Irvin, Sarah. (2009). Honors Courses Needed

One area in which the Southern Arkansas University Honors College could use work is in the courses it offers. An Honors College’s curriculum should offer significant course opportunities across all four years of study.[1] As far as honors credit classes go, Southern Arkansas University Honors College is not doing so great.

The current honors credit hour requirement for Southern Arkansas University Honors College stands at twenty-four hours with eighteen hours to consist of general education courses and the remaining six hours to consist of upper division courses.[2] [Editor's Note: It is now 9 general educations courses minimum] While these seem to be solid numbers, there are multiple factors that can make achieving these required hours difficult for a student. The number one factor is concurrent credit. These are college level classes taken by a student in high school, which count for both high school and college credit. Concurrent credit course opportunities usually consist of general education courses and do not include any honors credit courses. This is a problem because when that student reaches college with all these pre-completed general education course credits, they must struggle to find honors credit in courses that have not already taken.

Another problem that occurs for Honors College students is trying to find honors credit courses in their chosen field. Southern Arkansas University does not offer an equal number of honors credit courses in all subject areas. For example, there are not many honors credit opportunities in either English or art but there are more than enough opportunities for science majors. This causes some students to resort to taking classes they do not need or want because they need the honors credit in order to graduate.

Overall, I believe this Honors College is an asset to Southern Arkansas University, but there is always room for improvement. One way Southern Arkansas University could improve is by offering a wider range of honors credit courses. If there are not enough students to fill a separate honors course, the university could consider contract or online courses. As far as the general education hours are concerned, Southern Arkansas University could solve this problem by either lowering the total number of required honors credit or by allowing students to take less general education honors credit, and more upper division honors credit.

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[1] SAU Honors College Report Card

[2] Southern Arkansas University Undergraduate Catalog 2009-2010 page 3.

Irvin, Sarah. (2009). Change the Baccalaureate?

A college diploma used to lead to a good job, financial security, and respect. Now, in a time of record college enrollment coupled with a growing economic recession, a college diploma no longer guarantees those results. A record 18.4 million students are currently enrolled in colleges and universities around the United States, compared to just 12 million in 1999. But what is happening to them after graduation? What will happen when those 18.4 million students are sent out in to the world armed with a brand new diploma? Will they reap the same reward as past graduates?

One of the biggest debates concerning colleges and universities today is the structure and value of the baccalaureate or the bachelor’s degree. That degree, developed more than 60 years ago, is still used by the majority of colleges today. It consists of four years of classes containing general education and major specific information.

On one side of the debates are those who are concerned that the current bachelor’s degree program no longer adequately prepares students for life after college. According to Mark C. Taylor, “Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand.” The big question seems to be: while this system worked perfectly 60-70 years ago, is it still practical today?

On the other side of the debate are people who argue that new ideas and technology are allowing for more specialized degree options at some schools. These new degrees would offer solutions to current social problems and contribute to new scientific discoveries. While the old baccalaureate degrees focus on general subject areas, the new degrees would be centered on current issues. An example could be a degree all about “Going Green.” This major could deal with environmental science. Students would learn about environmental issues, resource technology, and problem solving skills. They could take classes in chemistry, physics, biology, geology, and geography. These degrees would be more focused on “hands-on” work as opposed to classroom time. They would include more field trips, internships, and work study opportunities. The focus would be on the student’s ability to learn and display skills rather than on memorizing facts. These new degree programs would allow students to explore their surroundings and learn new ways of approaching problems. Some argue that the current degree programs cause “cloning,” or where students learn to become exact replicas of their professors. The best way to solve the cloning problem is to reconstruct the American baccalaureate. Imagine what college would look like if these new degrees containing classes from all disciplines came to be the new norm.

[1] Source: Upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2009, Table 211

[2] Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, October 1999.

[3] Source: End of the University as We Know It. Mark C. Taylor <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html>

Mawalagedara, Nimendra. (2009). Honors Admissions

The article states that one characteristic of fully developed Honors College is that “a fully developed Honors College should exercise considerable control over honors recruitment and admissions, including the appropriate size of the incoming class” and the Honors College of Southern Arkansas University does fulfill this requirement.

Honors College recruits students. But if should be more efficient. Personally, I never received information about the Honors College. It would be more efficient if the Honors College was able to inform all the applicants who have made a certain GPA, SAT or SAT score that they are eligible to apply.

Admissions to the Honors College is by a separate application. The applicants to Honors College are required to complete and submit an additional application. The application contains general questions and two essays. In addition to the academic requirements, the essays give the student a chance to tell the college officials why that student wants to be in the Honors College. This extra information allows the Honors College to choose or filter students and select those that would best meet the requirements of the Honors College.

The Honors College has and appropriate number of incoming freshman. By regulating the number of incoming freshman the college can maintain housing in an appropriate manner and provide comfortable accommodation to each and every student and I believe apt accommodation is vital for academic excellence. A regulated intake of students also allows the honors classes to be smaller. It is crucial to have a low enough number of students so that each on can communicate with the professor freely, but it is also important to have enough students in the class to make discussions more enriched. I believe the Honors College has done a good job at admitting an appropriate number of students.

Mawalagedara, Nimendra. (2009). Education as the Primary Focus

When Sherwood Anderson said “The whole object of education is to develop the mind” I am certain he was oblivious about future education systems. Maybe there was a time when education was a pristine entity that provided unlimited knowledge to whomever was willing to absorb it. But somewhere between the time when people started moving out of caves to the time when careers started dominating every part of life, we have lost our interest in learning. Somewhere down the line, we have stopped questioning why the sun rises in the morning and sets at night. Concepts which are seemingly simple have been taken for granted. If our thirst for knowledge and exploration dwindles, we could stagnate as a species. It is our will to explore, our ability to cope with change and our undying desire to question bleak ideologies that brought us this far. Therefore, I believe boundaries should not be imposed on education, I also believe that an extremely liberal education is not the answer.

A liberal arts education system gives a student broader insight into a wide range of subjects. Students learn to draw in ideas from a vast area. It promotes spontaneous inspirations. Although some courses may not seem worth exploring and others may have no connection to the student’s chosen major, filtering education by what is useful or not is impossible. That is why I believe dullest and seemingly unworthy courses could teach students something that would alter the way they view their field of study. The physicists in the 1800’s were confident that they had peaked in physics discoveries. They were so confident that in 1890, Michaelson announced that “the more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered.” With the dawn of 1900, Maxwell Planck was trying to decide if he should go into research physics. His advisors warned him against it because they, like Michaelson, believed that our knowledge of physics had reached its saturation point. But a few years later, quantum physics was discovered, and with it modern physics became the place where greatest and most exciting discoveries lay. The universe is infinite; our understanding of things is negligible. All it takes is a new angle or an innocent question to break the next barrier. By limiting students to one course and specializing in a particular field leaves little room for serendipity. So it is extremely difficult to classify any course as less important or of little use. Limiting education can be the most dangerous thing.
While I strongly believe that what one has learnt will not be wasted; I also believe that an education system which is too broad and the liberal arts can dilute one’s education. If an institution emphasizes too much diversity of course and less on the depth of each course, students would graduate with very little knowledge that can be channeled into something productive. Forcing university freshman to follow a general education system under the assumption that they are not experienced enough to choose a major who is related to their future career is absurd. Freshman add up experiences every day, with each experience their point of view gradually changes.

Our experiences define us, but we cannot predict when we will experience a defining moment which would enlighten us about a new career path. What is the gauge that tells us when we are ready to make that decision? How old must we be before we are certain of what we want? Focusing on a particular major that interests us at the time is much better than groping around indecisively.

Having a liberal education within a chosen major would be a reasonable balance between the liberal arts and structural education systems. If students can explore various fields related to their degree program, then that would give them a much deeper understanding of the subject than if they specialized in one particular area of their chosen field. But, if students can discover how to apply what they learned in several different classes to their chosen major, that would reflect the best of what they learnt.

However, I firmly believe that the problem is that we are trying to define is what constitutes a “perfect” university education is. The beauty of education is that one can learn the same thing is several different ways. Each individual would have their own preference. Some would prefer a more career oriented education while others would like to follow a more structured system which would prepare them for a future in academics. Trying to fit everyone into one particular system would cause more harm and hinder undiscovered potential. Rather than trying to come up with the best education system, it would be better to come up with the effective education SYSTEMS which would fit the needs of all the different people out there. For instance I believe establishing career oriented, academic, liberal arts, and traditional universities we can achieve an equilibrium. Perhaps it can be done within a particular university. Even now, universities have separate science courses for science and arts majors. If that idea is expanded on a larger scale would allow students to not only choose their major but also how they want to study it.

King, Samson. (2009). Honors and Decentralization

Southern Arkansas University has a much more centralized form of control over its departments and colleges when compared to other similar universities. This is in no small part due Dr. David Rankin’s status as president also essentially being an “aggregate dean” status that places him in a more direct line of power over the colleges present at Southern Arkansas University. This is not necessarily always a bad thing, but it does place more responsibility directly in his hands where it may in other cases be delegated to a dean overseeing one college.

Other universities feature a more decentralized system for the development and administration of their internal, specialized colleges. This makes the system employed at Southern Arkansas University particularly unfriendly to certain internal colleges, since some, such as Honors Colleges, stipulate that they must originate from universities who feature the decentralized system and, thereby, maintain a greater degree of control and autonomy within the college itself. While it is true that the Honors College at Southern Arkansas University, much like the other internal colleges at Southern Arkansas University, has a designated head, it does not have any position close to what could be considered “dean status.” This severely gimps the Southern Arkansas University Honors College and prevents it from meeting the requirements of a “fully developed” honors college one might find elsewhere.

The Honors College is surely not the only internal specialized college found at Southern Arkansas University that is, in many ways, not as fully developed as it could potentially be if it had a dean that oversaw its development, fund allocation, and curriculum free of outside intervention. It is, however, a newer college on campus, and is grossly under-represented. This state of being is further exacerbated by its facelessness; there is not as much talk of the Honors College as its own entity, as there is for other on-campus colleges. At the same time, the individuals that comprise the Honors College also make up parts of every other college on campus, making it uncertain as to whether or not the Honors College, as a group of individuals simultaneously representing other colleges, truly has a “face” of its own. Regardless of this, there is little to no chance for it or the other internal colleges at Southern Arkansas University to experience exponential growth under centralized, non-dean oriented control. In fact, in a local social environment that not only does not foster faculty and student involvement in school politics and decisions, chance for change from this model of governance is bleak at best. This is a perfect case of a cause for a problem further facilitating a problem and, in return, allowing the problem to propitiate the causation to create a cyclical pattern.

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.

Stress Data from Honors General Psychology Class

Dr. Chrisanne Christensen's honors general psychology class heard a presentation from three of its members about the results of a stress questionnaire they gave to 46 Southern Arkansas University honors students this Fall semester.

Using the CUSS (the College Undergraduate Stress Scale) they found that SAU honors students scored 9 percentage points higher than did a national sample of students (N = 12,000).

SAU honors students scored higher than they thought they would in the categories of academic and personal stress. Also, hardly any respondents believed that typical stress relieving activities would help them. Respondents desired more time to meet their commitments, both academic and personal, instead.

The student researchers (see below) concluded that learning better time management skills might be an important step in dealing with stress. They recommended that such skills be taught early on in the Honors Seminar. [Noted, BTW]

Here are the three student researchers (from left to right: Ben Bower, Daniel Kasper, and Sara Caller ):