NCHC 2011 Report

The 2011 NCHC meeting was held in Phoenix at the Sheraton Downtown Hotel last week (October 19 to 23, 2011). Three people from SAU attendend: Honors College GA Suraj Manandhar, Deborah Wilson, and Edward P. Kardas. We arrived on Thursday, October 20 and left on the following Sunday.

On Thursday, Kardas attended a reunion of directors who had attended the two camps for beginning directors. The first such camp was held at Iowa State University in 2009 (the one Kardas attended) and the second was held in 2011 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The utility of this camp for new directors cannot be overemphasized. Most of the campers at the meeting reported favorable results with their individual honors colleges and programs since having attended. A few reported problems, mostly with finances.

On Friday, all SAU participants attended various sessions. One was the Business Meeting of the Southern Regional Honors Council which last year met in Little Rock. In 2012 that meeting will be in Tampa and in 2013 will be in Louisville.

Other meetings attended included one on starting or revitalizing two-year honors programs. SAU hopes to seed such programs at nearby community colleges. Manandhar and Kardas attended the Research Committee meeting. That meeting's agenda was relatively long but productive. SAU will host a new Web page featuring honors research. At present, there is no central location housing honors research beyond the K to 12 level. Manandhar will create and manage the page. Members of the research committee will cull and categorize the records he collects.

A highlight of the conference was the plenary address by Tyrone B. Hayes of the University of California-Berkeley. He gave a narrative of his research and how it led him to look at the effects of atrazine, a herbicide, on people, animals, and the environment.
Friday night also featured a reception hosted by the nearby Arizona Science Center, a part of Arizona State University's Downtown Phoenix campus.

Saturday included two presentations by the SAU contingent. Both were well attended and chock full of comments and questions from the audience. The first of those was a research panel by Wilson and Kardas: Using the Non-Cognitive Questionnaire in Honors College Admissions and Retention: A Two-year Study. The second was by Manandhar, Wilson, and Kardas: An iPad for Every Student in Honors Seminar: A Pilot Program.

Also on Saturday was a riveting flute performance by R. Carlos Nakai. He played music on Native American instruments. That was followed by a dinner and awards presentation. This year, for the first time, student posters were judged. Deborah Wilson served as a judge for the behavioral science posters.

Next year's NCHC meeting will be in Boston. In 2013, the meeting will be in New Orleans. SAU plans to take a busload to that meeting!