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ERIC Number: EJ1081084
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015
Pages: 6
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1559-0151
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Honors Composition: Humanity beyond the Humanities
Guzy, Annmarie
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, v16 n1 p37-42 Spr-Sum 2015
Annmarie Guzy opens this article by saying that, as a professor of composition and technical communication, she has found "dipping into other fields" an integral part of her job. In a traditional English department, what she does is considered service teaching, providing a service to other departments and colleges rather than teaching English majors. Although she occasionally sees an English major on her roster, she spends the majority of her time working with students from pre-professional programs such as engineering, computer science, biomedical sciences, health care management and informatics, graphic design, and secondary education. Her work with so many students, honors and non-honors alike, from a range of professional disciplines, provides a unique perspective on the interdisciplinarity of college studies. Guzy requires her students to make the transition from academic writing for a grade to workplace writing in which they need to convey field specific information effectively so that a real audience can make a decision or take a course of action. Similarly, her honors freshmen are building writing skills necessary to navigate writing and research projects in any discipline. When Guzy's students can successfully explain their discipline- specific work to classmates from different majors, when they have learned enough to have thoughtful discussions about topics from everyone's majors, then Guzy has achieved one of her major pedagogical objectives. Honors administrators and faculty consider students to be the leaders of the future in their disciplines of choice and strive to give them the tools to be responsible, ethical citizens. Guzy argues that fast-tracking students past their humanities courses deprives students of opportunities to develop their critical thinking and writing skills beyond those of an eighteen-year-old high school senior before they have to complete advanced projects in their majors. It also limits them to trade-school coursework in increasingly narrow disciplinary specializations without giving them valuable chances to discover the interdisciplinary connection--the human connection--among all majors.
National Collegiate Honors Council. 1100 Neihardt Residence Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 540 North 16th Street, Lincoln, NE 68588. Tel: 402-472-9150; Fax: 402-472-9152; e-mail: nchc@unl.edu; Web site: http://nchchonors.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A