Honors Education

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            Since becoming director in 2009 I have developed a much more sophisticated understanding of honors education.

            My vision for honors revolves around several axes. The first is enthusiasm for learning. Honors students and faculty must share the excitement that comes from learning about the past and extending that knowledge ever forward. There is no place in honors for a 9 to 5 mentality or a cookbook approach to learning. The second is some kind of demonstrable intelligence. I quickly learned that my bias toward higher ACT scores and GPAs was not fully predictive of honors success. My first honors class quickly taught me that lesson. I found no difference in the ACT scores of those who met our retention standard (GPA 3.25 ≥ 3.25) and those who did not. Thus, Dr. Deborah Wilson and I began to search for and report on non-cognitive predictors of honors success. As Sternberg has found, there is much more to intelligence than what is emphasized in typical academic settings. Honors should be more open to finding and selecting atypically intelligent students. Third is diversity, broadly defined. To me, diversity extends beyond race or gender. It should encompass and reflect the make up of the world as a whole. True honors education must attempt to explain the entirety of the human condition and to do so without the usual blinders so commonly found. Here, of course, is where extramural education fits into the honors equation. Extramural education could include foreign and domestic travel, internships, or other nontraditional types of learning experiences. Finally, honors students should be respectful. They should respect the opportunity being provided for them and not just accept it as a privilege of their status. They should respect, and learn, from the past. All too often, students and scholars from all disciplines fail to realize the depth and breadth of the knowledge they have inherited from their intellectual ancestors. They should respect the new. Honors students or faculty should not be blissfully unaware of the ever-changing world around them. Culture and technology are never static and neither should be honors education. 

            The ideal formula for honors is to recruit the best possible students, to introduce them to honors education right from the beginning, to publicize the opportunities available, to support them in their efforts, to expect the maximum from them academically, to graduate them, and to make them lifelong supporters of their Honors College.