In the last decade, the LSU Honors College has grown and improved, and with a recent emphasis on prestigious scholarships and an expanded honors residence hall, the college is a strong option in the South.
Now with about 1,200 students, the College is in our category of “smaller” programs–those with fewer than 1,800 honors students. It appears that the recent trend in honors colleges is to establish residential scholars’ communities of 1,000–1,200 students.
Admission to the College is selective, with a “recommended” SAT of 1330 (ACT 30), plus an essay. A minimum score of 660 on the SAT critical reading portion is also recommended. An ACT composite score of 29 is acceptable if the English score is 31. The deadline to apply is November 15.
The Honors House Residence is located in West Laville Hall (renovated in 2010) and now in East Laville Hall, newly renovated and open to students in the Fall of 2012. Both are located adjacent to the 459 Dining Commons and the French House, home of the College. About 600 students can be accommodated in the halls, both of which have central air conditioning with individual room controls. One important feature is that the halls are available to students for all four years of residence. Although the baths are corridor style, each room has its own sink.
Next to the Honors House is the academic center of the Honors College, the French House, an historic building resembling a French chateau, where small seminar classes are held, students meet with specialized advisors, and all Honors College events take place, ranging from classical concerts to Quiz Bowl tournaments.
The honors curriculum is substantial, requiring 32 hours of honors credit, including a thesis; an overall GPA of 3.5 is required for graduation. (This overall requirement compares very favorably with those of the fifty honors programs we have formally evaluated.) At least 6 honors hours must be in seminars, and at least 12 hours must be upper-division courses, including the thesis.
Students can earn “sophomore honors distinction” if they complete 20 hours of honors work in the first two years, including 6 hours of honors seminars. Upper division honors distinction requires exemplary work in junior and senior courses along with an excellent honors thesis.
Honors credit may be earned in honors-only seminars; in small versions of regular classes, with an honors component; and in honors “option” courses, requiring the student to arrange individual instruction with a professor. Honors students have priority registration for honors courses.
Since 2005, when LSU established the Office of Fellowship Advising within the Honors College, LSU students have won 13 Goldwater awards for undergraduate research in STEM fields, and have had 15 finalists for the Truman Scholarship for postgraduate studies. LSU students also earned seven National Science Graduate Research Foundation grants in 2012. The establishment of a fellowship office within the honors college or program is an important consideration for prospective students who have an interest in prestigious awards.
Honors students are also encouraged to travel and study abroad “to enrich their education and to gain a wider perspective on the future of this country. The Honors College sponsors summer study trips to China and to South Africa, where students learn foreign languages, engage with students from those countries and learn about their cultures.”
From time to time we become mildly wonkish and write about the implications of some of our data, including information that we did not include in A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs.
Recently, we have been looking at correlations between faculty reputation and honors curricula on the one hand, and the attainment of prestigious scholarships, such as Rhodes, Truman, Goldwater, Fulbright, and National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research grants on the other.
A significant correlation that stands out is that between faculty reputation and prestigious NSF grants, awarded for research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and, to a lesser extent, research in the social sciences.
We did not find that our data for honors curricula correlated significantly with the attainment of NSF grants. This does not mean, however, that participation in honors programs is not important to STEM majors, for honors programs are the surest way to connect serious undergraduates with research opportunities supervised by high-quality faculty. In addition, of course, honors curricula typically provide more scope and depth to the overall education of all honors students.
We also found a lesser but still significant correlation between faculty reputation and the attainment of Fulbright Student awards, given in a variety of disciplines. Again, the correlation of these awards with curricula was minimal; but the same access to strong faculty mentors via involvement in honors, along with the broader honors education, still points to advantages in pursuing honors.
The impact of honors curricula is clear, however, when it comes to Truman and Goldwater awards, and when curricula are correlated with a metric that combines all prestigious scholarships (including Rhodes, Marshall, Gates, and Udall) except for NSF grants. Honors curricula are a stronger factor than faculty reputation with respect to the combined scholars metric, but both curricula and reputation are important.
It is interesting that curricula correlate with the undergraduate Goldwater awards, also given for STEM research, but not with the NSF grants. The impact of faculty reputation was minimal when correlated to Truman Scholarships.
So what is the “take home” message from all this number-crunching? For STEM majors, strong faculty along with honors research opportunities are probably as important as the general honors curriculum. Departmental honors, with a thesis requirement, are also important if the honors program does not require a thesis.
The New College of Florida, located in Sarasota, is the official public liberal arts college for the state, and with only about 800 undergraduates enrolled, the entire campus functions in much the same way as a relatively small honors program at a larger university.
New College is not, strictly speaking, an honors college. But with an estimated average SAT in the 2000 range and average GPA of about 3.75, it is as selective as many major research university honors colleges and programs, and the curriculum and extremely flexible options appear to have some of the same elements as Echols Scholars enjoy at the University of Virgina along with tutorial choices that are similar to Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College.
Like Echols scholars, all students at New College can create their own, individual curriculum, with a choice of forty majors and additional choices for double concentrations. Classes are with very small–about 12 students–or one on one, in the tutorial format that is associated with Ohio U.
And there’s one other thing you should know about New College: there are no grades.
Students receive lengthy and detailed narrative evaluations of their performance in course work and tutorials. Does this hurt New College students when they apply to graduate and professional schools?
The answer appears to be no. “About 80 percent of New College alumni go on to graduate school within six years of graduating,” the college reports. “For the 2010 graduating class, 86 percent of graduates who applied to a Ph.D. program were accepted, and 100 percent who applied to law school got in! It’s no wonder that The Wall Street Journal ranked New College the nation’s no. 2 public feeder school for elite law, medical and business schools.”
Another key feature of New College is that Kiplinger’s Best Values in Public Colleges ranks New College at number 5 as an in-state public college value, and at number 19 as an out-of-state value.
One thing that students should consider is very small size of the college. On the plus side, there is the flexibility, the individual instruction, the research opportunities, and excellent options for studying abroad, especially in language-related study. New College students have an extraordinarily high rate of success in attaining Fulbright Student Fellowships, to go with the excellent prospects for placement in graduate and professional schools.
But on the other side of the ledger, the small campus is also like a very small town, and some small towns can seem confining. One factor that may offset the small size is that about 80 percent of students live on campus.
“New College’s Pei Campus is the center of residential life, the college says, “with eight out of a total of nine residence halls located there. Along with the dorms, Hamilton ‘Ham’ Center, Palm Court, the Fitness Center and other recreational facilities form a student village where academics and campus life seamlessly intertwine and ‘learning occurs around the clock.'”
“Designed by internationally-renowned architect I.M. Pei, New College’s Pei Residence Halls opened in 1965 and accommodate more than 250 students in double and triple-occupancy rooms, each with its own private bathroom. Community spaces and laundry rooms in the Pei buildings are located in each of the three quads, and the outdoor Palm Court around which the rooms are grouped is a focus of New College student life. Pei rooms are spacious, measuring approximately 15′ x 15.’
“All of the rooms have recently, and some feature covered porches or large balconies, providing additional living space. The clustered construction, communal spaces and orientation around Palm Court affords Pei residents a strong sense of community.”
Dining options include the student-run Four Winds Cafe, located on the Bayfront section of campus, a market cafe with sandwiches and traditional entrees, and a deli.
And we shouldn’t neglect to mention the nearby beaches.
“Lido Key offers quiet North Lido Beach, the popular Lido Beach with parking and restrooms, and South Lido Beach, which has BBQ grills and picnic tables under Australian Pines. Boutique stores and restaurants can be found on St. Armands Circle.
“Siesta Key Beach, named America’s #1 beach and known for its powdery white sand, has volleyball nets, tennis courts and picnic area. Every Sunday at sunset there’s a drum circle. Siesta Village offers restaurants and nightlife. Turtle Beach, on the southern end of the island, is quieter with coarser sand and beach dunes.
“Or head up north to Anna Maria Island for a change of scenery. There are many restaurants and funky shops along the beautiful beaches. Check out the island’s annual Bayfest, too.”
The Honors College at the University of Utah may have more interesting options for living, learning, and participating in honors projects than any other program or college that we have reviewed–and we’re not talking about the fabulous skiing that is so accessible from Salt Lake City.
Okay, we do have to mention that the brand new Donna Garff Marriott Honors Residential Community (MHC for short) does in fact have a ski wax room as well as storage space for skis and bikes.
But what is most impressive is the thoughtful, coherent, yet flexible curriculum that blends effectively with so many living and learning options that it will be difficult to list them all.
Admission is selective but holistic, with no ironclad test and GPA requirements. From what we gather from the website, applicants are “highly likely” to be admitted with SAT 1490 (ACT 34) and above, plus a GPA of at least 3.8. It appears that “likely” admission requires an SAT of around 1360 (ACT 31) and a GPA of 3.6 or so. SAT of approximately 1250 (ACT 28) and a GPA of 3.5 or higher may require the applicant to go through a portfolio admissions process. The portfolio must contain two letters of recommendation, a graded writing sample that includes the name of the teacher who issued the grade, and a personal statement of 1-3 pages. Portfolio applications may require four or five weeks for review.
The requirements for the preliminary honors certificate are six hours of credit in Intellectual Traditions (IT) courses; three hours of credit in an honors writing course; and six more hours that can be from several honors core options. These include American Institutions; honors calculus; and core courses in behavioral sciences, physical and life sciences, fine arts, Construction of Knowledge, or any honors seminars. Note: AP credits can apply to general education requirements but DO NOT displace honors course requirements.
The university honors degree requires an additional six hours of honors courses and a thesis or capstone project. Most departments also offer an honors track, and even those that do not offer the separate track do have honors advisors that can supervise the thesis.
It appears that it would be difficult not to continue taking honors courses, given the range of options.
Students can select honors internships “to work alongside a community leader in a real-world situation to bring about change in a community,” meanwhile receiving a $1,000 stipend for the 16 weeks required to complete the internship.
Or students can take honors tutorials that enable them to work one on one with a faculty member on a research project, while meeting with the instructor weekly.
Most interesting to us is the option to participate in the honors think tank collaborative classes, limited to 12 students, many with different majors. These two-semester courses bring students together to apply multidisciplinary perspectives to a “contemporary societal challenge under the guidance of faculty,” and also carries a stipend of $1,000.
Students may also participate in honors cohorts of 20 students, who focus on topics of mutual interest. Examples are cohorts for religious studies, environmental studies, pre-med, pre-law, ethics, American Studies, Sciences, and LGBTQ studies. Students meet monthly to discuss their projects and aims.
The legal cohort, for example, allows students to attend hearings, meet with judges and attorneys, do legal research, learn about the Socratic method of teaching, and study case law and courtroom practices. Students also have the opportunity to consult with advisors about the many career options and specialty fields available to lawyers.
Another exciting feature is the early assurance program, which is open to students with SAT scores of 1170 or higher (ACT 26) and GPA of 3.8, who want to attend graduate school at the “U.” Most honors students are eligible. The program allows students to take up to two years to decide on a graduate major–a remarkable level of flexibility.
Each year, the most elite applicants to the early assurance program are selected as Eccles Distinguished Scholars, who receive full support for tuition, fees, and housing as long as they remain eligible.
All honors students are eligible for the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), which offers some grants of $1,200 for first-time research projects in collaboration with and $600 in renewable grants.
Students may earn honors credit for studying abroad and can choose from seven special honors options:
Theater, humanities, and fine arts in London
British studies–the Bloomsbury Group–in London
Environmental studies in Costa Rica
Summer studies in Berlin
Summer studies in Cambridge
Social work in Mexico
Writing in Costa Rica
Students may also receive credit for non-honors study-abroad courses, but not for courses in language study abroad.
The new Marriott Honors Center (MHC) is opening this Fall. The MHC is located near the Huntsman Center on Campus, at the intersection of Mario Capecchi Drive and South Campus Drive. The MHC has 309 beds in apartment/suite configurations, and there are plans to expand the facility.
The MHC has its own cafe, coffee shop, laundry, ski wax room, music room, secure bike storage, and is near a TRAX line that provides transportation around the city.
The residence hall includes an honors core experience floor for students who have not decided on a major; a first-year honors floor for students who have chosen a major; an upper-division honors community; and residences for Eccles School of Business honors students and College of Engineering honors students.
Additional honors communities are located in the Officer’s Circle section of the campus. These include The Law House for pre-law students; the Honors Innovation House; the Poulson House for students working on capstones and theses; and another Honors First-Year Floor at Sage Point.
Some honors programs and colleges make liberal use of honors contract courses, which allow a student to receive honors credit for taking a non-honors class if the student and professor agree on additional requirements–often a paper or research project–and honors staff confer formal approval on the contract arrangement.
Whether the contract courses are worthy additions to honors education depends on the following factors:
the reasons that the courses are offered;
the substance of the additional requirement for honors credit; and
the frequency of the contract courses.
If faculty productivity requirements reward departments and individual faculty for teaching large numbers of students, then honors contracts may allow faculty to receive credit for teaching a large section and also allow the honors credit for the section. This approach may be defensible if budget cuts or productivity requirements leave no other alternative, or if the university as a whole offers smaller, high-quality classes to most of its students, whether or not the students are in the honors program.
Using contract courses primarily as a means of circumventing faculty involvement in honors-only courses, however, could well be a sign that the program lacks strong support from the departments, the administration, or both.
But if a culture of excellence is pervasive at a university, then the honors contracts may be more defensible. Honors students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, might be able to contract for a large number of classes that are relatively small and of high quality, but that are not formally designated as honors-only classes. While this arrangement may lead to claims that the honors program is not sufficiently distinct from the university as a whole, the result is nevertheless likely to be a substantive experience.
In any case, honors contract courses should in fact be substantive. If an additional paper is required for honors credit, then the paper should be of considerable length and reflect serious scholarship. The stronger the requirement, the higher the likelihood that the professor and student have a higher degree of collaboration. In such cases, the contract courses mix tutorial and class instruction, perhaps even to a greater extent than would a regular honors course.
On the other hand, if honors contract courses are the dominant element in the honors curriculum, it is difficult to see how the faculty involvement could reach the high level discussed above. For if that level of involvement could be attained, why would it not result in more actual honors courses instead of an excess of contract courses?
Editor’s Note: There is a full, updated profile and detailed rating of Macaulay Honors College in our book, INSIDE HONORS. You can see a list of the highest rated honors programs here.
Students who are residents of New York State have the unique opportunity of qualifying for free tuition and other benefits at the Macaulay Honors College, which is affiliated with eight senior colleges of the City University of New York. Admission to Macaulay for state residents not only makes them Macaulay Scholars with free tuition but also presents to them the Big Apple in all its fascinating dimensions.
Out-of-state students who meet CUNY New York State residency requirements can also receive the full tuition scholarship. And for those who do not qualify for the free tuition support, CUNY provides one of the best values in higher education. In addition, the student will receive all of the enhanced benefits of a Macaulay education.
Macaulay students study at the following CUNY campuses: Baruch College, Brooklyn College, City College, Hunter College, John Jay College, Lehman College, Queens College, and the College of Staten Island (CSI). There are special honors housing packages at City College and Hunter College. All the other colleges have residence options. Macaulay Honors College is housed in an elegant, renovated brownstone located in the Upper West Side, near Central Park and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
In addition to free tuition, Macaulay students receive a $7,500 Opportunities Fund “to pursue global learning, internships, and other service and learning opportunities”; a MacBook Pro laptop; a “Cultural Passport” that permits free or discounted admission to arts, cultural, and educational institutions across the city; and specialized advising through the Macaulay Advising Program (MAP).
The laptops are an integral part of Macaulay’s plan to enable students to participate in social and academic programs at campuses other than their home campuses and to prepare and present e-portfolios of their college work, with the help of Instruction Technology Fellows (ITF’s) assigned to each of the honors seminars. “ITFs are CUNY doctoral students in a wide range of academic disciplines, carefully selected for their familiarity and experience using technology both in the classroom and in research,” according to the Macaulay site.
Admission to Macaulay is selective, with an average SAT score of 1410 and grade average of 93.9. In addition, co-curricular activities, essays, and letters of recommendation are required. The acceptance rate was 29% for the Class of 2016; approximately 540 freshmen will be entering Fall 2013.
The honors curriculum for the first two years is focused on the city of New York itself:
“Seminar 1 introduces Macaulay Scholars to the arts in New York City and the Cultural Passport. During the semester, students attend theatrical, operatic, and musical performances, exhibitions of visual art, and other highlights of the current cultural season, and help to create the annual “Snapshot of New York City” exhibition.”
“During Seminar 2, Macaulay Scholars investigate the role of immigration and migration in shaping New York City’s identity–past, present, and future. Visits to archives, interviews, mapping and walking tours allow students to create the collaborative Neighborhood Websites, presenting their research through audio, video, photography, and other media.”
“In Seminar 3, Macaulay Scholars analyze issues in science and technology that have an impact on contemporary New York. Students work together to create scientific posters and presentations for a Macaulay-wide conference of their peers and others in the Macaulay community.”
“The purpose of Seminar 4 is to analyze the ongoing interplay of social, economic, and political forces that shape the physical form and social dynamics of New York City. Throughout the semester, students engage in a team research project, sometimes including Public Service Announcement Videos, to be presented at a model academic conference.”
Macaulay’s upper-level seminars encourage students to integrate course work and their own primary research, in a richly collaborative and supportive interdisciplinary setting. Recent topics include Sexuality and American Culture, Imagining the End of the World, The Future of Education, Religion and Public Policy, and Women and Global Public Policy Since the 1960s.
As for off-campus opportunities in New York City, Macaulay students benefit from special access to network with New York’s most dynamic firms.
“Macaulay students often use some of their $7,500 Opportunities Fund to develop customized programs that enable them to explore different professional paths, or to gain additional hands-on experience in fields they wish to pursue in graduate school or professionally after college.”
Examples of recent internships are New York Life, HBO, The New York Historical Society, The Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability (EICES), NYU Langone Medical Center, BBC Worldwide Americas, The New York State Office of the Attorney General, US Trust, Free Arts NYC, The Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), and Northwestern Mutual.
Over 90% of Macaulay students intend to study abroad. Again, they can use their Opportunities Fund, outside fellowships, and additional resources CUNY makes available to them to pursue a wide range of semester and year-long study abroad programs, at universities around the globe.
Students might analyze marine life in the Galapagos, study drama at Trinity College of Dublin, learn Arabic at Bosphorus University in Istanbul, or study mathematics at the City University of Hong Kong.
Other examples of recent study-abroad locations are the following: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Brazil, China, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Morocco, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and Turkey. Macaulay students have studied on every continent with the exception of Antarctica.
Macaulay graduate, David L.B. Bauer of City College, became something of an undergraduate “brainiac” celebrity, who chose Macaulay over the Ivies after he won the Intel Science Talent Search as a high school student in 2005. A winner of Goldwater, Rhodes and Truman Scholarships while at Macaulay, Bauer focused on research in clinical medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (WTCHG) at the University of Oxford, where he worked during his junior year at CCNY. Bauer is currently a DPhil candidate in clinical medicine at Oxford.
A second Rhodes scholarship was awarded to a Macaulay student in October, 2011 to Zujaja Tauqeer (Macaulay and Brooklyn College ’11). Zujaja, who graduated with a BA/MD, is studying the history of medicine in a two-year program at Oxford.
We have written previously about the Southeast, referring to it as the “land of great honors programs.” Like some other programs in the region, the one at the University of Tennessee actually has two honors programs that are interrelated: the Chancellor’s Honors Program (CHP) admits about 420 extremely talented students each year, and another 15 extraordinarily fortunate students become Haslam Scholars, who receive the most generous support of any undergraduate scholars on campus.
While the CHP does not list a definite minimum set of requirements, the average freshman entrants score 32 on the ACT and have a 4.0 GPA. This equates to about the top 10 percent of freshmen who enroll at UT.
The required curriculum for the CHP is 25 semester hours, including two courses in the freshmen year (total of 1 credit hour) and another seven courses in the remaining years (21 additional hours). The final requirement is a 3-hour thesis or “approved substitute,” which can be within the department or related to an honors topic. Continuation and completion in the CHP require a cumulative GPA of 3.25.
About 75 percent of freshmen honors students live in Morrill Hall, which, though not centrally located, features appealing double suites with one adjoining bath for only four students to share. It does not appear to be the case, however, that only honors students can live in Morrill, so choosing the right roommate could be extremely important.
Haslam Scholars at UT (similar to other elite undergraduate scholars at Alabama and Georgia, for example) receive scholarship packages worth more than $17,000 a year–and out-of-state students receive a waiver that allows them to enroll at the in-state level. Haslam Scholars also receive a free laptop, a grant ofg $4,500 for studying abroad, and special mentoring for research and thesis work.
The Haslam Scholarships are funded through a $5 million grant from the Haslam family. While the university does not list specific requirements, the likelihood is that Haslam Scholars would need to have credentials approximating National Merit Finalists (in regard to test scores), extremely high GPAs, AP/IB results at the highest levels, and other evidence of superior accomplishment in leadership, service, and cultural activities.
Haslam Scholars must complete at least 28 semester hours of honors work, including 6 hours of research coupled with a presentation, and 3 hours of service or executive internships.
Haslam Scholars are essentially a part of the CHP as well, and are eligible to live in Morrill Hall and participate in CHP programs and activities.
While all honors colleges and programs offer interdisciplinary courses and emphasize student interactions in small classes, the University Honors Program at the University of New Mexico does an excellent job of describing exactly how these best practices come together to develop students who are confident, engaged, and increasingly aware of their place in a complex world.
“Rather than simply piling on extra work, Honors courses are specially designed and crafted to be interdisciplinary,” the program site says. “Topics are examined a little more in depth than in normal undergraduate courses at the University. Extensive student participation and creativity form the foundations of every course. Enrollment is capped at 16 students. Interaction takes place in group activities and round-table discussions or presentations.”
The curriculum requires a minimum of 24 hours of honors credit, and it is, in fact, carefully designed. First-year students take at least one 100-level honors “Legacy” course.
“Legacies incorporate history, literary works, philosophy and/or political theory, drama and/or poetry, art, music, dance and/or architecture, science, math and/or technology. Legacies deal with the development of ideas rather than definitive historical time.”
Next come 200-level courses. These are cross-cultural topics, including Women, Africa, the Far East, the Americas, Medieval Europe, and the origins of mathematics and science. “These courses incorporate interdisciplinary explorations of specific topics with an emphasis on developing and strengthening skills important to success in Honors and undergraduate education, including oral and written communication skills, reading skills, critical and creative thinking, etc.”
The next series, 300-level courses, are an interdisciplinary exploration of specific topics designed to demonstrate the interconnectedness of academic disciplines. “Recent courses have focused on the significance of gender in myth and literature, bio-medical ethics, the nature and politics of nuclear energy, the origins of prejudice, arts across cultures, the existential imagination, and cross-cultural communication.”
At the 400 level,topics are more in- depth than those in lower-level courses, and students will have increasingly greater roles and responsibilities, the ultimate goal of the curriculum. “These courses afford enthusiastic and enterprising students the opportunity to craft a publishable paper or coordinate a collaborative mini-conference.”
Finally, senior options, earning six credit hours, can take the form of a thesis that can be interdisciplinary or within a discipline; or a senior teaching assistantship; or a senior colloquium involving a service learning project.
Another especially interesting option for honors students is to work on the honors publication, called Scribendi, Latin for “those which must be written.” Ten to twelve honor students work on the magazine, which publishes creative and non-fiction work not only by students at UNM but also by students at any of the 127 members schools of the Western Regional Honors Council. UNM honors students can receive credit for their work on the magazine.
Through the Conexiones Program, honors students can participate in more than a month of intensive Spanish-language study in Spain, in the cities of Trujillo and Salamanca. Students live with host families in Trujillo, “a city whose history and architecture represents in itself the history of Spain (from Iberians and Romans, Moors and Christians, to the famous Spanish nightlife, modern architecture and cyber cafés).”
“Students will attend classes in a 15th century restored convent, the site of the Fundación Xavier de Salas, an institution created with the purpose of studying and disseminating the theme of connections between Extremadura and the Americas.
“Weekly excursions are part of the program, including the visit to the medieval city of Cáceres and the Roman city of Mérida. Some highlights of the program are: a behind scenes tour of the ancient library at the University of Salamanca (one of the oldest in Europe), a day at a bull ranch in Salamanca, attendance at a performance of Classic Theater at the Roman Amphitheater of Mérida, a visit to the medieval town and monastery of Guadalupe and a day in the sister city of Alburquerque, with a tour through its medieval castle.”
The UHP at New Mexico began in 1957 with an enrollment of only 30 students; now the program has 1,300 students. Admission requires a minimum ACT of 29 (SAT 1860) and a minimum GPA of 3.50. Students must maintain a 3.20 GPA to remain in good standing.
UHP students enjoy priority registration, and many live in the Scholars Wing of the Hokona/Zia Residence Hall, home to Regents’ Scholars, Presidential Scholars, as well as UHP residents. Hokona is a traditional, co-ed dorm, with mostly double rooms and corridor-style baths. It is air conditioned and centrally located, very close to La Posada (LaPo) Dining Hall, the library, and buildings for economics and social sciences.
In our continuing series of profiles on honors programs that we would have liked to include in our book, A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs, we will discuss in this post the well-known honors program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
An early post complimented Miami Honors for their up-front stats showing the achievements (in the form of placement percentages) of their most recent class of graduating honors students. So before describing the details of the program, we are listing the Miami web site stats for placement rates for the 2011 class below:
Law School: 100% placement (national average 69%)
Medical School: 85% placement (national average 45%)
Acceptance to Grad School: 94% (national avg not listed)
Job Prior to Graduation: 86% (national avg <56%)
Four-year Grad Rate: 98% (national average <56%)
The Miami program does not list a rigid set of admission requirements, but the average test scores are SAT 1340/ACT 30/GPA 4.0. A few students, however, are admitted with significantly lower test scores, if they have outstanding qualities in other areas, such as leadership, academic awards, and volunteer activities.
Like some other honors curricula we have reviewed, the Miami requirements are extremely flexible, with credit assigned for “honors experiences” rather than honors courses alone, although honors courses are the basic elements of honors experiences. And, following a trend in honors education, students have to prepare and submit for review annual online portfolios that organize and summarize what they have learned.
Honors experiences include small, interactive seminars, research, study abroad, undergrad teaching assistantships, graduate courses, leadership projects, and internships. Honors portfolios must demonstrate progress in six areas: written communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, intercultural understanding, and reflection (self-understanding). Students must complete at least nine experiences.
Note: Readers may want to see our recent post on “College Learning Assessment (CLA): Rationale for Honors?” in which we discuss the ways that honors curricula already enhance critical thinking and writing skills that college reformers often advocate.
Honors housing is important at MU because students are required to live on campus during the first two years.
“Although members of the University Honors Program eventually move all across campus, most have one thing in common: they spent their first year living in Tappan or Emerson Hall,” one student reports.
Tappan Hall is located on South Quad and is close to Harris Dining Hall, an all you care to eat location, and Scott Hall, which houses Encore and Ovations food courts. South Quad is not the most central location on campus, but, as another student says, the “location is great…for all the ‘good stuff’ (Rec Center, Hamilton Dining Hall, Shriver Center, Western Campus…”
Most rooms are corridor style with communal baths and shared double rooms. It appears that at least some of the rooms are air-conditioned, and there are a few suite-style rooms as well.
In a previous article, we wrote about philanthropist Bill Gates and his ideas regarding hybrid college courses that combine “superstar” faculty videos with classroom discussion groups. The Gates Foundation is also associated with the Council for Assistance to Education, which has developed the Collegiate Learning Assessment test used by some universities.
Gates has said that he does not want universities to turn into vocational institutions, and he has maintained that students need to develop broader skills, especially the critical thinking and writing skills measured by the CLA test, not only for the students’ own benefit but for the benefit of employers and society functioning in a world where vocational training becomes outdated so quickly.
Honors curricula for decades have emphasized critical thinking and writing skills as a central component. The writing requirements for almost all honors students are significantly more demanding than those for non-honors students, and the curricula develop critical thinking by engaging students in texts, research, and projects that demand sophisticated, in-depth analysis.
The CLA test is used to compare the skills of entering students with those of graduating seniors in a given institution. The results of the test provide part of the statistical basis for the 2011 book Academically Adrift, which argued that students in American universities learn relatively little during their time in college and, moreover, do not work very hard in the process.
Critics of higher education, especially of public higher education, cite the book as evidence that universities over-emphasize research at the expense of undergraduate instruction and as confirmation that too many of the students now entering college are not sufficiently motivated or prepared to be there in the first place.
That argument aside, Academically Adrift and a more recent and detailed study by the CAE itself show that students in certain major areas do better than those in others. For example, students majoring in science or the humanities score the highest in improving the critical skills between the time they enter a university and the time they graduate. Business, education, and engineering majors do not show as much improvement.
Although some honors programs have a lot of engineering and business students, in general the focus is on the arts and sciences. Under siege by reformers for not being vocational enough, the humanities and social sciences, as well as the natural and physical sciences, can now stake a claim to being leaders in developing “higher order” thinking.
The longstanding honors role in teaching to this end is generally accepted; but there are other roles, less noticed by the general public, that honors education has promoted critical skills in their universities as a whole. Allowing non-honors students to enroll in some honors classes is a common practice, and of course all honors students take classes that are not directly a part of the honors curricula.
While it may cost more to educate an honors student than it does to teach non-honors students, the need for critical thinking skills is emerging as a priority. Even gradual increases in the enrollment of honors students could, in the long run, be one of the best investments a university can make in its own future and the future of all its graduates.
