Harned, Kahle. (2009). Experimentation in Honors

“The Honors program, in distinguishing itself from the rest of the institution, serves as a kind of laboratory within which faculty can try things they have always wanted to try but for which they could find no suitable outlet. When such efforts are demonstrated to be successful, they may well become institutionalized thereby raising the general level of education within the college or university for all students. In this connection, the Honors curriculum should serve as a prototype for things that can work campus-wide in the future.” -- Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program

Does the SAU Honors program live up to this criterion for a fully developed honors college? I think we are getting there. Though there seems to be no mandate in SAU's honors program to actually experiment with honors students, I believe most of the faculty does this without being told to. With my limited experience in the honors program thus far, I see ample opportunity for professors to experiment with new teaching ideas, of which honors students would be able to test. In full honors classes, many professors test ideas they may think will work on more advanced students, and in turn see if it will apply to the general student body. In regular classes, professors are able to use honors students as a test bed for material that they may deem too complicated for their main classroom body of students. Our honors program does not fully live up to this criterion for two main reasons: First, our honors program has a very limited scope and implementation thus far. We have very few honors courses and students. Second, we have no system in place to make sure that professors experiment with honors students or if they do, we have no guarantee that they will implement it to the benefit of the student body as a whole. I give us a B+ for general implementation of this criterion.