Honors Program Research Articles

Seeking Legitimacy: The Community College Mission and the Honors College

The community college mission has been the subject of considerable review and commentary since its conception. Based on traditional concerns of access, a consensus has largely been reached regarding the inclusion of transfer, career, developmental, and community foci within a comprehensive community college. While concerns regarding access and affordability have largely driven mission, community colleges have also begun to reach out to other groups of students, including international students and honors students, raising questions about mission. Community colleges have addressed this latter group through honors sections and programs. As with four-year colleges, community colleges have also begun to institute honors colleges as a way to recruit and serve high achieving students who might otherwise go elsewhere. Based on a case study of one college's efforts to establish an honors college, we suggest a contingent model for development of honors colleges at the community college. The ultimate determinations as to whether the honors college is true to the community college mission lies in the composition of honors college participants. Districts that can use honors colleges to attract diversity in terms of underrepresented groups to their colleges may fulfill the promise of the traditional community college mission by making the transition from the community college to a selective four-year institution less onerous. The enhanced confidence, success, and social capital obtained in such an honors college simultaneously meets the egalitarian and meritocratic aims of the community college.

The impact of dual enrollment on the institution

AbstractHow do dual enrollment programs benefit colleges and universities? Using quantitative and qualitative measures, the director of Kennesaw State University's Dual Enrollment Honors Program demonstrates the program's value to the university and highlights program concerns and challenges.

“A Man's Gotta Do What a Man's Gotta Do,” and Other Memorable Lines from “Philosophy and Film”

“A Man's Gotta Do What a Man's Gotta Do,” and Other Memorable Lines from “Philosophy and Film”

From knowledge acquisition to knowledge production: issues with Australian honours curricula

Although there have been increasing attempts to involve undergraduate students in conducting research, a pivotal moment when students engage in knowledge production is during honours programmes. Honours programmes, particularly those in Australia, seek to develop students’ capacity to engage in higher order thinking that may lead to knowledge production. This transition is facilitated through advanced disciplinary knowledge, research training and a research project. However, there is a pedagogical tension between requiring students to engage in this deeper level of inquiry at the same time as they complete a heavy knowledge acquisition load. This paper explores how a number of disciplines in Australia balance these elements of the honours curricula. It argues that the combination of these curriculum goals can make it difficult for students to apply the knowledge they have gained in advanced disciplinary and research training courses to their research project work. This has serious implications for honours programmes.

Predicting academic success in higher education: what’s more important than being smart?

This study investigated the combined predictive validity of intelligence and personality factors on multiple measures of academic achievement. Students in a college of higher education in the Netherlands (N = 137) completed a survey that measured intelligence, the Big Five personality traits, motivation, and four specific personality traits. Student performance was measured with grade point average (GPA) and time to graduation, as well as with five specific performance measures: regular exams, skills training, team projects, internships, and a written thesis. Results show that 33% of the variance in GPA and 30% of the variance in time to graduation can be explained by combining intelligence, personality, and motivational predictors. Conscientiousness is the best predictor across a broad spectrum of academic achievement measures and explains five times as much variance in GPA as does intelligence. The practical implications are that institutes of higher education should collect personality data on students at the outset and then help students accordingly. Highly conscientious students who are organized and internally motivated might potentially be offered more challenging honours programs with corresponding special commendations on their diplomas, whereas students who score low on conscientious would receive more structure through student study groups, frequent deadlines, shorter assignments, group assignments, clearly defined learning goals, and less second chances for passing examinations.

The Importance of Infrastructure for Support for Community Based Learning

The Community Based Learning (CBL) Certificate and the Civic Honors Program provide unique opportunities for students to receive college credit for their civic participation. The authors describe these programs and the historical and administrative changes at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, which created an environment for their development and support. This support includes recruiting administrators and faculty who support CBL, developing an infrastructure to recruit students into these programs, building relationships with community partners, and providing training and professional development to faculty. Collaborations with the volunteer and career centers and clarification of roles have contributed to cooperation across university programs. Descriptions of promising practices in developing community partners and connecting with community resources are offered. Future challenges to expand CBL and credit faculty for their engagement efforts are discussed.

The Elements of Maritime Piracy

This piece was originally submitted in November 2012 in satisfaction of the Australian National University College of Law's Honours program. The dissertation identifies uncertainty in the Article 101 UNCLOS definition of maritime piracy as an obstacle to the effective prosecution of piracy offences at the domestic level. After surveying relevant domestic decisions and legislation purporting to give effect to the customary and/or conventional definition of piracy (as evidence of State practice and opinio juris or subsequent practice relevant under Article 31(3)(b) VCLT) the dissertation adapts the approach of the International Criminal Court of establishing 'elements of crime' for Rome Statute offences, and attempts to articulate such elements of crime for maritime piracy.

Do honors students have more potential for excellence in their professional lives?

Universities in many countries increasingly value talent, and do so by developing special honors programs for their top students. The selection process for these programs often relies on the students’ prior achievements in school. Research has shown, however, that school grades do not sufficiently predict academic success. According to Renzulli’s (1986) three-ring model, student characteristics relating to intelligence, motivation and creativity are the most important predictors of excellent achievements in professional life. In this paper, we will investigate whether honors students differ from non-honors students in terms of these characteristics. By means of a questionnaire, more than 1,100 honors and non-honors students at Utrecht University were asked to assess themselves on six characteristics: intelligence, creative thinking, openness to experience, the desire to learn, persistence, and the drive to excel. The results showed that the honors students differed significantly from the non-honors students in terms of the combined variables as well as for the separate variables, with the exception of ‘persistence’. The strongest distinguishing factors between honors and non-honors students appeared to be the desire to learn, the drive to excel and creativity, whilst there was little difference in terms of intelligence and persistence. However, the profiles of these differences varied according to the study program. While Law and Humanities honors students differed from their non-honors peers in terms of their drive to excel, Physics honors students were primarily more eager to learn than their non-honors peers, while the LA&S honors students scored higher on creative thinking than non-honors students.

Assessment of Policies and Programs to Combat Human Trafficking

Little research has been conducted to evaluate recent anti-trafficking policy initiatives and programs. This is particularly problematic because policymakers, service providers, and activists across the United States are looking to recent research to help identify what efforts have been effective and what efforts have not or could be improved. Many states also are reevaluating their efforts and considering new approaches, but have even less knowledge and understanding of the problem.Massachusetts stands as one of only four states that currently lacks legislation specifying human trafficking as a crime. Although one bill introduced in 2009 passed the state Senate, it died in the House. Under the leadership of the Attorney General and key state legislators, new bills have been filed this year. Despite the apparent momentum for a landmark bill, it is not clear that the public or most members of the legislature and other policymakers view human trafficking as a problem here in Massachusetts.To address this void, a team of researchers from the Bentley University Service-Learning Center and University Honors Program offered to assist the Massachusetts Governor‘s Council to Address Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence in drawing together what is known on the topic and evaluating programs that exist within and outside of the state. The report seeks to answer the following research questions: 1. To what extent is human trafficking a problem in Massachusetts? 2. What explains the variation among the U.S. states in policymaking outcomes on combating human trafficking? 3. How well are current law enforcement and prosecution strategies and specific programs to combat human trafficking working in practice? 4. How well are current strategies and specific programs to protect victims of sex trafficking working in practice? 5. How well are current prevention strategies and programs working in practice? 6. How can effective strategies and programs to combat human trafficking be adapted to effectively address the problem in Massachusetts?

Introduction to “Worker Appropriation as Responsibility and Right”

With the increasing globalization of labor markets in the early 21st century, more employment relations scholars have addressed the issue of whether workers rights are human rights. The current, widely-accepted definition of workers rights is rooted in the International Labor Organization’s “Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work” (1998) which includes the following four rights—the eradication of discrimination in employment, the effective elimination of child labor, the abolition of all types of forced labor and the right of employees to freely associate and to engage in collective bargaining with their employers. In this well-written, provocative and timely essay, Dr. Richard McIntyre, the Honors Program Director and Professor of Economics at the Schmidt Labor Research Center at the University of Rhode Island, expands on the ideas presented in his excellent book, Are Worker Rights Human Rights?, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2008. In this essay, Professor McIntyre argues that in order to achieve “an ethically acceptable workplace in globalized capitalism,” employees having the rights to freely associate and to engage in collective bargaining might be inadequate for obtaining this objective. As an alternative, Professor McIntyre contends that in order to attain such a desirable goal, “the traditional wage-labor relationship” needs to be transcended through worker ownership/appropriation. Drawing on experiments in various forms of worker ownership from throughout the world, Professor McIntyre articulates how such a system might be successfully crafted and implemented in the United States in the near future. I welcome employment relations scholars from all nations throughout the world to contribute future essays on employment relations topics from any one of a variety of theoretical perspectives. Moreover, if any of the journal’s readers would like to respond to Employ Respons Rights J (2011) 23:219–220 DOI 10.1007/s10672-011-9179-x

Universal Broadband: Opportunities and Challenges in Western Massachusetts – Executive Summary

There has been much attention recently on the need to make broadband Internet available to every household in America. Broadband is now seen as critical for economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness, and enhanced quality of life. Broadband technology is changing how we educate our youth, deliver health care services, manage our energy needs, ensure public safety, engage government, and how we access, organize and disseminate knowledge. Yet the United States is behind many advanced countries in the adoption and quality of broadband. Today, only about two-thirds of Americans have broadband service in their homes. Even fewer Americans living in rural areas have adopted broadband simply because it is unavailable where they live. This problem is particularly severe in western Massachusetts. Currently there are 32 towns in the Commonwealth that are completely unserved and another 91 towns where broadband is available to less than 10% of the households. To facilitate deployment of new broadband infrastructure and expansion of existing services in unserved and underserved communities, Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation creating the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) and providing funding for the construction of fiber, wireless towers and other critical and durable broadband infrastructure. In 2010, the MBI began building a $71 million, 1,100 mile open-access fiber-optic network – the middle mile – to begin bridging the digital divide in western Massachusetts communities. What is still needed, however, is the development of a sustainable business model for a telecommunications carrier to build the “last mile” and also provide affordable service to its customers. To help further bridge the digital divide in Massachusetts, a team of researchers from Bentley University’s Service-Learning Center and University Honors Program offered to assist MBI in learning more about cost effective ways to deploy broadband in unserved and underserved areas and increase adoption rates in areas of low population density to make such areas more attractive to service providers. Although our report covers broadband policy and practices at a broad level, we focus on increasing access to broadband and adoption rates in rural areas and how it might apply to western Massachusetts. Research Questions1. What are advantages and disadvantages of alternative broadband technologies in overcoming the technological challenges for encouraging broadband deployment to unserved and underserved areas of western Massachusetts? 2. What are some the most effective programs and practices to increase broadband adoption in western Massachusetts?3. What policy changes and initiatives at the state and federal level would be most helpful in supporting broadband access and broadband adoption goals? Bringing the last-mile to western Massachusetts is no simple task. In the full report, we show in more detail the challenges faced by MBI with regard to the issue of access and what technology will best suit the Commonwealth’s needs, the factors that hinder adoption and how to overcome them, and what policies would best support MBI’s objectives.A copy of the full report with findings and recommendations and other supplementary materials will be available for download from Bentley University’s Web site. In the meantime, a copy of the report can be obtained by contacting the study’s faculty advisor, Professor Jeff Gulati at jgulati@bentley.edu or 781-891-3177.

Evolution of a Digital Repository: One Institution's Experience

In this article, the development of a digital repository is examined, specifically how the focus on acquiring content for the repository has transitioned from faculty-published research to include the gray literature produced by the research centers on campus, including unpublished technical reports and undergraduate research from honors programs. This material has the benefit of fewer copyright restrictions, making acquisition much less problematic. Inclusion in the repository increases the creditability of the research center and provides wider distribution of this often under-recognized research.

Effect of internal pressure on the vibrational response of fluid‐filled shells: Finite element model.

A finite‐element model of the vibrational response of fluid‐filled shells with arbitrary shape and composition has been developed using the COMSOL multi‐physics modeling package. The user can specify the properties of the fluid inside the shell including the static pressure. The shell is surrounded by air, which is enclosed by a perfectly matched layer boundary, and an acoustic source is positioned just outside the shell. The frequency response of the shell due to a swept sine acoustic excitation can be recorded at multiple locations. Model results for a spherical aluminum shell filled with water at different static pressures are compared with experiment. Results are also shown for a shell with geometry and material properties similar to a human skull. The goal is to apply this model to predict vibrational response due to changes in intracranial pressure. [Work supported by Central Washington University Science Honors Program.]

Universal Broadband: Opportunities and Challenges in Western Massachusetts

There has been much attention recently on the need to make broadband Internet available to every household in America. Broadband is now seen as critical for economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness, and enhanced quality of life. Broadband technology is changing how we educate our youth, deliver health care services, manage our energy needs, ensure public safety, engage government, and how we access, organize and disseminate knowledge. Yet the United States is behind many advanced countries in the adoption and quality of broadband. Today, only about two-thirds of Americans have broadband service in their homes. Even fewer Americans living in rural areas have adopted broadband simply because it is unavailable where they live. This problem is particularly severe in western Massachusetts. Currently there are 32 towns in the Commonwealth that are completely unserved and another 91 towns where broadband is available to less than 10% of the households. To facilitate deployment of new broadband infrastructure and expansion of existing services in unserved and underserved communities, Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation creating the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) and providing funding for the construction of fiber, wireless towers and other critical and durable broadband infrastructure. In 2010, the MBI began building a $71 million, 1,100 mile open-access fiber-optic network - the middle mile - to begin bridging the digital divide in western Massachusetts communities. What is still needed, however, is the development of a sustainable business model for a telecommunications carrier to build the “last mile” and also provide affordable service to its customers. To help further bridge the digital divide in Massachusetts, a team of researchers from Bentley University’s Service-Learning Center and University Honors Program offered to assist MBI in learning more about cost effective ways to deploy broadband in unserved and underserved areas and increase adoption rates in areas of low population density to make such areas more attractive to service providers. Although our report covers broadband policy and practices at a broad level, we focus on increasing access to broadband and adoption rates in rural areas and how it might apply to western Massachusetts. Research Questions:1. What are advantages and disadvantages of alternative broadband technologies in overcoming the technological challenges for encouraging broadband deployment to unserved and underserved areas of western Massachusetts? 2. What are some the most effective programs and practices to increase broadband adoption in western Massachusetts?3. What policy changes and initiatives at the state and federal level would be most helpful in supporting broadband access and broadband adoption goals?

Learning to Unlearn: Transformative Education in the City

For millennia, cities have been an integral part of human life. Today, with more than half the world’s population living in cities, they are at the core of survival on, and of, this planet. Urban centers are not simply the scenery for study abroad; the International Honors Program (IHP) embraces the consequential role of cities in the world as the thematic heart of our study abroad program, Cities in the 21stCentury. In this article, we discuss the content that is available when the city becomes the classroom. It is through a process of sustained observation, engagement, and critical thinking that students are empowered to question their assumptions, to cross social and physical boundaries, and to understand how cities work in practice. The IHP Cities in the 21stCentury program explores the heart of how cities work, and thus how students in their personal and professional lives can influence the future of cities. The article describes the current form of the program, analyzes the methods that we use, and suggests how the intercultural context and interdisciplinary nature of this experience can be adapted to other models of international education.

Judgments of Widely Held Beliefs about Psychological Phenomena among South African and Australian Postgraduate Psychology Students

Lay understandings of human cognition, affect, and behaviour often diverge from the findings of scientific investigations. The present study compared South African and Australian fourth year psychology students' judgments about the factual correctness of statements of psychological phenomena that have been demonstrated to be incorrect by empirical research. Students enrolled in the psychology Honours programmes at two large residential universities in South Africa and one university in Australia were asked to respond to a questionnaire that required them to decide on the validity of a list of empirically untrue statements. The results show that a large proportion of all universities believed many incorrect statements to be true. Significant differences between the samples emerged that may have been due to curricular differences between the academic programmes in the two countries. These results are discussed with reference to the teaching of critical thinking skills in psychology courses and the influence of popular culture on beliefs about human behaviour. Recommendations are also made about the teaching of scientific and critical reasoning skills in academic psychology programmes.

How do we play the genre game in preparing students at the advanced undergraduate level for research writing?

The study described in this article sets out to understand the barriers and affordances to successful completion of the short research thesis required in many advanced undergraduate courses or Honours programmes. In the study, the genre features of students' research projects and the criteria used to assess them were analysed and both students and supervisors were interviewed. The article focuses on one particular student from the case study and the findings provide in-depth insights into the complexities of genre acquisition in one particular department at a South African university, where writing and knowledge of the genre are often not taught, but must be acquired through a form of apprenticeship. The article concludes by raising some questions about how research genres can best be mediated in developmental contexts, where the teaching of writing may not be valued.

Knowledge and Attitudes of Pharmacy Students Regarding Traditional Medicine

Traditional/Complementary Medicine (T/CM) is offered as an elective course in the third semester in the undergraduate Bachelor of Pharmacy with Honours programme at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The objective of this study was to assess the perceived knowledge of and attitudes toward T/CM and T/CM course in the curriculum by the pharmacy students. A total of 160 students from the first to fourth years of the pharmacy programme were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. In general, over 60% of students have positive knowledge and attitudes on the general knowledge related to T/CM, but some are uncertain on some issues related to the effectiveness and safety of T/CM. A majority of students agreed that the T/CM course is offered in the pharmacy curriculum, but on average only 40% of students agreed that the course is offered as a core course. A large number of students who have attended this course agreed that this course had provided them with knowledge and practical benefit to them in the future. However, various reactions were obtained from the students who did not attend the course due to lack of exposure to T/CM. In conclusion, the T/CM course is suitably offered in the pharmacy curriculum in order to enhance their knowledge on the T/CM issues and to help them apply such knowledge in their pharmacy practice.

Hearts and Minds: Honors Programs in North American Christian Institutions

For readers of this journal outside North America, the very concept of “honors education” may be confusing (since the word honours features in British and Commonwealth degree titles) or obscure (bringing to mind associations with aristocratic privilege or elitist competition). But in the United States the development of honors programs in colleges, and later honors colleges within universities, has been an important and growing trend of the last fifty years. Intended to recruit students of high intellectual aptitude, to serve their special needs, and to raise the academic profile of the host institution, honors programs have proliferated from a handful in the 1940s to more than 600, as catalogued in the most recent edition of Peterson's Guide to Honors Programs and Colleges (Digby, 2005). Even though the phrase “honors education” may have a peculiarly North American ring, the issues raised for those who teach highly talented university students are the same for Christian educators around the world, and very little has been published on the topic. With these essays we aim to identify some of the issues that are particularly relevant to Christian higher education for “honors” students, to explore how different theological traditions offer different pedagogical resources for teaching the gifted, and to describe some successful paradigms for cultivating hearts and minds toward service in the kingdom of God.

An Augustinian Culture of Learning for Interdisciplinary Honors Programs

An Augustinian Culture of Learning for Interdisciplinary Honors Programs