the
program’s outset (176). Colvin notes that instructors were also hesitant
to include peer mentors partly because of “the time requirement to
fully integrate, train, and utilize” them in the classroom (176). Initially,
the faculty in our honors program echoed similar concerns over the
time it would take to incorporate mentors into their class and develop
a rapport with their selected mentor.
In a subsequent study on the risks and benets of peer mentoring,
Janet W. Colvin and Marinda Ashman argue this resistance is due in
part to the peer mentor occupying a new position in the classroom, or a
space that results in “new expectations” that are “added and challenged”
(122). Colvin and Ashman’s study reinforces the notion that eectively
using peer mentors requires implementing a comprehensive system
of support and training that includes all the instructors and mentors.
is endeavor takes time and energy from all parties involved (122).
“It cannot be assumed,” Ashman and Colvin conclude in another study,
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
“that peer mentors and faculty have a common understanding of their
roles” (52). For a peer mentor program to be successful, integrating
the training of faculty and mentors is necessary to decrease the risks of
these stakeholders developing diering perceptions of their role in the
classroom. To address these concerns, faculty members attended several
peer mentor training sessions. ey were provided with the same criti-
cal literature about peer mentoring so that both mentors and faculty
could discuss the mentor roles with a shared theoretical underpinning.
Although our cohort’s FYS coordinator and peer mentors under-
went a robust and comprehensive training program, faculty also
expressed concern over the eort it would require to establish an
authentic and productive teacher-mentor relationship. Some faculty
predicted that negotiating their relationship with the peer mentors
would be dicult. Others expressed concerns over conicts of interest
when a peer mentor also happened to be a student in another course
taught by that faculty member.
Communication and transparency were crucial priorities in
addressing the new classroom dynamics created by incorporating peer
mentors into the academic seminar. As such, the FYS coordinator acted
as a liaison between mentors and faculty through formal and infor-
mal channels. For instance, throughout the semester, peer mentors
wrote reection pieces about their experiences with the students. ese
reection pieces were shared with the FYS coordinator, who would
alert faculty members regarding any concerns over student-mentor
interactions. Mentors were also asked to share presentation outlines
and activities with their faculty members 48 hours before their pre-
sentations so that the faculty members could preview them and oer
suggestions for revision. Additionally, FYS faculty met collectively at
two points each semester to discuss concerns and provide general feed-
back about mentors. More informal communication channels were
also available, including faculty meeting with peer mentors weekly to
discuss upcoming classes.
Despite these challenges, our FYS faculty cohort was ultimately
willing to develop an eective plan for incorporating peer mentors and
to overcome the discomfort of altering course content while adjust-
ing to sharing space in the classroom. To date, we have found that the
benets of including peer mentors in the FYS classroom signicantly
outweigh the drawbacks. Furthermore, the relationships cultivated
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
between faculty members and peer mentors are some of the strongest
and most meaningful relationships with students we have experienced.
Developing roles for peer mentors that emphasize their support of
academics also requires a distinctive approach to the training process.
Incorporating peer mentors into the crowded space of an honors FYS
academic semester presents challenges for both peer mentors and fac-
ulty members. Craing a pedagogical space for peer mentors to emerge
as co-educators of the academic seminars begins with group and indi-
vidual training in our program. e training prepares peer mentors
to take on the more signicant roles of peer educators in the program
and keeps faculty members involved in shaping how peer mentors
will step into their classrooms. is ongoing training starts before the
semester begins when students learn about the variety of roles they
will play during the semester: teacher for in-class sessions, coordina-
tor of events, tutor for essay writing assignments, and personal coach
and role model. ey sign contracts identifying the expectations for
their roles, which these students will nd familiar since all program
participants must have taken Cultural Traditions themselves.
Aer that initial training day, peer mentors meet as a group six
or more times each semester with the faculty coordinator of the FYS
program. Group training sessions deliberately mimic the seminar-style
learning that engages the peer mentors as active knowledge creators.
In these meetings, peer mentors prepare to teach students about FYS
topics by developing presentations, discussing how issues like the one-
on-ones are progressing, and learning about additional training topics
such as eective interpersonal communication strategies. ey also
provide important opportunities to address issues of sharing the class-
room territory with the faculty as mentors reect on how they will cra
their own roles in collaboration with their assigned professors. ese
training and reective sessions have been crucial to establishing and
maintaining the central importance peer mentors have grown to play
in our honors FYS, including the contribution of the signicant and
successful innovation of one-on-one meetings throughout the semes-
ter. On the other hand, when elements of the FYS fail to engage or
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
eectively help students, these meetings with the peer mentor team
are also the best ways to learn about the problems and correct them.
For peer mentors, these sessions also function as opportunities to
reect on their new roles and the identities they are forging as student
educators in and out of the classroom environment. is focus on
reection has been identied in research on peer mentors as a criti-
cal component of a peer mentor training program. Harmon’s study
of peer mentors determined “that peer mentors progress through a
unique learning experience built on personal reection and collab-
orations as well as direct applications of what is learned from their
experiences” (79). Collier’s guide for training peer mentors also puts
reection at the center of any successful training program. “Successful
programs,” he writes, “are designed with frequent, regular reection
exercises that encourage trainees to think about and articulate con-
cerns and issues within a supportive setting” (227). He also notes that
such reections provide peer mentors with a record of their learning
and accomplishments. In our training program, peer mentors complete
several journals each semester that discuss what they have been doing
and how they view successes and problems in the issues they are expe-
riencing. ese journals not only promote reection on the part of the
peer mentor but also provide feedback for the program coordinator
and faculty team. ese journals create a record of the program and
its continuing innovations through the various sections and mentors,
allowing the faculty to reect on the course from a perspective that we
do not typically have when we teach other courses.
ese group training meetings and activities like keeping jour-
nals are supplemented by one-on-one training that occurs between
each faculty member and the assigned peer mentor for the course sec-
tion. Peer mentors meet with their designated faculty member before
the semester begins. e informal meeting includes making general
introductions, sharing the syllabus, and discussing potential schedul-
ing conicts. e faculty are given a shared schedule for typically 5–6
presentations that peer mentors are required to make over the course
of the semester. But each faculty and peer mentor partnership can also
decide to incorporate additional instructional presentations or cre-
ate new ways to involve the peer mentors in classroom activities such
as class discussions or essay workshop sessions. During the semester,
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
faculty are also asked to continue working with the peer mentors, espe-
cially focusing on how they can enhance their roles as educators in and
out of the classroom.
Our initial assessments of our program, like much of the previously
cited research focused on FYS programs, point to the positive academic
impact of mentors on our students. Since the program’s outset, we have
used various approaches to assess the peer mentors’ success and develop
new and more successful strategies to integrate peer mentors into the
course. e most formal component of this self-study employs a sur-
vey distributed each semester that students complete along with their
general course evaluations (Appendix B). In addition to these surveys,
we continually gather qualitative evidence that documents reections
on our program through our ongoing training sessions with mentors,
reports created by mentors several times each semester, and direct fac-
ulty supervision of the peer mentors assigned to each classroom; these
informal assessments identify strengths and weaknesses of the peer
mentor program. is ongoing system of assessment helps us identify
areas needing further work or successful innovations worth continuing,
and it serves as an essential feedback loop for developing the program.
We have found our process of continually gathering feedback
from the mentors themselves essential in identifying areas that can
be improved through new approaches. We gather these reections
through mentors’ shared observations on their interactions with stu-
dents in both the group mentor training sessions and in the peer
mentor reports collected throughout each semester. By inviting peer
mentors to critique their performance as well as our courses, we delib-
erately blur boundaries typically present between peer mentors and
professors. Welcoming such critiques invites the mentors to gain a
sense of ownership in the course—an essential foundation for their
own innovations in our FYS pedagogy.
ese opportunities for reection, in fact, led to one of our most
signicant changes to the peer mentor program: requiring one-on-
one meetings with students to take place at least once each semester.
e peer mentors, frustrated with what they saw as too few students
reaching out for assistance, rst suggested including this additional
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
assignment. Since incorporating these meetings in the fall of 2016,
students, peer mentors, and faculty have been impressed with how this
new interaction has developed the students’ relationships with their
peer mentors, particularly in the ways this social connection fostered
signicant improvements in how students saw their peer mentors as
important academic resources.
To assess the success of the peer mentor program, we issue formal
student surveys at the end of each semester. is survey contains seven
questions on a 5-point Likert scale, with ve representing the highest
rating, and several open-ended questions. We have gathered data with
this survey each fall from 2015 through 2022 with an average response
rate of 75 percent of the approximately 80–100 students enrolled. Table
1 below presents the results of Question 5, which explicitly evaluates
the peer mentors’ academic contributions: “Mentors provided a valu-
able resource about academic issues like success in Honors, reading,
or writing.”
Year Mean Score
Fall 2015 4.130
Fall 2016 4.361
Fall 2017 4.365
Fall 2018 Data not available
Fall 2019 4.10
Fall 2020 4.39
Fall 2021 4.57
Fall 2022 4.55
ese results conrm that students see peer mentors serving important
academic roles—and that response has strengthened over time. Peer
mentors and instructors have been guided by such responses to con-
tinue developing eective ways to ensure that students view mentors
as vital academic resources. ese assessments have helped identify a
need for instructors and peer mentors to develop additional in-class
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
sessions on issues like reading critically in honors. For example, peer
mentors now discuss critical reading strategies specically suited to
the kinds of texts assigned in Cultural Traditions. Rather than simply
providing generic advice about critical reading strategies, as they did
at the start of the peer mentor program, these sessions now target the
kinds of readings students actually encounter.
ese results also reveal that the reliance on peer mentors to sup-
port the work of academic learning is generating increasingly valuable
academic capital, particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Our faculty and peer mentors, drawing on experiences with
student cohorts since fall 2020, view this signicant jump in students’
assessments of the academic value of peer mentors as grounded in the
increased importance of developing personal connections and build-
ing community to support learning in the pandemic era. Peer mentors
play a critical role in providing such connections at a time when many
higher education institutions have struggled to keep students engaged
and learning at their full potential.
Our campus institutional data provided an additional means of
assessing peer mentors’ impact on the academic success of students in
Cultural Traditions I during the early years of forming the program. In
Table 2, data comparing the mean GPA of students across all sections
of our Cultural Traditions fall courses during the ve years before and
aer the inclusion of peer mentors indicate an overall trend of higher
academic performance.
Looking at this data for the trends in academic performance before
and aer the inclusion of peer mentors reveals an overall increase in
academic performance when examining either the mean or median
GPA of all students enrolled. Fall 2011 appears to be an aberration
with an abnormally low mean GPA and thus aects these results; how-
ever, the overall trends in academic performance over these 10 years
provide a helpful data point indicating the positive impact of peer
mentors on their students’ academic success. is overall pattern of
higher GPAs can be especially empowering for students experiencing
their rst semester of college, giving students greater condence in
their ability to succeed academically and helping ensure that they are
better positioned to meet the honors college’s requirements of a mini-
mum 3.2 GPA to maintain good standing.
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
Cultural Traditions
before peer mentors
Mean GPA of all
sections combined
Fall 2009, 5 sections 3.262
Fall 2010, 5 sections 3.362
Fall 2011, 6 sections 2.977
Fall 2012, 6 sections 3.302
Fall 2013, 6 sections 3.529
Mean GPA, Fall 2009–2013 3.286
Median of all GPAs, Fall 2009–2013 3.302
Cultural Traditions
with peer mentors
Mean GPA of all
sections combined
Fall 2014, 6 sections 3.553
Fall 2015, 7 sections 3.473
Fall 2016, 7 sections 3.299
Fall 2017, 7 sections 3.456
Fall 2018, 7 sections 3.522
Mean GPA, Fall 2014–2018 3.461
Median of all GPAs, Fall 2014–2018 3.473
As a follow-up to the 2009–2018 data above that indicate a posi-
tive correlation between the inclusion of peer mentors and student
GPA, we are currently in the early stages of implementing a college-
wide student e-portfolio requirement to assess our honors learning
outcomes. e e-portfolio will include representative work from the
FYS classes, allowing us to assess whether students are meeting learn-
ing outcomes in areas such as contrasting diverse cultural viewpoints.
Common rubrics will be developed to assess student work in relation
to explicitly dened benchmarks. is approach will provide impor-
tant direct assessment measures to complement the numerous indirect
assessments of the FYS program currently in place.
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
e evidence gathered so far points to the peer mentor program’s
success in enhancing our students’ academic achievements. Student
comments on the surveys demonstrate that they recognize the posi-
tive academic impact of the work done by their peer mentors. As one
student notes, “My mentor’s most valuable contribution to my cultural
traditions’ experience is the advice they were able to give being some-
one who has academic experience. e mentor was able to give us an
idea of what the expectations are and what the expectations are going
to be as we continue our education.” Such feedback underscores how
students in these classes primarily dene mentors as having crucial
academic roles, and this perspective creates the environment needed
for mentors to impact student learning signicantly. Our distinctive
approach to the peer mentor role in the honors academic seminar high-
lights and reinforces our mentors’ academic support and leadership.
THE ACADEMICALLY ENGAGED PEER MENTORS IN ACTION
e following sections explore more fully how the peer mentors carry
out meaningful academic work at the center of our Cultural Traditions
seminars. Each example—focused on the issues of teaching liberal edu-
cation and developing strong writing—demonstrates the signicant
ways in which peer mentors contribute to our students’ learning. ese
sections also include feedback from students and peer mentors reect-
ing on their perceptions of these critical academic roles.
Peer mentors play a crucial role in helping to establish the course’s the-
oretical backbone: its reections on liberal education. e fall semester
of Cultural Traditions introduces students to this topic, and the spring
term oers opportunities for deeper critique and innovation in con-
ceiving of this course as a foundation for students’ understanding
of their honors education. Fall course objectives include developing
students’ ability to understand and analyze various philosophies of
eective learning; students apply these skills and this knowledge to
classes across the curriculum and their daily lives.
We address these objectives through critical engagement with the
concept of liberal education beginning in the rst week of the course.
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
Although instructors develop varied approaches and readings for this
component, all instructors start the fall semester by addressing the
concept of liberal education. e texts employed to discuss approaches
to liberal education include writings from authors such as the famed
philosopher and educator Paolo Freire, moral philosopher and law pro-
fessor Martha Nussbaum, environmental historian William Cronon,
and former Secretary of Education William Bennett. ese readings
function as a way to render the course learning outcomes more trans-
parent. ey also serve as a way to dene and contemplate the elements
of liberal education before the course transitions into exploring semi-
nal ancient texts that shape our modern world.
Because our goal is to expand the role of the mentor beyond the
extended-orientation format into a role that fosters critical thinking
and scholarly activity, we integrate mentors into the discussions about
liberal education from the outset of the semester. Even at the begin-
ning of the course, peer mentors play a signicant role in this aspect
of the curriculum by facilitating critical inquiry as well as the applica-
tion of the liberal education texts. For instance, concurrent with this
discussion about liberal education, students complete an activity and
writing assignment that integrates the concept of liberal education with
the FYS component of the course. During the rst few weeks of the
fall semester, students must attend events that are part of the campus
“Weeks of Welcome” activities, including educational, cultural, and
social programs. All FYS courses are encouraged to promote student
participation in these events to cultivate a sense of campus community.
Our honors version of this campuswide initiative strengthens students’
connection to the university and promotes thinking and writing about
ways their university experience contributes to their development as
liberally educated people.
Mentors play an integral role in this assignment. ey closely
review the university’s Weeks of Welcome events and highlight spe-
cic activities students may nd interesting or useful for the objective
of the assignment. Mentors attend several of these events themselves,
and they encourage students to meet up with them there. Although
this initial part of the assignment is primarily a social activity, mentors
explain to their classes how involvement at the university has enhanced
their own education as liberally educated individuals. e mentors also
lead in-class discussions to help students think critically about these
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
events and develop a written reection about how the events fulll the
goals of a liberal education. Mentors are critical because they are the
primary facilitators connecting campus events to the academic discus-
sion during class. ey then assist in highlighting for students how the
activities from orientation reinforce the broader, more critically reec-
tive goals of the course and liberal education in general.
Mentors help to legitimize the academic material by facilitating
ways in which the academic readings apply to community activities.
Understandably, many students struggle with fully understanding the
liberal education articles; however, with the mentors’ guidance, most
students glean some of the dominant themes woven throughout the
articles and then articulate in writing how those themes relate to their
Weeks of Welcome experiences. For instance, one student’s written
reection on a campus lecture, which was entitled “Tips for Becoming
a Student Leader,” addresses how his experience reinforced William
Cronon’s ideas in “‘Only Connect . . .’ the Goals of a Liberal Education.”
In his reection, the student writes:
Being liberally educated and being a successful leader are closely
intertwined. Many of the qualities of a leader that were covered
in [the] lecture are similar to Cronon’s list for a liberally edu-
cated person. In his “Only Connect . . .” Cronon discussed the
importance of “nurturing and empowering the people around
you.” is is vital for being an eective leader, and sums up the
ve points in [the leadership] presentation. In striving to be a
good leader, I will work on many of the qualities in Cronon’s list,
such as listening to the people around me, talking with them,
and being humble. A good leader also knows how to get things
done, another of Cronon’s requirements for a liberally educated
individual. In seeking to become a better student leader, I will
also become a more liberally educated individual.
Even if students maintain only an elementary understanding of the
academic sources of liberal education for this rst assignment, it gives
them a preliminary chance to think critically about liberal education.
It prepares them to develop their understanding of liberal education
and then apply this knowledge to real-world settings throughout the
fall and spring semesters.
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
Similarly, mentors’ reections about their experiences regarding
this assignment identify a connection with their role in the Weeks
of Welcome activities as ultimately enhancing the academic core of
the FYS seminar, echoing what we hoped to achieve while designing
the assignment. For instance, one mentor reects on the connection
between meeting with students at the Weeks of Welcome events and
in the classroom. He posits that their active role in the assignment
“help[s] the students get to know their mentors and each other bet-
ter outside of an academic setting. . . . [And] it could help increase
the comfort level in class. is could, in turn, create better class dis-
cussions.” His reflection reiterates our assumption that mentors’
engagement with students outside—and inside—of class is ultimately
a way to enhance classroom discourse.
Seeking methods for strengthening meaningful engagement
between mentors and students, the program evolved in 2016 to incor-
porate mandatory one-on-one meetings near the start of the semesters.
In these one-on-ones, peer mentors discuss ways to get involved on
campus and the kinds of campus opportunities that interest individual
students. Such conversations naturally relate to many central themes
in the texts discussing liberal education, particularly with the notions
of “connecting” presented by William Cronon. ese informal meet-
ings allow students to revisit the more formal classroom discussions on
thinking about liberal education outside the classroom. e meetings
also oer the peer mentors opportunities to share their reections on
how their involvement on campus has developed their experience of
liberal education. e peer mentors’ pedagogical role in these meet-
ings is not formalized, but its impact on students’ full understanding
of the concepts of liberal education is signicant.
One of the most important academic challenges facing students in our
writing-intensive curriculum is the development of strong academic
writing skills. Our approach to having peer mentors help to develop
this academic skill is substantial; the peer mentors provide crucial aca-
demic support for the assigned essays throughout both semesters of
Cultural Traditions. eir interactions with students for these assign-
ments are multi-faceted and include formal information presentations
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
during class sessions. In the rst semester, for example, peer mentors
create interactive presentations focused on how to tackle the challenges
of writing at the collegiate level. To prepare for these presentations,
peer mentors meet with the faculty FYS coordinator to discuss com-
mon writing problems rst-year students face and helpful strategies to
develop stronger writing skills. e collaborative process of preparing
and getting feedback on these presentations helps mentors model the
kinds of feedback students will receive from instructors. It also gives
the mentors pedagogical control over the tone and content of their
classroom sessions. us, from the rst classroom presentation focused
on becoming a successful writer in honors, the peer mentors establish
themselves as educational authorities inuencing the narrative of what
is being taught to the classes.
In addition to this writing presentation, peer mentors attend in-
class essay workshop sessions where they assist with developing the
students’ dras. Having established their authority on academic writing
in the classroom presentations, the peer mentors build on this founda-
tion by oering additional essay workshops outside the class meetings.
us, students view the peer mentors as particularly knowledgeable
when they provide feedback on essays. One student noted in a recent
course survey that the peer mentors “were like having another profes-
sor who cares just as much as the actual professor.”
Our peer mentor assessment surveys conrm the value students
place on their peer mentors’ role in developing their writing skills.
As part of our ongoing eort to improve the FYS program and assess
the peer mentors’ academic contributions to the course, we updated
a few questions in our peer mentor assessment survey in 2020. One
such survey question indicates how students identify their peer men-
tors’ role in strengthening their academic skills and their success in
honors overall. Students give high ratings to their peer mentors for
their academic contributions to the course, responding to the following
statement listed as Question 3: “e mentor strengthened my ability
to succeed in Honors.” Table 3 demonstrates the high level of student
condence in the academic support they are receiving.
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
Year Mean Score
Fall 2020 4.08
Fall 2021 4.44
Fall 2022 4.45
In addition to these scores, our open-ended survey questions point
to the positive impact of the peer mentors on students’ writing. When
asked to share what “you considered the most valuable contribution
of the mentors to your experience of Cultural Traditions,” one of the
most frequent responses—appearing in roughly 25% of the surveys—
mentions mentors’ assistance with essays. ese remarks suggest that
students highly value mentors’ distinctive and critical contributions
for developing academic writing. As one student articulates, “having
a mentor helped me feel more comfortable with my writing because
I always had someone to critique and encourage me.” Another com-
ment about the value of the peer mentors’ contribution demonstrates
how many students perceive the peer mentors as providing necessary
academic support that complements the teaching of the instructors:
“Mentors helped me get a greater understanding of what my professor
had already told me, and I did not completely understand.”
e nal essay in the spring semester of the course asks students to
occupy the role of teacher by designing their own sequence of classes
for Cultural Traditions. In addition to creating a sequence of texts and
in-class activities to construct a new unit for the course, they must
include a source that links their concept to the liberal education goals
they identify as centrally important. is nal assignment takes on
additional complexity because an essential part of their justication
for their idea must relate to the concepts of liberal education that they
began exploring in the fall semester. Students reread and then use the
liberal education texts from the rst weeks of the fall semester to sup-
port their rationale for new approaches to liberal education topics like
global community, environmental challenges, and civic engagement.
e assignment pushes students to develop complex cognitive skills
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
and create new approaches to learning and analysis. Peer mentors are
especially important in providing a much-needed academic under-
standing of this challenging assignment. In various ways that build
upon their roles as co-educators, the peer mentors facilitate and oen
model the academic operations required for students to complete this
assignment successfully.
To help prepare students to engage critically with these liberal
education sources, peer mentors take the leadership role in class dis-
cussion about the texts. Because the mentors are uniquely positioned
to provide relatable, accessible strategies to interpret and respond to
faculty assignments, they help break down the cognitive steps needed
to accomplish this sophisticated thinking. ey also help students iden-
tify where they may struggle to construct the logical process needed to
arrive at a new approach to Cultural Traditions. Mentors help students
recognize key concepts from the texts while also prompting them to
analyze how their rst year in honors actualizes these concepts. e
mentors also help the rst-year students critically reect on their own
achievements as they acquire the habits of liberally educated people.
e peer mentors themselves model this kind of critical self-analysis
as they share how they see themselves becoming liberally educated.
Seeing a peer mentor in this authoritative pedagogical role also
enhances students’ condence in the mentor’s ability to guide them
through the diculties of creating ideas, organizing a dra, and iden-
tifying areas needing revision. By foregrounding that academic role in
the classroom, students not only express their condence in the peer
mentors’ academic insights but also become more likely to seek the
mentors out for personal guidance.
CONCLUSION
Scholars and honors communities have embraced the academic
seminar as the primary pedagogical format for FYS courses. Yet, a
signicant need as well as a rich opportunity for program development
still exists for moving beyond practices and models typically found in
extended-orientation formats. While including peer mentors in eec-
tive FYS programming undoubtedly requires changes in approach
and structure, our experience indicates that peer mentors are a valued
part of our program’s success, providing us with a crucial source of
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Peer Mentors as Co-Educators
innovation, academic improvement, and community building within
our FYS program. Our results conrm an important recommendation
from the 2012–2013 National Survey of First-Year Seminars: “e use
of undergraduate peer leaders is an opportunity for all institutions,
and particularly rich for two-year and public colleges and universi-
ties” (Young and Hopp 52). Our peer mentors have proven the many
benets of embracing that opportunity to provide valuable “psycho-
social” support (Terrion and Leonard 150) and pedagogical insights
for both students and instructors; their contributions to the program
more than justify the challenges of integrating them into the course.
Certainly, this collaborative approach to education requires curriculum
revisions, role clarications, and adjustments in classroom dynam-
ics and shared pedagogical spaces. But it also oers a foundation for
continued advancements in educational content and practice. Strong
and open communication on multiple levels produces a healthy and
productive interaction within the FYS group as a whole. When faculty
are invited to collaboratively shape the goals of the program while also
dening the goals for their individual classroom spaces, their initial
concerns about adjustments to their syllabus and setting and main-
taining professional parameters are signicantly eased. Likewise, when
peer mentors are allowed to participate as more than appendages to a
preexisting curriculum, these student educators can profoundly impact
students and faculty alike.
In addition to discovering that peer mentors can enhance an
academically rigorous curriculum, we have learned other important
lessons. For instance, we recognized the importance of legitimizing the
peer mentor’s role in the class to create stronger and more meaningful
personal connections between the mentors and students. is process
begins with the earliest activities: ensuring the mentors’ presence at
rst-year orientation, requiring early and regular contact between the
mentor and students outside of the classroom, and including state-
ments about the role and signicance of mentors on the class syllabus
and in faculty’s earliest communications with students.
Finally, we have learned to appreciate the evolving role of peer
mentors as an integral bridge between students and instructors. Not
only do peer mentors function as liaisons between instructors and
students by explaining and demonstrating eective classroom prac-
tices, but they also serve as additional feedback loops for instructors
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
by alerting them to diculties students experience with course content
or instruction—problems that may otherwise be overlooked or misun-
derstood. We are condent that the role of our peer mentors and the
curriculum of our FYS will continue to evolve through this process of
continual reection and development, allowing us to create a respon-
sive FYS program that can meet the challenges honors students face
now and in the future.
REFERENCES
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Collier, Peter. Developing Effective Student Peer Mentoring Programs: A
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APPENDIX A
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Cultural Traditions I:
Course Objectives
Students will develop their understanding of early Western and non-Western cultures as
they:
• Gain an overview of central ideas in world cultures by reading and analyzing a wide
range of inuential texts.
• Demonstrate their ability to analyze and compare cultural values embedded in writings
from diverse geographical and chronological perspectives.
• Master the fundamentals of university library usage, including search engines and
the database system for their written and oral assignments; use these skills eectively
by identifying and incorporating reliable academic sources.
• Demonstrate eective communication of their ideas, both orally and in writing,
in a coherent and critical fashion, with full and correct documentation of sources.
• Apply the skills and knowledge from this Cultural Traditions core to other Honors
seminars, to classes across the curriculum, and to their daily lives.
Students will develop important skills as scholars in a university as they:
• Understand and critique various philosophies of eective learning.
• Reect on individual strategies to achieve undergraduate success; consider meaningful
connections between a university education, career, and other life goals.
• Become informed about the workings of our campus and demonstrate full
responsibility for their academic aairs through the use of online tools such as
DARS, MyConnect/Starsh, Canvas, and MyView.
• Familiarize themselves with advising and registration processes on this campus
and learn about campus resources for independent study, internships, and other
co-curricular opportunities.
• Participate in campus events and reect on the experiences.
• Investigate important campus resources for academic and professional success.
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Baldus, Friedline, and Torrusio
APPENDIX B
SURVEY ASSESSING PEER MENTORS
Cultural Traditions I:
First-Year Experience and Mentor Survey
Please provide your responses to help us continue to strengthen these components of the
course in future semesters. We appreciate your feedback!
5 = Highest Rating; 4= Above Average; 3 = Average; 2 = Below Average; 1 =
Unsatisfactory
5 4 3 2 1
1. Mentors in the fall Cultural Traditions classes improved ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
my understanding of advising and tools like DARS.
2. Mentors provided helpful information and encouragement ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
to attend campus events.
3. Mentors strengthened my understanding of the goals of ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
liberal education and Honors education.
4. Mentors increased my sense of connection to the UMSL ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
student community through social activities or personal
encounters outside of class.
5. Mentors provided a valuable resource about academic ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
issues like success in Honors, reading, or writing.
6. is course helped me think about my personal goals ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
for a college education.
7. e class encouraged me to make connections to the ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
UMSL community.
8. e class provided me with helpful advice and strategies ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
for tackling issues like library research and writing essays.
9. is class helped me develop skills or insights that will ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
help me succeed academically.
Take a moment to share what you considered the most valuable contribution of the
mentors to your experience of Cultural Traditions.
Please list any additional in-class or out-of-class activities or topics you think mentors
should present in future fall semesters.
What class assignments or activities were especially helpful for you as a rst-semester
student?
HONORING THE
Exploring High-Impact
Learning Experiences
for the First Year in Honors
PROFILE SUPPLEMENT
261
Kelli M. Slunt and Mara N. Scanlon
University of Mary Washington
Located in Fredericksburg, Virginia, situated between the
nation’s capital and the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia,
the University of Mary Washington (UMW) is a public, co-edu-
cational, and predominately four-year liberal arts and sciences
institution. e university is committed to the shared values in
our ASPIRE principles: accountability, scholarship, personal
and institutional integrity, respect and civility, and engagement.
Founded in 1908, UMW has evolved from a normal and indus-
trial school for women to a university that oers 48 majors, 44
minors, and 3 graduate programs. In fall 2023, UMW enrolled
3,611 undergraduates and 197 graduate students. Fiy-ve per-
cent of the students reside in on-campus housing. Ten percent of
the student body is from out of state, and 40% identify as racially
or ethnically diverse. Seventy percent of the faculty are full-time;
classes are taught by faculty or adjunct experts in the eld; and
the faculty-student ratio is 13:1.
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Slunt and Scanlon
UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON HONORS PROGRAM
F
ounded in 2011 and admitting the rst cohort of students in fall
2012, the University of Mary Washington (UMW) Honors Pro-
gram provides an intellectual home to high-achieving students. e
honors program is staed by 4 part-time individuals, 3 of whom are
teaching faculty. Each year, UMW admits approximately 90–125 new
students, with roughly 80–85% as direct admits from high school, for
a total enrollment of 350–425 students. To earn University Honors
distinction, students complete HONR 101, a service learning course,
12 credits of honors-designated coursework, a capstone experience,
and non-credit-bearing co-curricular and leadership requirements.
Honors-designated courses are oered across the curriculum. Taught
by faculty in their home disciplines, these honors courses are not
restricted to honors scholars only. e UMW Honors Program does
not utilize contract options for any honors-designated courses.
HONR 101: HONORS CITY AS TEXT®
is one-credit pass-fail course is mandatory for all honors schol-
ars during their rst fall semester in the program. It begins with an
intensive two-and-a-half-day pre-semester component and continues
through eight weeks of the semester in an evening course slot. rough
HONR 101, students are introduced to the institution, honors educa-
tion, and the City of Fredericksburg through experiences designed to
enhance critical observation and thinking skills and foster a greater
understanding of place. e honors faculty directors sta the course,
which enrolls 100–120 students. Faculty from Sociology, Anthropol-
ogy, and Historic Preservation, as well as sta from UMW’s James
Farmer Multicultural Center and members of the local community
and city government, serve as guest instructors. Upper-class honors
scholars volunteer as peer mentors and small group facilitators to assist
with the administration of the course programming. A small course fee
provides partial funding for the early arrival component.
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University of Mary Washington
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
All rst-year UMW students complete an academic rst-year semi-
nar (FYS), which is oered on various topics across the curriculum.
When the UMW Honors Program was rst established, it required
all scholars to complete an honors-designated FYS (HN FYS). Over
time, because of concerns with the limited topics for the HN FYS and
the inability to guarantee an honors cohort in any individual seminar,
it was decided that this iteration of the FYS was not ideal. In 2017,
the provost’s oce encouraged the honors program to develop an
early arrival honors-focused orientation. Aer learning about City as
Text® (CAT) at the 2017 National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC)
annual conference, Kelli M. Slunt enrolled in Negotiating Belonging:
Crossroads and Communities in Barcelona, which was a Master Class
on this pedagogy, in the summer of 2018. In August 2018, incoming
honors scholars were encouraged to participate in the rst UMW adap-
tation of CAT. On the rst night, students received a brief overview of
the CAT pedagogy and the history of architecture in Fredericksburg,
an experience modeled aer the CAT event featured at every NCHC
conference. e following day, in small groups, they explored neigh-
borhoods in the city with limited information or specic directions.
In the aernoon, the students prepared oral presentations about their
initial impressions of their new home. ey delivered their presenta-
tions at a banquet attended by university administrators, city ocials,
faculty, and community partners.
Positive outcomes from the rst experience included relationships
forged through the cohort experience and fostered through town-and-
gown connections. e mayor remarked that she learned more from
the rst-year students than she did from paid consultants on whom
she had recently spent time and resources. Concern arose, however,
that, especially in the compressed schedule, students who were naïve
or unaware of their own privileges could be unintentionally insensitive;
we believed that follow-up discussions or opportunities for reection
would mitigate that in later iterations. erefore, for the second year,
the program was expanded to multiple days to incorporate those ele-
ments and guidance on using impartial language and the basic skills of
ethnographic observation. We felt, however, that this version suered
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Slunt and Scanlon
from problems; it still did not allow enough time for meaningful dia-
logue and programming, and only a portion of the honors students
benetted from the optional cohort experience.
As a result, we developed HONR 101, a mandatory eight-week
one-credit course with an early arrival component that expanded the
orientation portion and would replace the required HN FYS. In prep-
aration, we participated in the NCHC City as Text
®
Faculty Institute
“Re-Reading Local Spaces” and explored Fredericksburg together.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rst oering of HONR 101
was delayed until fall 2021, when large group gatherings were once
again permitted at UMW.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
HONR 101 builds on NCHC’s Places as Text/City as Text pedagogy to
familiarize students with the campus and local community and to criti-
cally explore and reect on a place. In addition, it situates this NCHC
program in a deeper context that includes training for the target popu-
lation. rough guided experiential learning, students transition from
previous educational experiences, in which they may have been more
focused on nding the “right” answer, to a more curious, reective lens
that fosters dialogue and debate to seek new insight on how others may
view or interpret the space we occupy. e course is developed so that
even students native to the city are encouraged to gain a new perspec-
tive and reect on how others see their hometown.
e pre-semester component of the course focuses on curated
views of Fredericksburg, including visits to a local museum and the
Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park; an introduc-
tion to the city’s Civil Rights Trail, which has recently been designated
part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail; and a trolley tour of the city. Rein-
forcing a primary commitment of our program to service, students
engage in a morning of activities in partnership with UMW’s Commu-
nity Engagement oce. Time is also devoted to advising sessions with
the faculty directors, an overview of ethnographic and observational
research, and scavenger hunts on campus. Reection and mapping
exercises prompt students to begin critically reecting on the built
environment, including what is memorialized, protected, and noted,
as well as what is missing from the evolving story or the spaces visited.
265
University of Mary Washington
During the semester, the class meets for presentations on the built
environment and urban planning, on choosing descriptive and nonbi-
ased language when describing places and people, and on city issues
with a panel of city ocials and community members. During the
third week, outside of the class meeting time and in the company of
a more advanced honors scholar, students explore an assigned area of
the city in small groups. ey are encouraged to document their obser-
vations of the places they encounter. All areas are close to campus,
but some spaces require signicant walking. For those with mobility
or health concerns, we provide transportation to a Saturday morning
farmer’s market, allowing for rich observations in an accessible and
limited space. In the class period following the city explorations, the
groups meet with their peer leaders to reect on their observations and
conclusions and begin to prepare their nal presentations. e course
culminates with a poster showcase attended by city ocials and mem-
bers of the UMW community, including faculty, administration, and
students. Student groups select the focus of their presentation; we have
seen commentary on the local murals downtown, the state of upkeep
of the Confederate versus other cemeteries, accessibility concerns, yard
signs, and hostile architecture for the unhoused, to name just some. For
the nal assignment in the course, students complete an individual or
small group reection, oen featuring numerous creative options, on
the impact of the course experience.
CAT poses some challenges for accessibility and inclusion because
spaces downtown with historic architecture and brick sidewalks are
not easily navigated, especially for those with a physical impairment.
As described above, the expeditions are adapted each year based on
the experiences and abilities of our students. For the nal showcase,
students are asked to wear the student-designed CAT T-shirts that
we provide free of charge to avoid any pressure to purchase profes-
sional attire since they may not have such clothing readily available.
Using more casual but uniform attire creates a festive and comfortable
presentation environment while reducing some apprehension about
speaking before a large group.
HONR 101 enables students to build relations with honors sta,
fellow students, and members of the UMW and local communities;
gain familiarity with UMW and the city of Fredericksburg; practice
skills of observation using all available senses; improve analytical
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Slunt and Scanlon
skills for reading texts; challenge preconceived ideas about spaces; and
consider lenses that others use to describe or commemorate place.
roughout the course, we stress the importance of a curious and open
mind rather than nding the “right” answer, a concept crucial to our
approach to honors education.
267
Lee Ann Elliott Westman
Rutgers University–Camden
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, was founded in
1766 and is the eighth-oldest university in the nation. Rutgers
has three regional campuses: Rutgers–Camden, Rutgers–New-
ark, and Rutgers–New Brunswick. e Camden campus was
founded in 1926 as the South Jersey Law School and College of
South Jersey; it merged with Rutgers University in 1950. Aca-
demic oerings at Rutgers–Camden include 38 undergraduate
majors and 29 graduate programs. An R2 research facility, Rut-
gers–Camden had 6,075 undergraduate and graduate students
in the spring 2024 semester. Rutgers–Camden is designated as
a Minority Serving Institution, with more than 50% of the stu-
dent population identifying as African American, Latino, and/
or Asian; 60.8% of enrolled students are female; and 92.5% of
the students are New Jersey residents. e average class size is
24 students.
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Westman
T
he Rutgers University–Camden Honors College was founded in
1997. e total enrollment in the honors college ranges between
300 and 400 students; the honors college enrolls approximately 100
rst-year students each year. e honors college student population
mirrors the demographics of Rutgers–Camden: over half of the stu-
dents are African American, Latino, and/or Asian. About one-quarter
of the students in the honors college are rst-generation students, and
99% of all honors college students receive nancial aid.
While roughly 20 students join the honors college each year as
sophomores, most students enroll as rst-year students. e honors
college curriculum includes a required First-Year Forum for students
entering the honors college as rst-year students, 2 honors college sec-
tions of Honors Composition I and II, 2 upper-division honors college
seminars, and participation in the Honors College IMPACT Night at
the end of their senior year. Honors seminars are taught each semes-
ter by Honors College Faculty Fellows, who receive a stipend from the
Chancellor’s Fund for Pedagogical Innovation to develop their courses.
Honors students must complete an Engagement requirement each
semester that consists of participating in honors college events, activi-
ties, and community service. Juniors and seniors must also participate
in an Experience project, such as completing internships, learning
abroad, writing an honors thesis, applying for a fellowship, publish-
ing an undergraduate paper, or attending an academic conference.
Students who complete the honors college curriculum, Engagement,
Experience, and GPA requirements earn the Rutgers–Camden Honors
College designation on their diplomas and transcripts.
All rst-semester students in the honors college must enroll in the
3-credit course entitled “First-Year Forum” in either the fall or spring
semesters of their rst year. e First-Year Forum, which employs a
City as Text
®
pedagogy, is organized around the question “What is a
Just Community” and is led by the honors college director and 4–6
teaching assistants.
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Rutgers University–Camden
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
e Rutgers–Camden Honors College introduced the First-Year Forum
in the fall semester of 2022 as part of a more extensive curriculum
revision in collaboration with the provost and the deans of the 3 under-
graduate colleges. In the previous curriculum, honors college students
had to take 2 Freshmen Honors Composition courses and 4 interdis-
ciplinary honors college seminars during their 4 years in the honors
college. While these seminar courses were frequently designed with
high-impact learning outcomes, they were also small courses of 10–15
students; however, they did little to forge a sense of community among
honors college students. e revised curriculum added the First-Year
Forum as a required course, reduced the 4 seminars to 2 seminars, and
introduced IMPACT Night as an honors capstone/exit requirement for
graduating seniors.
Currently, no campuswide First-Year Forum is operational despite
multiple eorts to institute one. Most recently, the College of Arts and
Sciences created a First-Year Rutgers Experience Program (FYRE),
which is a 1-credit seminar led by peer instructors (PI). e FYRE
seminars are intended for rst-year students and have 4 objectives:
familiarize students with the Rutgers–Camden communities; cultivate
students’ sense of identity and purpose; develop key skills to help stu-
dents accomplish their personal and professional goals; and encourage
students to take ownership of their journey on campus.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e design of the First-Year Forum is based on years of research about
learning communities and high-impact academic experiences. e
course is also explicitly tied to the honors college’s eorts to be engaged
in the city of Camden, New Jersey, where we work and live. During the
rst week of class, First-Year Forum students take a walking tour to
see the impact of Camden’s most famous citizen, Walt Whitman. is
one-mile outing includes a visit to Camden City Hall, where Whitman’s
poetry is engraved on the south wall; a visit to Walt Whitman’s home (a
historic site); a wave in the direction of Walt Whitman’s grave; a walk to
the waterfront to see the Walt Whitman bridge, which spans the Dela-
ware River; and nally a stop at the recently relocated Walt Whitman
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Westman
statue on Rutgers–Camden’s campus. e walking tour is followed by
a discussion of Whitman’s racist comments about African Americans
and Native Americans, as well as a brief history of Camden as a poor
city that is located between 2 wealthy cities and the recent installment
of slave auction markers around the city that sit in uncomfortable dia-
logue with Walt Whitman’s large historical footprint. Students break
into groups to discuss what a “just community” should do with gures
such as Walt Whitman, including whether the campus did enough. Stu-
dents write their rst paper for the course on what they think about the
statue, its current location on campus, and the larger issues of a “just
community” in relation to this issue.
e Walt Whitman tour initiates a semester-long study of the city
of Camden and its strengths, challenges, and opportunities. Students
read about the history of Camden and learn from approximately 10
guest lecturers from Rutgers–Camden and the community who visit
the course during the semester to talk about their work in Camden.
e guest lecturers provide readings for students in advance of their
presentation. Students write a short paper about the readings and pre-
pare 2 questions for the guest lecturer, who then joins the class for a
day and leads a discussion about various issues related to creating a just
community. Guest lecturers have addressed topics such as food insecu-
rity, inequities in STEM education, violence de-escalation in policing,
hostile architecture, health care disparities, work and transportation
inequities, housing and gentrication, the representations of Camden
in the media, and restorative justice.
e other signicant component of the course is an engaged civic
learning project that takes the students into the community to work
throughout the semester with local organizations that address food
insecurity through both a weekly soup kitchen and a community gar-
den, increase literacy through a free books projects, lead aer-school
programs and workshops for developmentally disabled children and
their families, or address period poverty. Students are required to
complete at least 25 hours with the community organizations. ese
partnerships with local organizations and community groups allow the
First-Year Forum students to participate in ongoing, sustainable proj-
ects and provide students with the opportunity to see rsthand how
campus and community organizations try to create a more just com-
munity. Students select their projects during the rst 2 weeks of class.
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Rutgers University–Camden
ere are 40–50 students in the class each semester, and between 8 and
10 projects, so each project has between 5 and 8 students participating;
once they select their project for the semester, students meet with the
other students who have chosen the same project.
Students evaluate their participation in these high-impact com-
munity projects by writing 3 individual reective papers during the
semester. e rst paper poses questions designed to gauge their
expectations of the project. e second, a mid-semester evaluation,
asks students how their project is going and what they are learning
from it. e nal evaluation exercise invites them to reect on the
value of their project, what they think went well, and what could be
improved. Students are also required to give a class presentation at the
end of the semester to their group in which they explain what went
well and what did not go well.
A recent addition to the First-Year Forum is a mapping project.
Students are randomly sorted into groups of 3 and required to select
and map 1 type of service or venue in Camden, New Jersey, and com-
pare what they nd in Camden to the city of Philadelphia to the west
and the wealthy New Jersey suburbs to the east. Student groups have
mapped places such as grocery stores, pizza shops, charter schools,
liquor stores, bodegas, urgent care facilities, thri stores, nail salons,
gas stations, and USPS drop boxes. ey briey present their ndings,
and from their reports, a picture emerges of what is both overrepre-
sented and underrepresented in Camden compared to the surrounding
towns. While this project provides some early interaction with class-
mates and some practice presenting their work to their peers, it also
oers a snapshot of what we discuss throughout the semester.
e First-Year Forum teaching assistants play a variety of roles in
the course. First, they read and respond to the approximately 15 low-
stakes assignments related to the history of Camden and the guest
lecturers. e teaching assistants have consistently worked alongside
the students on their projects and are oen a terric peer resource for
rst-year students. Also, teaching assistants share their expertise and
observations on the course material.
273
Michael Schavey
Grand Rapids Community College
Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC), Michigan’s rst
community college, was established in 1914 and is focused on
oering traditional liberal arts and occupational pathways, adult
education courses, and skilled training courses and apprentice-
ships. Academic oerings include twelve Academic Pathways,
eight degree programs, and several certicate programs. GRCC
had 11,777 students enrolled in fall 2022; 72% are part-time, 57%
of enrolled students are female, 40% of the student population
are from underrepresented groups, and 72% of the students are
considered in-district residents of Kent County.
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Schavey
GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE HONORS PROGRAM
The Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) Honors Program
was founded in 2004. It was initially housed within our Instruc-
tional Support & Institutional Planning Unit and led by a full-time
professor receiving release time. Between 2004 and 2015, the curric-
ulum consisted of 6–8 honors sections of general education courses
taught by full-time faculty. is model experienced several barriers,
including establishing consistency in honors pedagogy, maintaining
healthy enrollment in honors courses, fostering an honors community,
determining faculty criteria to teach honors courses, and retaining
students. In 2012, the program was absorbed into the newly created
Department of Experiential Learning, and a revised curriculum was
introduced in the fall of 2017.
A rst-year seminar and a nal capstone course frame the new
honors curriculum. Students have the option of completing 2 addi-
tional honors seminars that are distinct from the general education
curriculum, and they must also participate in 4 extracurricular projects
under faculty mentorship. An existing scholarship was repurposed: it
now covers all honors courses and supports the completion of honors
extracurricular projects. e program oers a rolling admission, with
students starting the program either in the fall or winter semester. Fac-
ulty teach honors courses on top of their base load. e program has
consistent participation of around 150 students, and 25–30 students
complete the program each year.
HNR 101: INTRODUCTION TO HONORS
HNR 101, which is required of all honors students, is a one-credit,
extended-orientation seminar taught by a team of full-time faculty who
teach this course on top of their base load. e course is oered in a
7-week format and is available both in person and online.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
GRCC has a brief history of oering a campuswide rst-year seminar
through our College Learning Studies (CLS) curriculum. e CLS 100:
Introduction to College course is a one-credit oering with sections
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Grand Rapids Community College
focusing on various topics related to general orientation and profes-
sionalization. e course is not required, and many students do not
enroll in part because of the extra cost associated with a course that is
not a formal part of a degree program. Understanding how important
it is to prepare students to be successful in the honors program and
to increase retention rates, we have taken the concept of CLS 100 and
applied it to a new course entitled “HNR 101: Introduction to Honors.”
Before enrolling in HNR 101, students receive an initial orienta-
tion through a 30-minute virtual information session as part of the
application process. Students are then invited to our annual Honors
Kick-O event, which brings new and current students, faculty, and
sta together to reorient students and build a sense of community. We
have experienced tremendous success with this revised model. During
the rst semester of our relaunch, we started with 1 section of HNR
101 and 16 students. In fall 2022, we oered 5 sections with an enroll-
ment of 107 students.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e course was initially oered as a traditional 15-week, in-person
course; however, feedback from students encouraged us to provide the
course in a 7-week format. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic forced
us to oer a virtual option. e rst two weeks of the course are oriented
around building a shared understanding of how to participate in and
complete the program. Guest speakers are scheduled to come into the
class to provide guidance and insight into the nuts and bolts of “how
to do honors,” which include learning how to establish and complete
an honors project, take advantage of faculty oce hours, and dem-
onstrate professional communication etiquette. In subsequent weeks,
we transition into discussions focused on leadership and exposing stu-
dents to opportunities within the program and through our Student Life
Oce. Because students love hearing from their peers, honors alums
and students in our capstone classes are oen invited to share their
perspectives. We also spend some time discussing the academic and/or
career advising requirement, which all students are required to complete
every semester. It is designed to help them identify and use campus
resources and build condence in their career goals.
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Schavey
e nal weeks of the class focus on community engagement. All
honors students are required to complete 4 hours of volunteer service
every semester. We understand that for many students this can be an
issue, especially if they struggle with time management, have chal-
lenges securing adequate transportation, or cannot take time o work.
e program oers one Day of Service event each semester where all
honors students can work on a Saturday with organizations with whom
we have established partnerships. e course culminates in students
preparing their plans to complete all program requirements.
Because the honors program has requirements beyond the col-
lege’s eld-specic academic and general education requirements,
students rely on HNR 101 for guidance, direction, and encourage-
ment to remain committed to honors. e honors program emphasizes
continuous improvement, regularly collecting feedback from students
and faculty to improve the teaching and learning experience.
277
Todd Fraley
East Carolina University
e mission of East Carolina Uni versity (ECU), which is located
in Greenville, North Carolina, is to be a national model for stu-
dent success, public service, and regional transformation. As of
fall 2023, ECU serves over 26,000 students and oers 85 bach-
elor’s degree programs, 68 master’s programs, 13 doctoral degree
programs, and various other certicate and advanced programs.
Current enrollment includes nearly 20,000 full-time students
(17,104 undergraduates, 2,700 graduate students, 591 in the
School of Medicine, and 207 in the School of Dental Medicine).
Almost 90% of these students are from North Carolina, with the
remaining students coming to ECU from 46 states, Washington,
D.C., and 70 countries. Students from underrepresented groups
comprise 31% of the population, and over 40% pursue STEM/
Health Care degrees. e ECU student-faculty ratio is 18:1, with
approximately 2,000 faculty.
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Fraley
THE HONORS COLLEGE AT ECU
T
he Honors College at East Carolina University (ECU) has a rich
history of providing innovative programs for honors students.
Since its inception in the mid-1960s, the ECU Honors Program has
attracted highly motivated and curious students and provided those
students with unique learning opportunities and experiences fostering
intellectual growth, personal development, and a strong and abiding
commitment to the ECU community. ECU transitioned from a decen-
tralized honors program to an honors college led by an academic dean
in 2010. e honors college admitted 100 rst-year students each fall
for the rst seven years. Today, the honors college admits 200 students
each fall, with current enrollment at over 800 students. e college
invites rst-time, full-time students and transfer students to apply to
the honors college aer being admitted to ECU. All students receive
scholarship support for up to eight semesters. e ECU Honors College
curriculum includes honors seminars, departmental honors sections,
colloquia, and a six-hour signature honors project that must be com-
pleted with the support of a faculty mentor. is regimen includes a
ve-credit-hour, two-course rst-year seminar (FYS) series required
for all entering rst-year students. e honors college works with fac
-
ulty members from across campus to deliver this curriculum.
Each incoming class of 200 new honors students is welcomed through
a cohesive first-year hybrid experience combining aspects of the
extended-orientation and academic seminars. e Honors Freshmen
Leadership Experience is a sequence of two rst-year seminars oered
in conjunction with experiential programming and participation in a
living-learning community.
HRNS 2000 is a two-hour colloquium taught in the fall semester,
and HNRS 3000 is a three-hour colloquium oered during the spring.
e courses are team-taught by an interdisciplinary ve-member fac-
ulty team representing the arts, sciences, humanities, and business.
Team teaching in this context means instructors prepare the courses
and syllabi together and meet weekly to prepare the in-class materi-
als and out-of-class activities, ensuring consistency in delivery and
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East Carolina University
content. e honors college oers ve sections of approximately 40
students in each class. Together, these courses provide a practical FYS
project that aims to create an entrepreneurial leadership experience
for students that reects the pressures and demands of the real world
in an early-stage startup.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
In the fall of 2010, the honors college introduced a three-course col-
loquia series supporting ECU’s initiatives that help students build a
foundation for success. While ECU does not require a rst-year course
for incoming students, a one-credit-hour student development course
focused on belonging, academic and life skills, and career explora-
tion is oered during the fall semester. e honors courses mirrored
these goals and provided additional opportunities for personal growth,
professional development, and relationship building. e honors three-
course sequence was taught during the fall semesters of a student’s
rst, sophomore, and junior years. Over time, this colloquia series has
evolved as honors leadership has responded to issues and priorities
related to course and cohort cohesion, living-learning programming,
faculty consistency, increased student enrollment, and an intentional
move toward transformative learning grounded in meaningful student
achievement. is project has evolved into a rst-year seminar series
designed to cultivate a unique cohort experience and enhance a stu-
dent’s academic and personal experience while avoiding the replication
of learning outcomes obtained in their home departments.
e honors FYS parallels ECU’s campuswide rst-year program-
ming. While honors college faculty, sta, and students participate in
many of these initiatives, the FYS is entirely supported by the honors
college.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e updated Honors College Freshmen Leadership Experience was
executed for the rst time during the 2017–2018 academic year. e
results are encouraging. Students who have completed the FYS pursue
unique and diverse leadership roles and embrace leadership, innova-
tion, and entrepreneurship as interconnected concepts.
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Fraley
e Honors 2000 and 3000 FYS sequence is designed to provide
a yearlong educational experience building the contemporary meth-
ods needed to address grand challenges with an emphasis on local
and regional issues. Grand challenges are dened as social or cultural
problems that prove dicult to solve for many reasons: incomplete or
contradictory knowledge, the large number of opinions involved, the
scale of the economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these
problems with other problems. To engage, equip, and empower the
rst-year honors class in understanding grand challenges, the class
rst introduces Human-Centered Design as applied to designing the
student’s own life.
Human-centered design is the starting point that allows rst-year
students to examine and question how to construct a meaningful life
and take advantage of the inherent opportunities of being a university
student. It also encourages students to consider and acknowledge their
unique leadership potential on campus, in their academic discipline,
and within the community. In a ipped classroom setting, students
build on this newly examined self-perspective. e class then applies
this same design thinking to a problem identied by teams of students
as something important to them. Selecting problems that students care
about stimulates discussions of empathy for others and is essential to
the success of human-centered design. is attribute of empathy is
also reinforced as a quality of collaborative and ethical leadership and
service using real-world examples. Students then move through the
process of building creative condence, writing problem statements,
reframing questions, building prototypes, and testing and proposing
possible solutions. Because of the complex nature of grand challenges
and the wicked problems they address, the goal is to demonstrate
how the students’ proposed solution moves closer to an ideal solu-
tion despite not solving every aspect of the wickedness of the problem.
e rst semester ends with a trade-show-style poster presenta-
tion. A competitive process moves a select number of ideas or topics
into the second semester. Students then lead the evolutionary process
and execution of the selected topics. In the second semester, additional
problem-solving methods are developed using Lean LaunchPad (LLP)
as a platform for evidence-based discovery. e students use this busi-
ness model, adapted for their area, as a planning guide for creating
value around their ideas for the people served. Students work through
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East Carolina University
the LLP experience using a “get-out-of-the-building approach,” also
called “consumer development,” to test their ideas and collect evidence
to determine if their assumptions are accurate. Because students oen
encounter chaos and uncertainty, the student teams interview stake-
holders, partners, and competitors.
Using feedback gathered during interviews, student teams learn to
iterate ideas as they rapidly build something necessary and sustainable.
is approach requires solutions that evolve through the collabora
-
tive eort of organizing themselves, their cross-disciplinary teams, and
their end users. Requirements and solutions are tested and measured
using small, incremental prototypes, and students use the data they col-
lect to refresh their business model. Findings are presented in weekly
meetings to the entire class. is structure moves the student through
an evidence-based entrepreneurial process that starts as a search and
ends in execution. e approach builds on the fundamental belief that
these skills are universally transferable and can be applied to any dis-
cipline to improve and enhance a student’s education.
By the end of this sequence, in conjunction with their living-learn-
ing experiences, students will develop an intellectual curiosity that
positions them as campus and community leaders armed with the
resources, condence, and support to pursue their passions and chal-
lenge themselves in ways they previously had not considered.
283
Lauren Shumaker, Carrie J. McClelland,
and Toni Lefton
Colorado School of Mines
Sarah Jayne Hitt
New Model Institute for Technology
and Engineering
e Colorado School of Mines (Mines) was founded in Golden,
Colorado, in 1874, two years before Colorado became a state.
Mines is a public four-year university specializing in applied sci-
ence and engineering, oering 21 undergraduate and nearly 40
graduate degrees. In addition to strong education and research
programs in traditional elds of science and engineering, Mines
is one of the few institutions in the world with broad expertise in
resource exploration, extraction, production, and utilization. A
total student body of about 7,600 (5,800 undergraduates, 1,800
graduate students) allows for an average student-faculty ratio
284
Shumaker, McClelland, Lefton, and Hitt
of 17:1. About 56% of Mines undergraduates are residents of
Colorado. e undergraduate student body is 32% female and
71% White.
UNIVERSITY HONORS AND SCHOLARS
F
irst-Year Honors (FYH) at Mines exists within the University Hon-
ors and Scholars (UHS) portfolio, which also houses the McBride
Honors Program, Undergraduate Research Scholars, Grand Challenges
Scholars Program, Teach@Mines, and the Oce of Nationally Com-
petitive Scholarships. Altogether, these programs engage more than
800 students each year, of which approximately 160 are enrolled in
First-Year Honors. e McBride Honors Program, founded in 1978,
is a sophomore-senior honors program emphasizing the integration of
the humanities and STEM elds. Up to 40 students are accepted into
McBride at the end of their rst year, aer which they take one hon-
ors course per semester and complete a practicum with the outcome
of an Honors Minor in Public Aairs when they graduate. FYH was
designed in 2016 to complement McBride as a foundational honors
experience, but it is not a direct pipeline to McBride; any student at
Mines may apply to join McBride, whether or not they are involved in
FYH. Typically, about one-half to two-thirds of McBride students come
from the First-Year Honors cohort. Similarly, FYH is not a prerequisite
for any of the scholars programs or Teach@Mines, but participation in
FYH prepares students for success in these areas. Incoming students
are invited to apply for FYH aer being admitted to Mines, typically
January-May before their rst fall semester. Students are encouraged
to apply for other UHS programs during the spring semester of their
rst year; however, applications for Undergraduate Research, Teach@
Mines, and Grand Challenges Scholars are accepted at all levels.
First-Year Honors at Mines oers two pathways: orson FYH was
developed in 2016, and Grandey FYH was launched in 2021. Each
approach is grounded in a required two-semester course sequence
(three credits in the fall and four credits in the spring) that covers
introductory design, communication, and ethics. Each course sequence
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Colorado School of Mines
fullls broader university core curriculum requirements via an inter-
disciplinary, team-taught approach. Faculty come from numerous
disciplines in the sciences, engineering, and humanities; their task is
to collaborate on course design, delivery, and assessments.
e courses are writing-intensive and graphics-intensive, designed
to equip students with the technical and creative skills they need to
face both the expectations of their Mines degree programs and the
ethical, environmental, social, and cultural complexities of the pro-
fessional world. Students investigate ethical problems and work on
hands-on design challenges informed by expert lecturers, eld trips,
team-based projects, and seminar discussions. Both programs incor-
porate Place as Text/City as Text® methodologies and other honors best
practices throughout the year to highlight the seamless boundaries
between science and engineering, design, and ethics as a path toward
making value-informed technical decisions. Within this shared ethos,
each program’s course sequence takes a unique approach to these top-
ics and skill sets.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
e orson FYH course is entitled “Innovation and Discovery in
Engineering, Arts, and Sciences” (IDEAS). IDEAS elevates humani-
ties-based perspectives, particularly from the visual and performing
arts, literature, and architecture, with elements of history, sociology,
anthropology, and other disciplines embedded in the curriculum. e
Grandey FYH is centered on a course called “Leadership by Design,”
in which students build capabilities to be better leaders, designers, and
communicators, emphasizing building creativity through making and
integrating societal context through systems-minded thinking.
In 2016, the IDEAS course was developed as the core curricular
experience for orson FYH, with two primary goals. First, it was
essential that honors courses at Mines replace existing core communi-
cation/ethics and engineering design requirements and not add more
classes to degree programs with heavy credit loads. Second, honors
faculty deemed it important that IDEAS expand upon integrating
humanities and the arts into STEM elds, which the McBride Honors
Program had already done with great success. is alignment coin-
cides with the vision and mission of the university and the National
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Shumaker, McClelland, Lefton, and Hitt
Academy of Engineering, which sees twenty-rst-century engineering
education as more multidisciplinary and holistic. FYH helps to achieve
strategic institutional goals of creating signature rst-year experiences
and developing student capacities to apply knowledge from an inter-
disciplinary learning environment.
e Grandey First-Year Honors Experience was developed in 2021
to provide a second pathway for FYH at Mines that integrates lead-
ership and the social sciences rather than a strong emphasis on the
arts. is second option allows for broader involvement from students
with interdisciplinary interests outside of the arts. Oering two FYH
pathways allows more students to be involved in this signature rst-
year experience without straining the resources of a single program.
orson FYH had grown to about 140 students for two consecutive
years before the launch of Grandey FYH. Subsequently, each program
has aimed for a cohort of 80–100 students, which provides for greater
opportunities for strong community development within each program
and close faculty attention for each student. Extracurricular activi-
ties and the “Honors Explore” Living Learning Community bridge
the two communities outside of the course experience. e director
for each program leads the faculty team for the course, teaches one or
more sections of the course, and fullls administrative duties such as
recruitment, admissions, travel planning, and budgeting. orson and
Grandey FYH share an Associate Director of Community who super-
vises a small team of student Community Coordinators to develop,
market, and deliver dozens of community-building activities across
the entire FYH cohort each year.
Mines requires all students to complete a one-credit, one-semester
rst-year seminar course called “Freshman Success Seminar,” which
introduces students to campus resources, time-management tech-
niques, and study skills. is requirement was recently expanded with a
follow-up course titled “Intro to Student Well-Being,” also a one-credit
course covering topics related to seven well-being dimensions, suicide
prevention, substance use, and relationships. First-Year Honors does
not replace either of these courses.
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Colorado School of Mines
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
orson and Grandey First-Year Honors both integrate honors best
practices into their coursework throughout the year. e course out-
comes are broadly similar between the two programs: by the end of
the year, students will have achieved key foundational outcomes in
ethical awareness, multimodal communication skills, leadership, cre-
ativity, design thinking, and project management. Both FYH courses
also incorporate optional co-curricular and extracurricular opportuni-
ties that emphasize community building, including the Honors Explore
Living Learning Community (themed residence hall oor), educational
travel during spring break, local eld trips in Boulder and Denver,
and small-scale activities on campus such as movie and game nights.
FYH students also have access to Honors Enrichment Award funding
to subsidize experiential learning such as study abroad, educational
travel, and conference attendance.
e orson FYH IDEAS course trajectory begins with investiga-
tions of the self in the context of place, asking students to interrogate
their own values, perspectives, and biases while also analyzing the
communities and physical spaces in which those worldviews devel-
oped. is pursuit expands into an exploration of community through
an open-ended design project aimed at a Mines student audience,
which teams must further dene for themselves. e spring semester
opens with a research/storytelling project anchored by eldwork in
Denver, followed by a design project that builds o the themes dis-
covered in that research. roughout the year, these projects build
students’ understanding of seen and unseen systems in communities
and cities and how social and technological problems intersect to create
challenging and compelling issues that lack straightforward solutions.
Class days rotate between Monday fifty-minute seminar dis-
cussions (twenty students, one professor, one TA) and Wednesday/
Friday ninety-minute studio sessions (forty students, two professors,
two TAs) that emphasize building skills and project work. Out-of-class
assignments emphasize literary readings that underpin the seminar
discussions; individual practice in hand and computer graphics, writ-
ing, revision, and research; and reection that connects course topics
to students’ lived experiences. Each student’s IDEAS Journal contains
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Shumaker, McClelland, Lefton, and Hitt
these assignments, a sketchbook that acts as a living record of learning.
Monday seminar discussions loosely set the tone for the week ahead,
investigating topics or ideas that students will be asked to put into
practice later. In-class work on studio days is predominantly directed
at projects, with some combination of direct instruction and guided
group work each day. Lecture-style content is minimized and typically
delivered in 10–20-minute trainings preceding immediate application
in individual or group work. Course deliverables include an expressive
personal narrative, multiple team design concepts, public-facing pre-
sentations, and a creative portfolio. Many deliverables oer signicant
exibility with respect to the medium and format of the nal product,
which emphasizes the value of arts-based creative expression in com-
municating complex topics.
e Grandey FYH Leadership by Design course is designed to
propel students toward being engineers and scientists ready for the
complexities of this century. In addition to having technical expertise,
engineers also need to possess the skills and capabilities of leaders,
designers, thinkers, collaborators, and creators. Students learn in a
multidisciplinary, integrated, collaborative environment that blends
leadership, design, communication, innovation, ethics, values, and
integrative thinking into open-ended projects. roughout the year,
students focus on who they are as leaders and then expand into study-
ing leadership theories and how others lead. e focus of the design
aspect of the course begins by looking at how things work physically.
en, it expands to incorporating societal elements into THE design
and investigating the impact that design can have on society and vice
versa. Leadership and design topics are connected by the shared impor-
tance of analyzing interconnections (systems thinking) and eectively
communicating in several modalities.
e course also emphasizes storytelling in a signicant way. It
spans from diving deeply into personal stories that shape a person’s
leadership style and biased views, investigating the stories inherent
in designs, and sharing the stories of our problems and our ideas to
address them. Once a week, the cohort meets together (50 minutes) to
focus on leadership: students hear from guest speakers, build collab-
orative and communication skills, and learn about leadership theories.
Students investigate case studies of successful and failed leaders and
conduct interviews to learn more. Twice a week, students meet in
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Colorado School of Mines
smaller studio sections (seventy-ve minutes each, twenty students,
one professor, and one or two TAs), with two sections sometimes com-
bining for activities. During studios, work focuses on discussing and
understanding readings and prep work, building skills for communi-
cating and designing, and progressing on project work.
e rst fall studio project has students design and build an object
that physically moves while it also “moves” someone. e focus on
objects then expands in the second project as students look for mul-
tiple perspectives of objects: through technical lenses such as reverse
engineering and systems and life cycle analyses; social lenses such as
users, inclusivity, and the meaning and values inherent in objects; and
creative lenses that encourage students to remix, repurpose, and dream.
e deliverable for this project is a series of vignettes sharing dierent
perspectives of objects through writing, visuals, models, art, and more.
Spring semester focuses on complex socio-technical problems, also
called grand challenges. Pairs of students work to learn deeply about
a challenge and dene a problem embedded within it. ey then cre-
ate a way to get others to care about this problem by using writing,
videos, or websites. e semester ends with student teams thinking
like futurists as they envision a better future by addressing one of the
problems dened earlier in the semester; they create an exhibit and
some speculative ction to share their physical “artifacts from the
future.” Both spring projects anchor the importance of empathy and
emphasize that design and leadership are sociotechnical exercises. e
course concludes with students craing portfolios highlighting what
they have learned, creating their leadership manifesto, and reecting
upon what “good” design means to them. Similar to orson’s regimen,
many project requirements oer signicant exibility with respect to
the medium and format of the nal product, which provides opportu-
nities for students to pursue their individual interests and preferences
as they design ways to communicate.
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Christine A. Jones
University of Maryland, College Park
e University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) is the state’s
agship university and one of the nation’s preeminent public
research universities. A global leader in research, entrepre-
neurship, and innovation, UMD is home to 14,000 faculty
members and sta and has nearly 400,000 alums. In 2023, UMD
enrolled more than 30,000 undergraduates (76.3% are Mary-
land residents, and 20.0% are rst generation) and almost 11,000
graduate students (35.5% are international). e racial/ethnic
makeup included 39.5% White, 23.8% Asian, 12.9% Black or
African American, 10.6% Hispanic/Latino, and 4.9% Two or
More Races. e gender makeup included 49.2% female, 50.7%
male, and a number reporting nonbinary. Academic oerings
include over 100 undergraduate majors across 12 colleges and
schools (with the highest concentration of students in the Col
-
lege of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences) and
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Jones
230 graduate programs. Located just outside Washington, D.C.,
UMD is the nation’s rst “Do Good” campus.
THE HONORS COLLEGE
H
onors at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) began
in 1966 when the Vice President for Academic Aairs founded
the General Honors Program. Dr. John Portz was the program’s rst
director from 1966 until his retirement in 1978. In 1990, the General
Honors Program was redesigned and renamed the University Honors
Program. At that time, the program shied from requiring upper-level
coursework and a thesis option to focusing primarily on students in
their rst ve semesters. Aer 1996, Gemstone, a four-year, multidis-
ciplinary team-research-based program, and Honors Humanities, a
two-year program with an arts and humanities focus, were created to
oer specialized opportunities for students. In 2009, the UMD Hon-
ors College was created to serve as the administrative unit for these
three programs. Between 2010 and 2024, other specialized programs
were added to the UMD Honors College, which today is home to eight
living-learning programs.
UNIVERSITY HONORS
In 2019, University Honors embarked on a multi-year initiative to
transform its curriculum and develop robust student life oerings. e
new design provides students with personal and intellectual opportu-
nities to align their passion with purpose during their rst two years
of college. It prepares them to chart a path to the next chapter of their
lives: departmental honors, education abroad, internships, and national
and international scholarships. Today, University Honors retains its
focus on the rst and second year, its widely interdisciplinary student
body and faculty corps, and curricular exibility.
en and now, University Honors (UH) rst-year students and
sophomores enjoy small, challenging courses that meet general edu-
cation requirements outside their major before moving to upper-level
honors work in their major during their junior and senior years. Our
new curriculum is organized into areas covered by faculty from dier-
ent disciplines. For example, the lead courses in the ematic Clusters
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University of Maryland, College Park
area address what we call a “Big Question.” ese courses accommodate
sixty students and are taught by advanced-rank UMD faculty. Clusters
also feature two small satellite seminars with twenty seats each: one
is taught by UMD faculty and the other by a limited-term, full-time
UH Collegiate Fellow. eory & Practice Tracks are pairs of seminars,
with 20 seats each, taught by teams of two—typically a tenure-line or
professional-track faculty member drawn from the university’s colleges
and schools and an area expert based in the Washington, D.C., area.
Students’ intellectual experience in these courses is bookended by the
Gateway Seminar in their rst semester and the Vantage Point Seminar
in their fourth semester, both focusing on personal and preprofessional
development and postgraduate goals. Students earn 15 credits and the
Honors Citation by completing Gateway, Vantage Point, and two clus-
ters, two tracks, or one cluster and one track. In fall 2020, we welcomed
the rst cohort of students into the new program.
UH’s annual appointment of four Collegiate Fellows—one for each
cluster—has transformed how students relate to the program. is
cadre of a dozen faculty members on full-time, three-year appoint-
ments becomes the face of the program through Gateway Seminar.
e program’s student aairs programming was expanded by intro
-
ducing an Associate Director of Student Engagement & Leadership
and an Assistant Director of Student Life to oversee extracurricular
and co-curricular programming as well as student groups and lead-
ership opportunities. Today, our student community is structured
into four Houses (House Altair, House Denebola, House Eltanin, and
House Shaula), which compete annually for the House Cup. Finally,
for the rst time in the program’s history, our community of students,
sta, and faculty is based in a single location—Heritage Community—
comprised of two residence halls and a mixed-use building housing a
dining hall, oces for UH sta and faculty, two classrooms, and mul-
tiple huddle and conference rooms.
HNUH100: GATEWAY SEMINAR
All entering UH students must enroll in Gateway Seminar, a one-credit
rst-year experience course that meets once a week. e common
syllabus of this multi-section course serves as an extended-orien-
tation seminar with opportunities for self-inquiry and community
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building. A faculty team of four Collegiate Fellows teaches twenty-
four to twenty-ve sections of the course; each section is assigned an
undergraduate who is compensated for serving as a Peer Academic
Leader (PAL). Each Collegiate Fellow covers six sections of twenty
seats each and oversees three to four PALs. Each set of six sections
(120 students) and associated leaders comprise a single House, and the
Houses engage in a friendly, yearlong competition to win the House
Cup. Students earn points for participating in co-curricular events and
activities in the program and across campus to develop a sense of self-
ownership, expand their support networks, and contribute to an ethos
of inclusivity.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Today’s Gateway Seminar is based loosely on HONR100, a first-
semester course in the earlier UH curriculum, which was itself an
honors-specic version of the campuswide UNIV100: “a space to
explore their academic interests, personal and professional passions,
and make meaningful connections with fellow Terps while gaining a
grasp on all of the resources UMD has to oer.” Upper-class student
Section Leaders facilitated HONR100. Because the earlier UH program
oered no curricular pathways, HONR100 focused on university poli-
cies, the required UMD bystander training, the campus social club First
Look Fair, and peer mentoring.
As part of the program redesign, Gateway Seminar (HNUH100)
grew out of HONR100, becoming a cornerstone of the student experi-
ence, where the program’s curricular and co-curricular “whole person”
mission is realized. It is now led by our newest Collegiate Fellows, who
are making their way in their rst UH semester at UMD and have
insight into the new-student experience. at parallelism means they
share an authentic need to create a new community with students and
can model the value of engagement and belonging when facing new
challenges. Pedagogically, they bring their eld expertise and personal
experience to the common syllabus as guiding lights for delivering the
material. ey are supported in instruction by their PALs, who lead
sessions on UMD- and UH-specic resources and expectations.
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University of Maryland, College Park
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
Gateway invites students in their rst semester to help co-create our
inclusive community, and it sets them on a path toward self-direction
and, ultimately, awareness of themselves as citizens of the program, the
university, and the larger community. e course modules follow the
progression of our program learning outcomes: foster connection, seek
complexity, explore uncertainty, and realize potential. In other words,
the modules introduce students to each area of growth we invite them
to experience while living and learning at UMD.
e course’s approach to orienting and professionalizing students
has grown out of the need to provide an entry point to a multidis-
ciplinary course of study across a large and academically diverse
population. Although inexperienced with the wider world, our incom-
ing students tend to be discipline-savvy and advanced academically
beyond their years. ey do not see themselves matching the prole
of a typical rst-year student and oen resent the implication that
they need a rst-year experience course. In some sense, the course is
designed to show them that they do. It balances life-skill development
with anti-isolation activities motivated by a desire to draw them out of
themselves and their focused academic intensity. Furthermore, because
it cannot deliver the methodological or writing skills required of the
disciplines, we focus instead on reection activities that encourage
self-awareness and metacognition.
Gateway is designed to introduce students to college life and UMD
requirements, such as a Four-Year Plan, First Look Fair, and bystander
training. e course scaolds self-inquiry through core profession-
alization skills such as resume writing, curating one’s online image,
and public speaking. Collegiate Fellows teach core skills and facilitate
programming to help students navigate UMD’s social and curricular
terrain. Together with PALs, Collegiate Fellows promote the values
of belonging and wellness through the House Cup competition and
guide students through reection on their passions and goals. PALs
contribute workshops on survive/thrive topics, from mental health to
time management, and they collectively provide mentorship for stu-
dents outside the classroom.
Signature features of the course begin with a PAL-led icebreaker
at Kicko, our pre-semester orientation for the approximately 500
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entering students, which welcomes them to the program and launches
the academic year. PALs are the first UH leaders to reach out to
Gateway students in the summer and, by bonding with students at
Kicko, become a through line for the orientation to extend into the
semester. e rst in-class activity of the semester, How to Make and
Keep Friends, builds on that familiarity to encourage active, inclusive
community making and introduces basic principles of conflict
resolution. e course ends with a presentation called “Citizenship,” a
three-minute speech in which students describe their place within UH
and the wider university, how they dene citizenship, and how they see
themselves embodying the spirit of that denition.
Taught in the two classrooms within the University Honors
Commons space, the seminar puts students in proximity to the UH
in-house advisor and a team of Advising Mentors, which gives them
direct access to support. At the end of the course, students have learned
to collaborate eectively with their peers, present themselves inten-
tionally, and articulate their aspirations as citizens of UH and of their
other chosen communities.
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Steve Bednar
Elon University
Located in Elon, North Carolina, Elon University was founded in
1889. It currently oers 76 undergraduate majors within the Col-
lege of Arts and Sciences, the Martha and Spencer Love School
of Business, the School of Communications, the Dr. Jo Watts
Williams School of Education, and the School of Health Science,
as well as 10 graduate degrees from the main campus and the
School of Law. Elon University had 6,202 undergraduate and 655
graduate students enrolled in spring 2024. Fiy-nine percent of
undergraduate students are female, and 25% are North Carolina
residents. e university has an 11:1 student-faculty ratio.
ELON UNIVERSITY HONORS PROGRAM
S
tarted in 1974, the honors program has evolved to include a two-
year, faculty-mentored honors thesis, interdisciplinary honors-only
classes, living-learning communities, and substantial nancial support.
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Bednar
Two full-time faculty members with a reduced teaching load lead the
program. Students can only apply to the honors program when they
apply to Elon, and those selected through a secondary admissions pro-
cess, which includes an additional essay and interview, progress through
the curriculum as a cohort of sixty students called Honors Fellows. e
curriculum consists of twenty-ve to twenty-nine credit hours, which
features honors sections of Elon 1010 and COR 1100 that are taken dur-
ing the rst semester; three honors seminars; eight hours of research;
and an optional four-credit winter term study abroad seminar in Turkey
for rst-year students. One honors-only residence hall houses twenty
rst-year students and an RA, and it includes a classroom and an apart-
ment for a faculty member in residence. First-year students can also live
on the second oor of another residence hall, whereas students not in
the honors program live on the rst and third oors.
As part of the Elon Core Curriculum, all rst-year students at Elon take
a two-course, ve-credit sequence. Honors Fellows enroll in exclusive
sections of these courses. Honors students in their second semester also
take an honors disciplinary seminar. Taken in the fall semester, Elon
1010, a one-credit extended-orientation-type seminar with a founda-
tion in academic advising, introduces rst-year students to the Elon
University community. is seminar focuses on academic planning
and fostering academic and personal success through learning about
campus resources and creating meaningful relationships with faculty
and sta. Because of the programmatic requirements of the honors
program, the four honors sections of this class are taught by the direc-
tor, associate director, and two faculty members who have mentored
and advised students in the honors program. Each faculty member is
paired with a peer educator (PE), typically a junior or senior Honors
Fellow, who becomes a focal gure for rst-year fellows. Honors Fel-
lows apply for this position and are interviewed by the director and
associate director, who select which students will serve in this capacity.
e PEs organize meetings with resource oces like the Student
Professional Development Center, the National and International
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Elon University
Fellowships Oce, and student wellness, as well as other entities on
campus, like the Maker Hub, that provide community-building oppor-
tunities and possible employment. e PEs bring upper-level honors
students to class for a panel and hold informal, as-needed oce hours,
using a small budget that covers any activities they plan. ey are indis-
pensable during the weeks focusing on registration and four-year
planning because of their experience navigating the honors curricu-
lum. e honors-only sections of Elon 1010 bring students together
from the dierent living spaces, including the honors-only residence
hall, strengthening the community building among all honors fellows.
COR 1100, a four-credit rst-year seminar taken by all rst-year
Elon students, examines personal and social responsibility in domestic
and global contexts. In developing their view of the world and its many
peoples, societies, and environments, students evaluate the complex
relationships that may both promote and obstruct human interaction.
e course emphasizes critical thinking and creativity, focusing on
contemporary and salient issues informed by historical contexts. e
seminar is inquiry-based, writing intensive, and taught from various
perspectives.
Faculty from all departments oer COR 1100, and the faculty
for the four honors-only sections are intentionally selected to repre
-
sent distinct disciplinary backgrounds so that students can discuss
the similarities and dierences in how the big ideas discussed in the
seminar are expressed using dierent perspectives. To link the student
experience in Elon 1010 and COR 1100, a typical day in Elon 1010
might start by asking students about their COR 1100 class because
students from every section in the room will be there. e focus of
hon ors courses in the rst and second years is on intensive study of an
academic subject while using several critical perspectives and on pre-
paring students for sophisticated research. Instructors are encouraged
to assign readings from scholarly texts and to set high expectations
concerning student participation in class discussion.
Aer essential foundations are laid in the rst semester, rst-year hon-
ors students take a required seminar in the spring semester that is not
oered to non-honors students. Much like COR 1100, faculty from
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Bednar
various disciplines teach this seminar. Still, all courses must meet the
goals of the honors program by utilizing reading beyond a textbook,
encouraging the development of research and writing skills, and pro-
moting advanced critical thinking. A central learning objective for the
honors program is that students, regardless of major, should be able
to participate in critical but respectful discussions about a diversity of
topics and material, and they should be able to generate, evaluate, and
rene research questions that may relate to their eld of study. is
seminar is the rst required course designed to introduce honors fel-
lows to conducting research, a key component of the honors program
experience.
301
David Coleman
Eastern Kentucky University
Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) is a public comprehen-
sive university in Richmond, Kentucky, with around 15,000
(primarily residential) students. The university offers 80
undergraduate majors, 36 master’s degrees, and four doctoral
programs. Approximately 40 percent of undergraduates are rst-
generation students. EKU traditionally draws many students
from its 22-county service region across southeastern Kentucky,
but the university also recruits heavily in the larger metro areas
of the region.
EKU HONORS
F
ounded in 1988, the Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) Honors
Program enrolls about 400 students. With a substantial founding
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Coleman
endowment that provided exibility through unrestricted funds, EKU
Honors has, over the past 36 years, built a tradition and reputation as
a community that supports a substantial portion of student travel and
high-impact learning abroad as well as within the United States. Since
1990, more than 1,100 students from EKU Honors have presented at
the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) annual meeting. is
gure leads the nation over that period.
In 2022, aer more than a year of faculty-input meetings, as well
as numerous focus groups involving more than one hundred hon-
ors students, EKU Honors instituted a redesigned twenty-ve-hour
standard honors track called “Honors Maroon.” It emphasizes exibil-
ity, dynamic classroom experiences, and a strong sense of academic
community. As is the case in most peer honors units nationwide, our
incoming honors students arrive with an average of twenty-ve to
thirty hours of “prior credit” via AP, IB, or Dual Credit, and our cur-
riculum is designed to build upon rather than duplicate their achieved
credits. We have a capstone/thesis requirement that involves six hours
of credit. Twelve hours of credit may come from 300-level interdisci-
plinary honors seminars. Up to six of those hours, however, may be
replaced by Honors Enhancements such as abroad experiences, intern-
ships, co-ops, or substantial undergraduate research experiences. For
this substitution, students must provide a reective essay in a required
e-portfolio similar to those used in many honors units today. Alongside
the Honors Maroon track is a shortened path option, the Honors Gold
track, requiring nineteen hours (up to six of which may be replaced
by Honors Enhancements). is track is intended for students who
transfer into EKU Honors or join in the second, third, or even fourth
semester of attendance at EKU.
HON 101: THE EXAMINED LIFE
e EKU Honors rst-year seminar (FYS) course began as part of our
2022 curriculum redesign, and it builds a solid foundation for our hon-
ors curriculum and community through a combination of curricular
and extracurricular elements. It begins when the new honors students
move into their campus residence halls three days before the general
rst-year student population. Aer settling in, they participate in the
Honors Launch camp, where they engage in community building and
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Eastern Kentucky University
leadership development activities led by Honors Launch peer men-
tors, who are current EKU Honors sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
During their rst fall semester, students in the Honors Maroon
track take a required three-credit-hour interdisciplinary humanities
course—HON 101: e Examined Life. Capped at twenty, HON 101
oers an academic seminar on a shared course topic. It introduces stu-
dents to honors inquiry through discussion-based engagement with
a diverse and eclectic series of memoirs, autobiographies, and biogra-
phies from Plato, Harriet Jacobs, Marjane Satrapi, and others. ey also
take a one-hour extended-orientation seminar, HON 100: Engaging in
Honors, to learn about and discuss the breadth of opportunities and
resources at EKU generally and in EKU Honors specically. HON 100
sections are also capped at twenty, and the faculty instructor is assisted
by two peer mentors who work closely with the rst-year students
through individual meetings and informal advising about campus mat-
ters and life in the honors and broader EKU campus communities.
Each Honors Maroon student takes the three-credit HON 104:
Learning Community in their second semester. Learning Community
sections are designed to group students with similar and related majors
and/or similar or related interests. One, for instance, is a Pre-Med+
Learning Community, which is especially popular among pre-health
students. Another is the Creative Imagination Learning Community,
which appeals to students interested in music, arts, dance, creative
writing, literature, and drama. We also have a Leadership Learning
Community, which draws mainly from Business and Political Science
majors. Other HON 104s include the Pre-Law + Criminal Justice
group, as well as a STEM (non-pre-Med) group, an Allied Health Sci-
ences group, and a Social Justice group. A key aim in each HON 104
section is to prepare students for high-level success in their areas of
study. Each HON 104 Learning Community section also includes
visits from EKU Honors alums who have built successful careers in
the respective areas under study. Finally, the HON 104 instructors
are asked to work extensively with their students to become aware of
extraordinary opportunities in their area, including nationally compet-
itive awards, internships and co-ops, job shadowing, and study abroad
opportunities.
e EKU Honors First-Year Experience closes on the penultimate
ursday of the spring semester with Honors Celebration Day. e
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Coleman
day includes an aernoon academic showcase when students in each
learning community share their work in a large ballroom in one of the
historic buildings at the center of the EKU campus. e showcase also
includes an Honors Executive Director’s selection of the best student
presentations at the annual NCHC conference and other venues on
campus and beyond. e showcase is followed by an Honors Celebra-
tion banquet in the same space. Following the supper, everyone goes
to the nearby theater building where the Creative Imagination learning
community shares their work, which includes painting, music, poetry,
dance, sculpture, and drama centered on the course’s theme. Displays
in the theater lobby spotlight some of the nal projects and other works
produced by the students throughout the semester.
305
Amy M. Shapiro and Brian J. Ayotte
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMass Dartmouth) is
a comprehensive, regional campus of the University of Massa-
chusetts system. It is a Carnegie-classied doctoral university of
high research activity located in the South Coast region of the
state, close to Cape Cod and between the cities of Fall River and
New Bedford. e university oers 61 undergraduate majors,
88 minors, 42 master’s degree programs, 17 doctoral programs,
and 43 graduate-level certicate programs. ese programs are
spread across ve academic colleges: Arts & Sciences, Engineer-
ing, Charlton College of Business, Visual and Performing Arts,
and Nursing and Health Sciences. ere are also two graduate-
only colleges: the School for Marine Sciences and the UMass Law
School. e undergraduate enrollment is 5,517 students, and
the graduate enrollment is 1,940. Eighty percent of students are
Massachusetts residents, 37.8% of enrollment is non-white, and
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Shapiro and Ayotte
52% is female. Nearly half of the undergraduate students (48%)
live on campus, and 57% are rst-generation students. UMass
Dartmouth has a 15:1 student-faculty ratio with 381 full-time
faculty; 270 are tenured or tenure-track.
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DARTMOUTH HONORS
COLLEGE
T
he UMass Dartmouth Honors Program was founded in 1990
and transitioned to an honors college in 2020. Since becoming
a college, enrollment has increased yearly and is currently at 477.
Approximately 160 rst-year students enroll annually, with an aver-
age of fourteen more transferring internally during the second through
fourth semesters. e UMass Dartmouth Honors College is part of a
unique statewide system, the Commonwealth Honors Program (CHP),
which unites the honors programs and honors colleges from twenty-
four public universities, four-year colleges, and community colleges
from across the state under a common umbrella overseen by the state’s
Department of Higher Education. While each institution enjoys ex-
ibility in its curriculum and programming, the CHP accredits each
honors operation on a seven-year cycle. e CHP is largely self-gov-
erned by a committee of representatives from each campus.
e UMass Dartmouth Honors College requires twenty-one cred-
its of coursework plus a minimum of three credits in thesis work to
graduate as a Commonwealth Honors Scholar. All rst-year students
take a rst-year seminar (FYS) oered by the honors college or by their
major department for honors students. e honors college curricu
-
lum has undergone extensive revision since 2020, with the rst-year
seminar and pre-thesis courses redesigned to focus on critical think-
ing and inquiry skills. Moreover, dozens of courses were added from
academic departments to allow students to meet the honors college
requirements by taking courses in their major. A wider variety of Uni-
versity Studies courses were also added so students have more choices
when selecting classes. e senior thesis requirement was also reimag-
ined to increase exibility for students in dierent majors. Students
can complete the thesis in one of three tracks: traditional research, an
internship or service experience, or a creative project or performance.
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University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Courses are taught by honors faculty, who are full-time faculty in aca-
demic departments but teach one course per semester for the honors
college, or by honors-aliated faculty from other academic depart-
ments who teach on an ad hoc basis. e honors college does not have
any full-time faculty.
In addition to academics, the honors college offers students
opportunities for social networking. In collaboration with the Oce
of Residential Life, the UMass Dartmouth Honors College provides a
living-learning community in the rst-year residence halls. In addition,
the honors college recently launched the SPARK program (Student-
Paired Activities, Recreation, and Knowledge), a peer-led program
designed to transition students socially into the campus and the
honors college. e SPARK program allows incoming rst-year stu-
dents to choose from 16 peer-led groups, each focusing on a dierent
social activity (e.g., dance, robotics, painting, bowling, disc golf, yoga,
etc.).e groups meet at least four times per semester for the activ-
ity and attend at least two honors college events together. e SPARK
leaders are trained to answer questions about several common topics,
including nancial aid, housing, registration, and crisis management.
HON101: REASONING AND COMMUNICATION ACROSS THE
DISCIPLINES
e UMass Dartmouth Honors College requires most honors students
to take HON 101, a three-credit extended-orientation FYS focusing
on core academic skills. Honors students in nursing and engineering
take a comparable course, as required by their respective professional
accreditation agencies, in their colleges. Nevertheless, these students
are still clustered with other honors students, allowing them to get to
know other students in their programs.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
All first-year students at UMass Dartmouth enroll in a required
three-credit, extended-orientation seminar that covers student suc-
cess strategies such as time management and creating a professional
online presence. ey also teach students how to recognize the con-
cept of engaged learning, how to apply it to their personal goals, how
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Shapiro and Ayotte
to explain the way perspectives in varying academic disciplines impact
communities, and how to understand the way academic disciplines
approach community issues. ese seminars are oered through the
colleges, and many add college-specic content, making them hybrid
academic and extended-orientation seminars.
Before 2021, HON 101 was titled “Scholarship in the Commu-
nity” and focused on the relationship between scholarly inquiry and
the community. It included a service learning component and oered
a multidisciplinary exploration of the interaction between individuals
and communities, the relationship between community and diversity,
the relationship between community ethical values and individual ethi-
cal values, and the particular responsibilities of scholars. e course
underwent a signicant revision in the fall of 2022 and now focuses
more heavily on logic, reasoning, and critical inquiry within and across
disciplines.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e revised HON 101 course was designed to continue meeting the
campus University Studies requirement, focusing less on conduct-
ing scholarship in the community and more on understanding how
information is used within and across communities. Specically, the
course equips students to manage the current societal misinforma-
tion crisis and engage in civil discourse with people holding dierent
opinions and beliefs. Students learn to recognize and nd empirical
evidence, critically evaluate claims, and make coherent arguments. e
course is taught by full-time faculty across disciplines. Each instruc-
tor is free to alter, replace, or add assignments and classroom activities
from the resources curated by others who have taught the course. e
course generally includes several short writing assignments, discus-
sion boards, low-stakes quizzes, and formal debates. Class time is
spent primarily doing activities or discussing readings or activities
completed outside class. Activities focus on applying course topics,
such as evaluating the quality of arguments made in published studies,
deconstructing arguments that support claims made on websites and
social media posts, learning to fact-check, distinguishing facts from
opinions, and playing a game called “Name at Cognitive Bias!” e
semester culminates in formal class debates that allow students to use
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University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
the skills they developed during the semester.
By the end of the course, students can (a) understand the struc-
ture of arguments and how to recognize and avoid logical pitfalls in
everyday life; (b) understand/use skills from dierent disciplines to
compare and evaluate evidence; (c) interpret the probability of out
-
comes in everyday settings; (d) understand how numbers and statistics
are used to frame arguments; (e) recognize biases in how they think,
seek information, and interpret arguments; (f) understand and rec-
ognize some basic methodological aws in research (e.g., sampling
bias and confounding variables); and (g) recognize the importance
of accurate reporting and interpretation of information to ourselves
and our communities. e combination of this course with the more
social SPARK program helps transition rst-year honors students into
the social and intellectual culture of the University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth Honors College while also providing a foundation for stu-
dents to succeed as campus leaders and role models.
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Mary Kay Mulvaney
Elmhurst University
Elmhurst University is a four-year regional institution of higher
education in the Chicago area that blends a liberal arts education
and professional preparation. Founded in 1871, Elmhurst oers
more than seventy undergraduate programs of study, more than
twenty graduate and certicate programs in exible formats, and
the Elmhurst Learning and Success Academy for young adults
with diering abilities. Elmhurst University enrolls approxi-
mately 3,600 students, most of whom are in undergraduate
programs. A minority-majority institution, Elmhurst achieved
Hispanic-Serving Institution status in 2022. e student body
is approximately 60% female, and roughly half of its students
are rst-generation college students. Approximately 60% of
the university’s students are commuters. e university has a
13:1 student-faculty ratio, with most classes taught by full-time
faculty.
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Mulvaney
ELMHURST UNIVERSITY HONORS PROGRAM
T
he Elmhurst University Honors Program was founded in 1965
as an inaugural member of the rst national coalition of honors
programs that would soon become the National Collegiate Hon-
ors Council (NCHC). e program enrolled small cohorts of sixty
or fewer students in its early decades. Beginning in 2004, the honors
program received renewed administrative attention with the appoint-
ment of a new director. It gradually grew from a minimally involved
total enrollment of about sixty students to a program of approximately
325 students representing all undergraduate majors. e program now
enjoys campuswide recognition and strong administrative support due
in part to the critical role the program plays in advancing university
recruitment.
Most students enter the program as rst-year (FY) students or as
incoming transfer students (approximately 35% of each fall term class
at Elmhurst consists of transfer students). Any enrolled student, how
-
ever, may apply to join the program upon earning a 3.5 or above GPA
and securing an Elmhurst University faculty member recommenda-
tion. About a dozen students join this way annually. High-achieving
students are invited to apply based on a combination of high school or
community college credentials, standardized test scores, or an addi-
tional essay score if test-optional admission is selected. Substantial
eorts are made to diversify the program demographics, which are
bolstered by Elmhurst’s minority-majority institution status.
e honors program awards three potential levels of gradua-
tion distinction: Honors Program Member, which requires nineteen
semester hours of honors coursework; Honors Program Scholar, which
requires twenty-six semester hours of honors coursework plus a sig-
nicant undergraduate research project; and Honors Program Global
Scholar, which requires twenty-six semester hours, an undergraduate
research project, and a credit-bearing study abroad experience. Pro-
gram coursework includes honors sections of the university’s rst-year
seminar (FYS) requirement; a variety of honors sections of general
education courses; interdisciplinary electives across all levels of study;
an honors-exclusive study abroad spring term in England; and disci-
pline-specic research options. Faculty are selected by expertise from
across a wide swath of departments.
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Elmhurst University
e honors program oers participation in an optional learn-
ing-living community in one of the newest university residence halls.
Student-elected ocers organize various social, cultural, and service
activities throughout the year, both on and o campus. A large, over-
night New Member retreat, facilitated by honors program sta and
peer leaders, is a signature event of the program every September, as is
a special honors program graduates’ dinner with the university presi-
dent, fellow administrators, and invited faculty.
All rst-year honors program students must enroll in one of four
honors sections of the university-wide, four-credit FYS requirement
(nearly all university courses are four-credit hours). FYSs are typically
capped at twenty students. e course includes signicant academic
content tied to a variety of topics as well as orientation-type informa-
tional sessions. FYS sections are taught by full-time tenured faculty
from various disciplines, with faculty teaching the seminars serving
as the primary academic advisors of all their FY students, regardless
of major, across their rst year. Faculty receive a stipend for this addi-
tional advising requirement. In addition, each seminar is assigned a life
coach who provides several orientation-type units during the semes-
ter and meets in a non-academic support capacity with each student
individually several times throughout the term. ese life coaches
are full-time sta members who volunteer to serve and are provided
university training. Seminars begin during the three-day university
orientation, where students meet their professors, life coaches, and
orientation student leaders (OSLs).
FYS BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
In 2007, Elmhurst University introduced an FYS option by piloting
four sections with four distinct topics that were led by four faculty
members from dierent disciplines. e honors program director
taught one of these as an option for incoming honors program stu-
dents. Aer one more year of a larger pilot, the university launched a
campuswide FYS requirement for all incoming FY students in fall 2009.
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Mulvaney
Each seminar section has a dedicated topic with appropriate aca-
demic materials as well as an increasing number of university-wide
orientation components, which range from mandated Title IX training
to explanations of nancial aid and how to navigate various campus
computer programs utilized for registration, advising, and support ser-
vices. Continued growth of these orientation emphases has required
cuts to curricular elements, such as a shared reading and service learn-
ing component. Some common elements have remained; for example,
students are required to attend at least three campus events and to sub-
mit a formal personal reection on each one. In addition, all courses
must include an information literacy session created and facilitated
by our reference librarian faculty members and require a summative
assignment addressing the common FYS student learning outcomes.
Initially, honors students could select any FYS section, partly
because of insucient spaces as the honors program grew. Since 2017,
however, all incoming honors program students must choose one of
four distinct honors-only sections. e four honors sections are struc-
tured similarly to the non-honors sections; however, the four honors
sections have retained some of the academic content that has been cut
from the campus-wide oering. is content focuses on elements that
reect the nature and goals of honors education as dened by NCHC
and that expand students’ intercultural competence.
CURRICULAR OVERVIEW
e university-wide FYS program objectives relate to college-level criti-
cal and analytical thinking articulated to a specic academic topic,
emphasizing ethical considerations, developing academic research
skills, and cultivating an understanding of the value of a liberal arts
education and its relationship to professional preparation. e honors
FYS sections must meet these outcomes and, in addition, focus on a
student’s ability to articulate an understanding of the characteristics
of an honors education as well as its relationship to a liberal arts edu-
cation. Students must also demonstrate their expanded intercultural
knowledge expressed in an ability to analyze a complex, enduring ques-
tion critically.
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Elmhurst University
To achieve the above outcomes, the four honors FYS sections
require the following common assignments, regardless of section topic:
• Submission of at least one short close-reading essay assign-
ment responding critically to a book or appropriate texts
that connect to the academic topic under consideration.
• Submission of a written reection demonstrating an under-
standing of the nature of honors education. is follows a
preparatory discussion of common readings/videos about
the nature of honors education that incorporates materials
on the NCHC website, NCHC monographs, and relevant
TED Talks, among other materials.
• Submission of a personal reection demonstrating inter-
cultural competence in response to one of the campuswide
Intercultural Lectures coordinated by the Elmhurst Uni-
versity Honors Program each fall term. ese include the
Cesar Chavez Hispanic-focused lecture and the William
Johnson LGBTQ+ lecture.
• Submission of a written response demonstrating intercul-
tural knowledge following participation in the honors FYS
sections’ eld trip to three distinct cultural museums in
Chicago: the National Museum of Mexican Art (in Pilsen);
the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly
the Oriental Institute) at the University of Chicago; and
the DuSable Black History Museum.
Finally, recognizing the value of additional high-impact practices
and our honors program goal to serve, all honors sections retain ser-
vice learning or experiential learning opportunities in the broader
Chicago community.
316
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
BRIAN J. AYOTTE is Faculty Director of the Honors College and Associate
Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He
is a research psychologist focusing on health behaviors, attitudes, social sup
-
port, and relationships.
RICHARD BADENHAUSEN is now Dean of the Honors College at Montana
State University. For the previous eight years, he was Dean of the Honors Col-
lege at Westminster University in Salt Lake City. A Past President of NCHC,
Badenhausen is also a two-time member of the NCHC Board of Directors,
an NCHC Recommended Program Reviewer, and the editor of the NCHC
monograph Honors Colleges in the 21st Century (2023). He is the 2014 recipi-
ent of Westminster’s Gore Excellence in Teaching award.
RITA L. BAILEY has served as a speech-language pathologist in school and
medical settings, Professor of Speech Pathology and Inclusive Education,
Dean of the Kennesaw State University Journey Honors College, and Assis-
tant Provost at Illinois State University. She has practiced, researched, and
published in multiple areas, including pre-literacy, literacy, social language,
pediatric and adult dysphagia, and augmentative/alternative communication.
KIMBERLY BALDUS has been Associate Dean of the Honors College at the
University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) since 2020 and has been a faculty
member since 2005. Starting in 2014, she led the development of the college’s
rst-year seminar, its living and learning community, and its peer mentor
program. Her scholarship has focused on teaching and learning, including
developing an undergraduate research course, and she chaired UMSL’s Teach-
ing Eectiveness Taskforce.
STEVE BEDNAR is Professor of Economics at Elon University, where he
has worked since 2010. He became Director of the Elon Honors Program in
the fall of 2022. Bednar has mentored four students with their honors thesis.
He has a bachelor’s degree in economics and applied mathematics from UC
Berkeley and received a PhD in economics from Yale University.
DAVID COLEMAN is Professor of History and, since 2013, Executive Direc-
tor of the Honors Program at Eastern Kentucky University. He was named a
Fellow of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) in 2023 and has
served as an instructor for the NCHC’s annual New Deans and Directors
Institute summer training program for the past four years. He also serves as
a coordinator for the Beginning in Honors program at the annual meeting
317
About the Authors
of NCHC. He has published extensively both in his own scholarly discipline
(late medieval and early modern Spanish history) and on honors education.
Coleman has held a wide variety of oces and committee appointments for
the NCHC, the Southern Regional Honors Council, and the Kentucky Hon-
ors Roundtable.
JESSLYN COLLINSFROHLICH is Senior Instructor and Director of the
Oce of Nationally Competitive Awards at the College of Charleston, where
she also teaches rst-year writing and literature courses. She received her PhD
from the University of Kentucky and has published on topics as varied as early
American women writers, gender in the plays of August Wilson, and service
learning in the Honors College at the College of Charleston.
KEVIN W. DEAN is an NCHC Fellow, Co-Chair of the NCHC International
Education Committee, and Coordinator of Partners in Peace, which is a col-
laboration between NCHC and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. His
honors curriculum and program development research has appeared in HIP,
JNCHC, and two NCHC Monographs. During his thirty-two years at West
Chester University of Pennsylvania (WCU), he served as a professor of Com-
munication Studies, received a Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, and
was the founding faculty advisor for Omicron Delta Kappa. He is the immedi-
ate past and founding Director and Chair of the WCU Honors College, which
he led for twenty-six years. A former National Kellogg Fellow, Dean lectured
on leadership development in China, England, Namibia, the Netherlands,
Norway, Russia, Scotland, and South Africa. He led honors student delega-
tions to China, Russia, and Norway and has taken thirteen service learning
groups to South Africa to conduct ethnographic research. Dean holds a PhD
in Public Communication from the University of Maryland.
TRISHA H. FOLDSBENNETT is a Special Advisor to the Chancellor and
Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise (UVA-
Wise). Before coming to UVA-Wise, she served as Dean of the Honors College
at the College of Charleston (CofC) for seven years. Prior to that, she served
for seven years as Associate Dean of the CofC Honors College. In that role,
she established the Oce of Nationally Competitive Awards and Undergrad-
uate Research and Creative Activities and a scholarship program to recruit
and engage high-achieving students at the College of Charleston. She took a
brief hiatus from her academic career from 2004 to 2006 to serve as Director
of Programs, Products, and Services at Darkness to Light, a nonprot orga-
nization focused on preventing child sexual abuse. Her disciplinary research
focuses on the factors that contribute to cognitive and moral development in
childhood and adolescence, and she has published several articles and book
318
About the Authors
chapters in the area, including a 2021 chapter in a book on memory develop-
ment that was published by Cambridge University Press.
TODD FRALEY was named Dean of the Honors College at East Carolina
University (ECU) in May 2023. Before his leadership position in the ECU
Honors College, Fraley served as Associate Dean and Director of the Brinkley-
Lane Scholars Program. He is also an associate professor at the School of
Communication, where he has taught classes and managed curriculum and
their internship program. His time in the honors college began with his work
as a faculty fellow in 2014. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Political Science
and Sociology from James Madison University and earned his MA and PhD
in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Georgia.
GERIANNE FRIEDLINE is Associate Professor Emerita of the Honors Col-
lege of the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She helped develop the honors
curriculum in the rst-year seminar and creative writing program. In addition
to supervising internships, she taught a course related to Bellerive, the student
literary publication. Her research interests include literature and culture stud-
ies, creative nonction, and narrative.
SARAH JAYNE HITT specializes in integrating the arts, humanities, and
social sciences within engineering education, especially focusing on ethics,
sustainability, and communication. In addition to her roles at the New Model
Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) in Hereford and Edinburgh
Napier University (both in the UK), she serves as project manager for the Ethics
and Sustainability Toolkits hosted by the UK’s Engineering Professors’ Council.
CHRISTINE A. JONES has been Associate Director for Academic and Fac-
ulty Aairs in University Honors and Aliate Professor of French and Italian
at the University of Maryland since 2000. She oversees curricular develop-
ment, pedagogical innovation, and faculty training for University Honors.
During her earlier career at the University of Utah, she specialized in French,
honors, and the rst-year experience, and she was a recent recipient of the
University Distinguished Teaching Award. Her research on early modern
French fairy tales emphasizes translation and language pedagogy.
TONI LEFTON is Dean of University Honors and Scholars and Assistant
Provost for Signature Student Experience at Colorado School of Mines.
ROBERT MAYNOR held a sta position managing the community out-
reach portion of the honors rst-year seminar at the College of Charleston.
He began working for the Coastal Conservation League in 2020. Maynor is
dedicated to working with communities throughout the Tri-County region
319
About the Authors
to help strike a sustainable balance between new growth and protecting the
irreplaceable natural resources, high quality of life, and diverse cultures that
make the Lowcountry special.
CARRIE J. MCCLELLAND is Teaching Professor and Director of the
Grandey First-Year Honors Experience and the Grand Challenges Scholars
Program at the Colorado School of Mines. McClelland holds an MS in Envi-
ronmental Engineering and a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University
of Colorado-Boulder. She is passionate about integrating multiple disciplines
into teaching engineering.
JODI MEADOWS holds a PhD in Educational Psychology from Regent Uni-
versity. She served as Director of the Gordon and Judy Dutile Honors Program
at Southwest Baptist University from 2013–2021. She currently serves as the
Manager of Learning Programs at CoxHealth in Springeld, Missouri.
MICHELLE MILES is Director of the Oce of National and International
Scholarships and Fellowships and Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw
State University. She is also a full-time faculty member with the KSU Journey
Honors College. Her research focuses on Irish poetry and politics as well as
the impact of self-reection in rst-year honors pedagogy. She also teaches
extensively abroad.
MARY KAY MULVANEY is Professor of English at Elmhurst University,
has served as the Elmhurst University Honors Program Director since 2004,
and has been teaching an Honors First-Year Seminar rooted in experien-
tial learning for nearly that entire time. Mulvaney has served on the NCHC
Board of Directors, as Chair and longtime member of the International Educa-
tion Committee, and as a member of the Major Fellowships and Scholarships
Committee. She is a contributing author and co-editor of two NCHC mono-
graphs: Preparing Tomorrow’s Global Leaders: Honors International Education
(2013) and Internationalizing Honors (2020).
MARA N. SCANLON served from 2018–2024 as Associate Director of the
Honors Program at the University of Mary Washington, where she is Profes-
sor of English. Her teaching interests and scholarly publications are rooted in
the elds of modern and contemporary literature, poetry, ethics and literature,
and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.
MICHAEL SCHAVEY is a seasoned higher education professional with
over twenty years of experience in administering programs and departments
that champion high-impact practices. His academic journey began at Grand
Rapids Community College, followed by Grand Valley State University,
320
About the Authors
where he earned degrees in sociology, psychology, social work, and public
administration. Schavey’s extensive expertise and dedication to fostering
impactful educational experiences have made signicant contributions to
the institutions he has served. As the founding director for the Department
of Experiential Learning at Grand Rapids Community College, he supports
students and faculty participating in the honors program, study away expe-
riences, and service learning. He also provides leadership for all o-campus
student travel experiences.
AMY M. SHAPIRO is the inaugural Dean of the Honors College and Pro-
fessor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She
is a cognitive scientist whose research focuses on memory, learning, and
epistemology.
LAUREN SHUMAKER is Director of orson First-Year Honors and Teach-
ing Associate Professor at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.
She holds a PhD in geological sciences from Stanford University. Her teach-
ing is informed by interdisciplinary interests in the sciences and humanities.
KELLI M. SLUNT is Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Honors Pro-
gram at the University of Mary Washington (UMW). She has been Inaugural
Director of the UMW University Honors Program since 2012. Her courses
in chemistry involve active learning and alternative grading methodologies.
Recent presentations focus on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
JACQUELINE SMITHMASON is Senior Associate Dean of the Hon-
ors College at Virginia Commonwealth University. She serves on NCHC’s
Transfer Committee as well as its Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Previ-
ously, she served on the board of the Virginia Collegiate Honors Council. Her
research interests include examining social equity in public administration
and higher education.
CHRISTOPHER J. SYRNYK is Executive Director of the Honors Program
and the Oce of National Scholarships as well as Professor of Rhetoric and
Composition at Oregon Institute of Technology, where he has taught since
2012. He currently serves on NCHC’s Board of Directors and is also a new
NCHC Program Reviewer. His teaching and research examine the ways we
conceptualize critical thinking; the problematic rhetorical nature of science,
medicine, and technology; and the role of honors in higher education.
ANN TORRUSIO is Assistant Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at
Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, she served as a professor in the
Honors College at the University of Missouri–St. Louis from 2013–2023, where
321
About the Authors
she taught lm and writing in the sciences courses. She also helped develop the
rst-year seminar curriculum and peer mentor program, supervised intern-
ships, and served as faculty advisor to the honors college student organization.
CHRISTY TYNDALL is Associate Professor and Student Wellbeing Program
Coordinator for the Virginia Commonwealth University Honors College.
Tyndall is the lead faculty for Flourishing and develops and implements
innovative co-curricular programming to promote wellbeing, mindfulness,
and community building. A lifelong student of psychology and an educator
for over twenty years, she also teaches courses in applied social psychology
and qualitative research methods. Her areas of research expertise include the
science of motivation, teaching/learning in higher education, and program
assessment. Also an experienced psychological counselor, Tyndall has worked
with adolescents and adults in multiple settings using cognitive behavioral
approaches to identify and implement adaptive strategies for personal change
and wellbeing.
ANTON VANDER ZEE is Associate Professor of English and Department
Chair at the College of Charleston. He served as an Honor College Faculty
Fellow overseeing the honors FYS and directing the Oce of Nationally Com-
petitive Awards. His co-edited collection, A Broken ing: Poets on the Line
(University of Iowa Press) was published in 2011. He has published widely
on matters of poetry and poetics, including such journals as Modern Philol-
ogy, Whitman Studies, ESQ, AGNI, and Resources for American Literary Study.
LEE ANN ELLIOTT WESTMAN is Director of the Honors College at Rut-
gers University in Camden, New Jersey. She holds a PhD in interdisciplinary
humanities from Florida State University. Westman’s research focuses primar-
ily on Mary Jane Holmes, a nineteenth-century American woman writer of
domestic ction, who was a famous and best-selling novelist in her lifetime
but is virtually unknown today. She has presented her work on Holmes at aca-
demic conferences and in edited collections and journals. In addition to her
work on Holmes, Westman recently completed a een-year appointment as
editor of Interdisciplinary Humanities, the Humanities Education and Research
Association’s scholarly journal.
ZACHARY WOOTEN is Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies in the
Honors College at West Chester University of Pennsylvania (WCU). e 2022
“Rising Star” of the Association of Leadership Educators, he is Director of
WCU’s Interfaith, Meaning-Making, and Spirituality Project. His scholarly
interests are in leadership education, interfaith leadership, ethical leadership,
visions of human ourishing, and grief.
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ABOUT THE NCHC MONOGRAPH SERIES
®
curriculum vitae
323
NCHC Monographs
Advising for Today’s Honors Students edited by Erin E. Edgington (2023, 244pp). A useful hand-
book for both new and experienced advisors, this volume brings together 11 essays on the theory
and practice of academic advising within the unique context of honors education. Incorporating
qualitative and quantitative data on advising eorts in honors programs and colleges across a vari-
ety of institutional settings, these essays oer practical advice and inspiration for honors advisors,
faculty, and administrators.
Assessing and Evaluating Honors Programs and Honors Colleges: A Practical Handbook by
Rosalie Otero and Robert Spurrier (2005, 98pp). is monograph includes an overview of assessment
and evaluation practices and strategies. It explores the process for conducting self-studies and
discusses the dierences between using consultants and external reviewers. It provides a guide to
conducting external reviews along with information about how to become an NCHC-Recommended
Site Visitor. A dozen appendices provide examples of “best practices.”
Beginning in Honors: A Handbook by Samuel Schuman (Fourth Edition, 2006, 80pp). Advice
on starting a new honors program. Covers budgets, recruiting students and faculty, physical plant,
administrative concerns, curriculum design, and descriptions of some model programs.
Breaking Barriers in Teaching and Learning edited by James Ford and John Zubizarreta (2018,
252pp). is volume—with wider application beyond honors classrooms and programs—oers vari-
ous ideas, practical approaches, experiences, and adaptable models for breaking traditional barriers
in teaching and learning. e contributions inspire us to retool the ways in which we teach and create
curriculum and to rethink our assumptions about learning. Honors education centers on the power of
excellence in teaching and learning. Breaking free of barriers allows us to use new skills, adjusted ways
of thinking, and new freedoms to innovate as starting points for enhancing the learning of all students.
Building Honors Contracts: Insights and Oversights edited by Kristine A. Miller (2020, 320pp).
Exploring the history, pedagogy, and administrative structures of mentored student learning, this
collection of essays lays a foundation for creative curricular design and for honors contracts being
collaborative partnerships involving experiential learning. is book oers a blueprint for building
honors contracts that transcend the transactional.
e Demonstrable Value of Honors Education: New Research Evidence edited by Andrew
J. Cognard-Black, Jerry Herron, and Patricia J. Smith (2019, 292pp). Using a variety of dierent
methods and exploring a variety of dierent outcomes across a diversity of institutions and institution
types, the contributors to this volume oer research that substantiates in measurable ways the claims
by honors educators of value added for honors programming.
Fundrai$ing for Honor$: A Handbook by Larry R. Andrews (2009, 160pp). Oers information
and advice on raising money for honors, beginning with easy rst steps and progressing to more
sophisticated and ambitious fundraising activities.
A Handbook for Honors Administrators by Ada Long (1995, 117pp). Everything an honors
administrator needs to know, including a description of some models of honors administration.
A Handbook for Honors Programs at Two-Year Colleges by eresa A. James (2006, 136pp).
A useful handbook for two-year schools contemplating beginning or redesigning their honors
program and for four-year schools doing likewise or wanting to increase awareness about two-year
programs and articulation agreements. Contains extensive appendices about honors contracts and
a comprehensive bibliography on honors education.
324
NCHC Monographs
Honoring the First-Year Seminar: Exploring High-Impact Learning Experiences for the
First Year in Honors edited by Anton Vander Zee and Trisha H. Folds-Bennett (2025, 362pp).
is volume is a compilation of analytical essays and descriptive proles focused on the rst-year
experience in honors. e themes of the essays include the importance of reective practices; the
essential nature of deep, meaningful, and respectful dialogue; and the power of community, particu-
larly through the leadership of peer mentors. Readers will nd easy-to-implement practices and the
theoretical underpinnings that support their use.
e Honors College Phenomenon edited by Peter C. Sederberg (2008, 172pp). is monograph
examines the growth of honors colleges since 1990: historical and descriptive characterizations of
the trend, alternative models that include determining whether becoming a college is appropriate,
and stories of creation and recreation. Leaders whose institutions are contemplating or taking this
step as well as those directing established colleges should nd these essays valuable.
Honors Colleges in the 21st Century edited by Richard Badenhausen (2023, 536pp). With essays
written by 56 authors representing 45 dierent institutions, this volume is the largest and most
comprehensive group of faculty, sta, and administrators ever to appear in print together discussing
honors colleges. A wide range of institutional perspectives are represented: public and private, large
and small, R1 agships and regional, two- and four-year, religious and secular, and HBCU.
Honors Composition: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Practices by Annmarie Guzy
(2003, 182pp). Parallel historical developments in honors and composition studies; contemporary
honors writing projects ranging from admission essays to theses as reported by over 300 NCHC
members.
Honors Online: Teaching, Learning, and Building Community Virtually in Honors
Education edited by Victoria M. Bryan and Cat Staneld (2024, 378pp). Combining longer,
research-based chapters with shorter, application-based chapters, the contributors to this volume
present a comprehensive overview, including an international perspective, of online teaching and
learning in honors programs and colleges in the twenty-rst century.
Honors Programs at Smaller Colleges by Samuel Schuman (ird Edition, 2011, 80pp). Practical
and comprehensive advice on creating and managing honors programs with particular emphasis on
colleges with fewer than 4,000 students.
e Honors esis: A Handbook for Honors Deans, Directors, and Faculty Advisors by Mark
Anderson, Karen Lyons, and Norman Weiner (2014, 176pp). To all those who design, administer,
and implement an honors thesis program, this handbook oers a range of options, models, best
practices, and philosophies that illustrate how to evaluate an honors thesis program, solve pressing
problems, select eective requirements and procedures, or introduce a new honors thesis program.
Housing Honors edited by Linda Frost, Lisa W. Kay, and Rachael Poe (2015, 352pp). is collection
of essays addresses the issues of where honors lives and how honors space inuences educators
and students. is volume includes the results of a survey of over 400 institutions; essays on the
acquisition, construction, renovation, development, and even the loss of honors space; a forum
oering a range of perspectives on residential space for honors students; and a section featuring
student perspectives.
If Honors Students Were People: Holistic Honors Education by Samuel Schuman (2013,
256pp). What if honors students were people? What if they were not disembodied intellects but whole
persons with physical bodies and questing spirits? Of course . . . they are. is monograph exam-
ines the spiritual yearnings of college students and the relationship between exercise and learning.
Inspiring Exemplary Teaching and Learning: Perspectives on Teaching Academically
Talented College Students edited by Larry Clark and John Zubizarreta (2008, 216pp). is rich
collection of essays oers valuable insights into innovative teaching and signicant learning in the
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context of academically challenging classrooms and programs. e volume provides theoretical,
descriptive, and practical resources, including models of eective instructional practices, examples of
successful courses designed for enhanced learning, and a list of online links to teaching and learning
centers and educational databases worldwide.
Internationalizing Honors edited by Kim Klein and Mary Kay Mulvaney (2020, 468pp). is
monograph takes a holistic approach to internationalization, highlighting how honors has gone
beyond providing short-term international experiences for students and made global issues and
experiences central features of curricular and co-curricular programming. e chapters present
case studies that serve as models for honors programs and colleges seeking to initiate and further
their internationalization eorts.
Occupy Honors Education edited by Lisa L. Coleman, Jonathan D. Kotinek, and Alan Y. Oda
(2017, 394pp). is collection of essays issues a call to honors to make diversity, equity, and inclusive
excellence its central mission and ongoing state of mind. Echoing the AAC&U declaration “with-
out inclusion there is no true excellence,” the authors discuss transformational diversity, why it is
essential, and how to achieve it.
e Other Culture: Science and Mathematics Education in Honors edited by Ellen B. Buckner
and Keith Garbutt (2012, 296pp). A collection of essays about teaching science and math in an honors
context: topics include science in society, strategies for science and non-science majors, the threat of
pseudoscience, chemistry, interdisciplinary science, scientic literacy, philosophy of science, thesis
development, calculus, and statistics.
Partners in the Parks: Field Guide to an Experiential Program in the National Parks
by Joan Digby with reective essays on theory and practice by student and faculty participants
and National Park Service personnel (First Edition, 2010, 272pp). is monograph explores an
experiential learning program that fosters immersion in and stewardship of the national parks. e
topics include program designs, group dynamics, philosophical and political issues, photography,
wilderness exploration, and assessment.
Partners in the Parks: Field Guide to an Experiential Program in the National Parks edited
by Heather iessen-Reily and Joan Digby (Second Edition, 2016, 268pp). is collection of recent
photographs and essays by students, faculty, and National Park Service rangers reects upon PITP
experiential learning projects in new NPS locations, oers signicant renements in programming
and curriculum for revisited projects, and provides strategies and tools for assessing PITP adventures.
Place as Text: Approaches to Active Learning edited by Bernice Braid and Ada Long (Second
Edition, 2010, 128pp). Updated theory, information, and advice on experiential pedagogies devel-
oped within NCHC during the past 35 years, including Honors Semesters and City as Text
®
, along
with suggested adaptations to multiple educational contexts.
Place, Self, Community: City as TextTM in the Twenty-First Century edited by Bernice Braid
and Sara E. Quay (2021, 228pp). is monograph focuses on the power of structured explorations
and forms of immersion in place. It explores the inherent integrative learning capacity to generate
a sense of interconnectedness, the ways that this pedagogical strategy aects professors as well as
students, and instances of experiential learning outcomes that illustrate the power of integrative
learning to produce social sensitivity and engagement.
Preparing Tomorrow’s Global Leaders: Honors International Education edited by Mary
Kay Mulvaney and Kim Klein (2013, 400pp). A valuable resource for initiating or expanding honors
study abroad programs, these essays examine theoretical issues, curricular and faculty development,
assessment, funding, and security. e monograph also provides models of successful programs that
incorporate high-impact educational practices, including City as Text® pedagogy, service learning,
and undergraduate research.
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Setting the Table for Diversity edited by Lisa L. Coleman and Jonathan D. Kotinek (2010, 288pp).
is collection of essays provides denitions of diversity in honors, explores the challenges and
opportunities diversity brings to honors education, and depicts the transformative nature of diversity
when coupled with equity and inclusion. ese essays discuss African American, Latinx, inter-
national, and rst-generation students as well as students with disabilities. Other issues include
experiential and service learning, the politics of diversity, and the psychological resistance to it.
Appendices relating to NCHC member institutions contain diversity statements and a structural
diversity survey.
Shatter the Glassy Stare: Implementing Experiential Learning in Higher Education edited
by Peter A. Machonis (2008, 160pp). A companion piece to Place as Text, focusing on recent, innova-
tive applications of City as Text® teaching strategies. Chapters on campus as text, local neighborhoods,
study abroad, science courses, writing exercises, and philosophical considerations, with practical
materials for instituting this pedagogy.
Teaching and Learning in Honors edited by Cheryl L. Fuiks and Larry Clark (2000, 128pp).
Presents a variety of perspectives on teaching and learning useful to anyone developing new or
renovating established honors curricula.
Where Honors Education and Faculty Development Meet edited by John Zubizarreta and Vic-
toria M. Bryan (2025, 288pp). e assorted chapters in this volume, written by honors faculty and
leaders and faculty development professionals, demonstrate the inextricable connections between
honors and faculty development. eoretical and practical essays explore the value of collaborations
between honors programs or colleges and institutional centers for teaching and learning and other
faculty development initiatives. A central tenet of the collection is that honors is, in fact, faculty
development, inspiring instructors to rethink pedagogy to implement new approaches to instruc-
tional design and improve both teaching and learning.
Writing on Your Feet: Reective Practices in City as TextTM edited by Ada Long (2014, 160pp).
A sequel to the NCHC monographs Place as Text: Approaches to Active Learning and Shatter the
Glassy Stare: Implementing Experiential Learning in Higher Education, this volume explores the role
of reective writing in the process of active learning while also paying homage to the City as Text
®
approach to experiential education that has been pioneered by Bernice Braid and sponsored by
NCHC during the past four decades.
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (JNCHC) is a semi-annual periodical
featuring scholarly articles on honors education. Articles may include analyses of trends in teaching
methodology, articles on interdisciplinary eorts, discussions of problems common to honors
programs, items on the national higher education agenda, and presentations of emergent issues
relevant to honors education.
Honors in Practice (HIP) is an annual journal of applied research publishing articles about
innovative honors practices and integrative, interdisciplinary, and pedagogical issues of interest
to honors educators.
UReCA: e NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity is a web-based,
peer-reviewed journal edited by honors students that fosters the exchange of intellectual and creative
work among undergraduates, providing a platform where all students can engage with and contribute
to the advancement of their individual elds. To learn more, visit nchc-ureca.com.
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from Honoring the First-Year Seminar:
Exploring High-Impact Learning
Experiences for the First Year in Honors—
“This volume includes eight analytical essays exploring a range
of distinct pedagogical emphases united by an intensive focus on
reection, metacognitive practice, interdisciplinary engagement, and
mentorship. Each of these essays is framed by a program prole that
provides institutional context, introduces the honors unit, and oers
a brief overview of the FYS curriculum and its evolution over time. To
ensure that this collection provides relevant models for the broadest
possible audience—whether one teaches at a two-year college, a private
liberal arts school, or a agship university—the collection concludes
with a supplement containing ten additional program profiles.
Together, the essays and program proles collected here detail a wide
range of program models and pedagogical approaches to the honors
FYS that other honors units can draw upon as they develop and rene
their own FYS programming. . . .
e FYS approaches that the essays and proles in this volume
explore and model chart out a map of possibilities that honors
programs can use as they invent or rene their rst-year oerings.
Although this work is dicult, it is important. . . . If a traditional FYS
aims to adequately orient students—an understandable goal, to be
sure—the pedagogical practices and models represented here tend to
be intensively reorienting and, at times, even disorienting as they lean
into the radical novelty of the rst year.”
—Anton Vander Zee
