The partnership that the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) entered into with the National Park Service (NPS) almost a decade ago, when the Partners in the Parks (PITP) program was created, has immeasurably enriched the lives of undergraduate honors students and faculty from throughout the United States and abroad. This second edition of…

The Monroe College Honors Program, located in New York, enjoys an extremely diverse student body, which can be attributed to its location within and proximity to New York City. Data about the Monroe College Honors Program are presented. More importantly, this essay presents the strategies that the honors program uses to meet the needs of a diverse…

In "Thinking Critically, Acting Justly," Naomi Yavneh Klos suggests that the key questions for honors education and social justice are first "how to engage our highest-ability and most motivated students in questions of justice" and second "how honors can be a place of access, equity, and excellence in higher…

In this article, the author asks members of the honors community to interrogate the way they narratively frame honors experiences so that these constructs are as inclusive as possible. Employing admissions practices that do not disadvantage students from underrepresented backgrounds is crucial, but also essential is that they do not…

This handbook is intended to help all those who design, administer, and implement honors thesis programs--honors directors, deans, staff, faculty, and advisors--evaluate their thesis programs, solve pressing problems, select more effective requirements or procedures, or introduce an entirely new thesis program. The authors' goal is to provide…

Northern Kentucky University (NKU) is a comprehensive public university located just five miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio. At NKU, educators aspire to provide a personal educational experience to the more than 12,000 undergraduate students who enroll each year. Given the demographics of the undergraduate student body--more than 50% are…

As the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) celebrates its fiftieth year, the organization has an excellent opportunity to reflect on how honors education has spread during its history. Tracking growth in the number of institutions delivering honors education outside of its membership has not been a priority for NCHC or for researchers in…

Often administrators overlook the student voice in developing strategic plans, mission and vision statements, marketing strategies, student services, and extracurricular programming. Engaging students in these areas may enhance students' cooperation, interactions, responsibility, and expectations. In order to assess honors students' perspectives…

A new admissions crisis has begun to emerge in the honors community. In an increasing number of states, legislatures are mandating uniform minimum AP and dual enrollment credits that public colleges and universities must accept, and consequently the honors students that have been admitted based in part on their willingness to take on challenging…

The fundamental concepts employed by City as Text™ (CAT)--the established experiential learning practice in honors education-and the discipline of geography, specifically the landscape tradition within human geography, share much in common. The overlaps offer CAT practitioners additional intellectual support from a source outside of honors while…

How honors faculty and administrators might best respond to the challenge of AP/IP/dual enrollment credit mandates across the country will depend largely on the nature of their institutions and the size, structure, and mission of their individual programs. While the debate will continue about long-term consequences for the quality of higher…

Recent research describing the landscape of honors education has demonstrated that honors programs and colleges have become an important and expanding component of American higher education. Since its inception nearly a century ago, collegiate honors education offering campus-wide curricula has spread to more than 1,500 non-profit colleges and…

Although the development of digital competencies has become increasingly important in higher education, integrating digital literacies in the college classroom has occurred at a slow pace. Honors programs and colleges represent one area of the academy that typically values a more traditional approach to skill development while resisting…

The authors of this article concede that Annmarie Guzy's lead article for this volume of "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council" speaks of a familiar challenge in the Eastern Kentucky University Honors Program. The nearly universal and dramatic increase in the number of AP, IB, and/or Dual Enrollment credit hours among their…

Today's young people are sophisticated consumers in the higher education marketplace. They are seeking "above and beyond" academic experiences such as study abroad and undergraduate research. They are looking for a personalized academic experience, and they aspire to be in community with others who share a similar sense of purpose and…