The National Collegiate Honors Council's "Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education" (2022) outlines the level of commitment, pedagogical innovation and inclusivity, mentoring, and intellectual leadership that honors programs and colleges expect from their faculty. These high expectations require institutional support…

This article considers the value of honors education beyond its marked contributions to enrollment management goals. Suggesting that quantitative assessments toward understanding the value of honors fail to capture its breadth, interdisciplinary focus, and engagement, authors posit a new way of measuring impacts from "contagion model"…

Honors faculty are defined by their dedication to their craft and their enormous impact on students in every discipline. However, their role within the larger university setting is nebulous, leading to an undervaluation of their contributions to higher education in an era of negative perceptions of the industry. Honors faculty can be tenured,…

This essay presents common practices for developing faculty in small honors programs and colleges operating with limited financial resources. The author outlines strategies and applications for implementing targeted faculty development, including: transdisciplinary coordinating efforts toward bringing full-time and adjunct faculty together for the…

Despite its crucial role in student success, there is scant research on how honors faculty develop teaching expertise and pedagogical authority. This essay considers the ways in which faculty development programs assist instructors by enhancing the critical skills necessary for positive student outcomes and successful honors programs. While honors…

Successful honors programs inspire and sustain a vibrant and committed faculty. This essay presents an established honors program which demonstrates, through varied faculty commitments over time, honors as a valuable asset in identifying, recruiting, supporting, and rewarding a strong, creative, loyal faculty that benefits the entire institution.…

Neither the historical antecedents of honors education in the Oxford tutorial model nor Aydelotte's implementation of honors at Swarthmore College in 1922 involves a privileging of the humanities within honors education. The signature characteristics of honors education and pedagogies are discipline-neutral. Though the historical and institutional…

This essay recounts efforts to teach liberal arts to engineering, nursing, pharmacy, and pre-medicine majors. Showing how various forms of public media reinforce harmful ideologies about social identities in the United States serves as a convergence between preprofessional disciplines and the liberal arts. At the same time, City as Text™ offers…

Gifted education and honors education often parallel one another. By using a theoretical construct from gifted education as guidance, honors colleges could adjust their programs to spark interest and expedite talent development of minorities in STEM and health preprofessional tracks. Small improvements include adjusting advising models, using…

The conventional structure of most honors colleges made it difficult to deliver curricula and programming during the global health pandemic. Traditional modalities for content delivery and community building did not always adapt well to online environments. By requiring that honors students come to campus, programs have been offering a…

Honors has long been a space for pushing boundaries and promoting culturally responsive teaching, yet students from underserved and marginalized populations rarely see themselves reflected in the designated intelligentsia of most universities. This essay considers several aspects of boundaries in, and barriers to, the honors experience. Implicit…

First-year students faced unprecedented challenges while transitioning from high school to university in fall 2020. The coronavirus crisis, economic downturn, social unrest, and a rapid and massive shift to remote learning altered their world in fundamental ways. This essay describes the response of one honors program toward providing extra- and…

Honors educators must acknowledge and respect clear boundaries between the work they do in the classroom and the advocacy they support or engage in as private citizens. Public colleges exist to prepare citizens for life in a pluralistic, democratic republic, and few limits should be placed here on what questions may be asked or which views may be…

Although honors populations occupy only a fraction of institutional enrollments, they have undeniably changed the nature of higher education. This essay considers the impact of honors on university culture, processes, and infrastructure. Touted as a "critical element" of the comprehensive college experience for both students and faculty,…

Recent scholarship demonstrates a direct correlation between the body and brain in academic performance and general wellbeing. This essay considers mindfulness practice as an integrative discipline in honors education. While exercise offers many benefits to college students, the authors maintain that the mindfulness practices of yoga, qi gong, and…