Inside Iowa State

July 22, 2005

Aim of honors changes: comprehensive, four-year program

by Anne Krapfl

Incremental changes this year to Iowa State's Honors program will begin to move it toward a coordinated, four-year program.

The freshman Honors program, started in 1977, is administered centrally and has a good reputation among students. ISU colleges have administered their own honors programs since 1960, focusing since 1977 on sophomores, juniors and seniors. As a result of the decentralized structure, the requirements on and quality of experience among students varies quite a bit by college.

The goal, said associate provost David Holger is not only to improve the Honors experience for students already in it, but also to attract more high-ability students into the Honors program and to Iowa State.

The changes follow up on two studies completed during the 2003-04 academic year and a March 2005 report by a study committee asked to propose ideas that could be implemented fairly quickly and that didn't necessarily require a lot of new funds. Honors program faculty director Ricardo Salvador and administrative director Ricki Shine were members of the nine-member committee.

New face at Jischke Hall

An assistant director has been hired to manage the day-to-day operations of the freshman Honors program, essentially what Shine has been doing. This will free Shine and Salvador to plan several years out, and develop long-term goals and an implementation schedule for the Honors program.

Brandy Cunningham, who starts at Iowa State Aug. 1, completed a master's degree in educational leadership and policy studies here in May 2004. For the past year, she has been the assistant director of the office of programming, leadership and involvement at Loras College, Dubuque. Cunningham's position is a P&S position.

Goodbye, red tape

The report that the study committee submitted in March to associate provost David Holger said students perceive that their Honors experience includes unnecessary bureaucracy. Shine said that one of the early initiatives is to eliminate administrative red tape, for example, the current "categories" (associate, full) of Honors program membership and the separate application processes that accompany them.

"We're going to try to make this program more seamless and, from the students' perspective, more comprehensive," Shine said.

She hopes to introduce an online application system for freshmen and faculty mentors who participate in the freshman research program.

"Some of what we do is exactly the way it was done in 1978, but the university has changed a lot since then. We need to look at all our processes, decide what needs to be changed and how to do it, " she said.

"We want to make the honors experience more interesting -- for students and faculty."

Graduation checklist

Perhaps the largest task under way is to begin to build a comprehensive, coordinated honors program beyond the freshman year. Salvador and Shine met in May with associate deans for undergraduate programs and will continue to flesh out ideas with that group. It may even lead to a separate advisory committee to look at curriculum, admissions or advising issues. Holger said he has asked the group to develop a list that answers the question: What are the components of a coordinated, four-year honors program? Some of those elements, according to Shine and Holger, could be:

• Off-campus experiential learning, in this country or overseas
• Research experience
• Course requirements, such as thematic (ex. ethics, social responsibility) or interdisciplinary courses
• Program-wide approaches to increased breadth and depth of the honors curriculum

"I think the colleges are mindful we don't do a systematic job of providing adequate opportunities for our high-ability students beyond the first year," Holger said. "It's too early to say they've bought into centralized coordination and administration of the entire program."

Some of the components on that list will require additional funding, Holger noted. A change in expectations could be the solution to others.

"Obviously, the associate deans are key players for us," Shine said. "The Honors program bridges all the colleges, but everything we do has to be negotiated with each college."

And while last year's study committee came up with a vision for the Honors program of the future, Shine said "we're always looking for suggestions and better ways to do things."

"I think the colleges are mindful we don't do a systematic job of providing adequate opportunities for our high-ability students beyond the first year. It's too early to say they've bought into centralized coordination and administration of the entire program."

David Holger,
associate provost