Honors College Research Articles

Talking Fieldwork with Rebekka King

In The Interview, we chat with movers and shakers whose contributions help us think about the field. Bulletin Editor, Richard Newton, and Editorial Assistant, Stephen Heaton sat down with Rebekka King. King is Professor of Religious Studies at Middle Tennessee State University and faculty resident at MTSU’s Honors College. We learned about Rebekka’s work in the anthropology of Christianity, her recent book, The New Heretics: Skepticism, Secularism, and Progressive Christianity (NYU Press, 2023), and her tenure as president of the North American Association for the Study of Religion (2021–2023).

Joining the Math Circus: exploring advanced mathematics through collaborative hands-on activities and performative storytelling

This paper details a qualitative study examining the experience and motivation of participants, facilitators, and organizers of the Math Circus, an event hosted by the University of Arkansas Honors College in Fayetteville, Arkansas, as part of the university’s 150th anniversary celebrations. The aim of the Math Circus was to entice participants to explore advanced mathematical concepts through collective mathematical art creations and dramatic storytelling of comic tales around the history behind mathematics. The study was carried out in two phases; an autoethnographic case study during the event; and a series of deep, semi-structured interviews with participants, facilitators, and organizers. The study examined pedagogical motivations behind the event’s activities and their mathematical content, as well as the experiences of the interviewees. Findings indicate that an interactive and festive event like the Math Circus is likely to encourage confidence to explore mathematical concepts further.

Excellence for All? University Honors Programs and Human Capital Formation

Can public university Honors programs deliver the benefits of selective undergraduate education within otherwise nonselective institutions? We evaluate the impact of admission to the Honors College at Oregon State University, a large nonselective public university. Admission to the Honors College depends heavily on a numerical application score. Nonlinearities in admissions probabilities as a function of this score allow us to compare applicants with similar scores, but different admissions outcomes, via a fuzzy regression kink design. The first stage is strong, with take-up of Honors College programming closely following nonlinearities in admissions probabilities. To estimate the causal effect of Honors College admission on human capital formation, we use these nonlinearities in the admissions function as instruments, combined with course-section fixed effects to account for strategic course selection. Honors College admission increases course grades by 0.10 grade points on the 0 to 4 scale, or 0.14 standard deviations. Effects are concentrated at the top of the course grade distribution. However, course grades of first-generation students decrease in response to Honors admission, driven by low performance in natural science courses. Results suggest that selective Honors programs can accelerate skill acquisition for high-achieving students at public universities, but not all students benefit from Honors admission.

Description and student perceptions of a medications dosing calculations course for non-healthcare majors.

To describe and assess a dosing calculations course presented to first-year college honors students who are not healthcare majors. The primary objective is, can first year undergraduate college honors students, who have not enrolled in a professional healthcare program, be successful in a calculations dosing course? The secondary objective is, what are the students' perceptions of the course? The instructor facilitated an in-person dosage calculations course, 1 h per week over 14 weeks. Small teams of students were created to facilitate learning throughout the semester. All 15 students passed the course, and overall, the student perceptions were positive. First-year college students, who were not healthcare majors, were able to be successful in a math and medications course. Overall, students had a positive perception of the course. Some students did have a concern about the relevance of the course to their future careers. This may be improved with the selection of healthcare students in the course for future offerings.

Student Assessment of a Math and Medications Course for First Year College Honors Students

Student Assessment of a Math and Medications Course for First Year College Honors Students

Teaching about White Supremacy and Privilege after the Capitol Insurrection

ABSTRACT In spring 2021, we taught a course called Honors White Supremacy and Privilege to university honors students at our higher education institution in Florida. Aimed at helping students process intellectually the Black Lives Matter events of the preceding year, the course took place just as a reaction was gathering momentum against anti-racist teaching. We present the materials used in the 1-credit course and contextualize the experience in ongoing Republican legislative efforts, particularly in Florida, to undermine the ability to teach courses like this. Much of the essay addresses the lessons we took away from the reading material and classroom discussions. These include the non-essentialism of race, the benchmark “normality” of whiteness, the material consequences of white supremacy, connections of the Trump presidency to a history of white supremacy, the recurring reactionary responses to challenges to the racial status quo, and the need to teach about white supremacy and privilege.

Mental Health and Academic Outcomes: Evidence from Honors College Students

Mental Health and Academic Outcomes: Evidence from Honors College Students

Review: Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction, by Talia Schaffer

Book Review| March 01 2023 Review: Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction, by Talia Schaffer Talia Schaffer, Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. Pp. xx + 274. $45. Emily Allen Emily Allen Purdue University Emily Allen is Associate Professor of English at Purdue University and Director of the Blue Sky Teaching and Learning Laboratory at Purdue's John Martinson Honors College. She is the author of Theater Figures: The Production of the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (2003). She is also coauthor, with Dino Felluga, of Novel-Poetry: The Shape of the Real and the Problem of Form, currently under review for publication. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Literature (2023) 77 (4): 253–256. https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2023.77.4.253 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Emily Allen; Review: Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction, by Talia Schaffer. Nineteenth-Century Literature 1 March 2023; 77 (4): 253–256. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2023.77.4.253 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search The best critical books afford readers new perspectives not only on familiar nineteenth-century texts, but also on something yet more familiar and perhaps therefore even more in need of a fresh view: their own lives as readers, critics, teachers, colleagues, partners, friends, and parents. Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction is such a book. Talia Schaffer’s description and theorization of a world that is profoundly, imperfectly interrelational, one in which we are immersed in networks where our varied roles shift and change around the fulcrum of care, is both deeply Victorian and urgently contemporary. Readers will find in it a paradigm for thinking about the history of the novel and its representation of individual subjectivity and complex social groupings, and they will find in Schaffer a writer dedicated to thinking communally about how to use the tools we have honed as scholars to build better communities and... You do not currently have access to this content.

WeatherChimes: An Open IoT Weather Station and Data Sonification System

Many people in the United States are disconnected from their environment: urban residents spend 90% of their time indoors inside confined climate-controlled spaces. In addition to being physically separated from the natural environment, much of human understanding of the world’s environment is inferred from data collected by satellites orbiting 22,000 miles away. In contrast, in-situ environmental sensor systems are physically accessible, location specific, and essential for correcting and validating weather measurements. However, present options for in-situ systems are mostly limited to expensive, proprietary commercial data loggers with inflexible data access protocols. WeatherChimes is an open-source Arduino-programmable, low-cost hardware and software suite that enables near real-time access to in-situ environmental sensor data (including light, temperature, relative humidity, and soil moisture) anywhere with a WiFi internet connection. Scientists, educators, and artists alike can use this tool to obtain and interact with environmental data in new and innovative ways, as well as collaborate remotely. Transforming data collection processes of environmental sensors into Internet of Things (IoT) compatible formats opens new doors into accessing, understanding, and interacting with natural phenomena. WeatherChimes not only enables users to observe data online, but can also transform data into auditory signals and soundscapes through sonification processes or creative animations using newly-created computer applications. Lab and field tests have confirmed the sensor and online data logging performance of the system. We describe the application of WeatherChimes in an undergraduate Honors College classroom and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education workshop series in Sitka Alaska, which was used to not only teach about environmental sensors, but to explore how different aspects of our environment are interrelated (e.g. temperature and humidity) through sonification.

Susan S. Smyth (1965-2022).

Susan S. Smyth (1965-2022).

Multidimensional Characteristics of Design-Based Engineering Learning: A Grounded Theory Study

Design-based engineering learning is an important learning model in the field of engineering education research, and also an important embodiment of sustainable development engineering education. At present, the research is still in the stage of conceptual discussion, and its connotation has not been effectively clarified. In order to construct a theoretical model of design-based engineering learning, this study adopted grounded theory to carry out exploratory research. First, we selected the advanced class of engineering education in Chu Kochen Honors College of Zhejiang University as a follow-up case, conducted interviews with front-line teachers and students, and collected relevant data; second, we adopted the three-level coding technology of open coding-axis coding-selective coding and used NVivo software to extract concept categories from open codes, and established the connection between categories through the axis coding; and finally, multidimensional ideas were developed through core categories, including design practice, interactive reflection, knowledge integration, and circular iteration. The multidimensional conception of design-based engineering learning constructed in this study aims to provide theoretical support for promoting engineering education research. At the same time, it puts forward some useful suggestions on the training of engineering talents for sustainable development in practice.

Sam G. McFarland (1939-2022).

This article memorializes Sam G. McFarland (1939-2022). A social and political psychologist, Sam joined the Western Kentucky University (WKU) faculty in 1979 and remained there throughout his 42-year career. In addition to teaching and research, Sam was the long-time director of the WKU Honors Program. Sam achieved the highest university honor, University Distinguished Professor. He remained an active researcher and writer throughout his life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Effect of Honors College Participation on Student Outcomes

The Effect of Honors College Participation on Student Outcomes

The development, validation and standardisation of a questionnaire measuring an Auditing teaching-learning intervention at a SAICA-accredited university

Questionnaires are widely used in the Accountancy field as a data collection instrument. However, previous studies have contentious views on the reliability of questionnaires in academic studies. This study describes the development of a custom-made questionnaire to evaluate the effectiveness of a teaching-learning intervention, the Audit Cube, designed to affect the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values of Auditing of B.Com. honours students in the Accountancy field at a SAICA-accredited university. The questionnaire was distributed to 156 university honours students, whereafter it was validated and standardised. Most of the extracted factors indicated a reliability level higher than 0.9, signifying that the constructs were suitable to address the project’s research question and that the questionnaire is valid. In conclusion, this study found that the use of questionnaires in academic studies is deemed reliable if a standardised process is followed in its development. Consequently, the study suggests that custom-made questionnaires should undergo factor analysis to prove the instrument’s validity prior to reporting on the findings. The findings of this study may be useful to academics in providing guidelines in developing their own data collection instrument to measure the effectiveness of a teaching-learning intervention and may also support the use of questionnaires by researchers in the teaching-learning environment.

<i>Aliis inserviendo consumor</i>. Тo the 145<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the birth of Professor Lev Lvovich Fofanov

Lev Lvovich Fofanov is an outstanding representative of the Kazan Therapeutic School, who headed the Department of the Faculty Therapeutic Clinic of Imperial Kazan University from 1914 to 1920. A talented researcher and doctor, he has always been at the forefront of the struggle for the life and health of citizens. During the typhus epidemic in 1919-1920, he was a member of the emergency commission to combat typhus. The entire medical community of the country has united in the active fight against this deadly and rapidly spreading infection, which kills hundreds of thousands of people. Professor Fofanov died of typhus at the age of 43, selflessly fulfilling his medical and moral duty. Kazan State Medical University honors traditions and remembers its teachers and mentors.

A straightforward graphical/statistical approach to help substantiate cheating on multiple-choice examinations.

Academic dishonesty is prevalent in universities in the form of cheating on examinations, with the problem being much greater in classes that have a large number of students that require close seating arrangements for in-class exams. The scenario described below was experienced during an in-class exam that included the possibility of an Honor Code violation between two students that was observed independently by three different faculty proctors. Herein we detail an objective, statistical approach taken to maintain exam and academic integrity that is compelling and transparent to students and the University Honor Council. Using the established error-similarity analysis for multiple-choice exams, it was determined that the number of identical incorrect answers found on the exams of the two individuals in question was sufficiently greater than the number expected by chance (probability of P < 0.00001). The number of total identical incorrect answers found on the remaining exams (across 65 students, n = 89 comparisons) was plotted as function of the number of total incorrect answers found on these exams (incorrect answers ranged from 1 to 22) and clearly supported that there was an Honor Code violation between the two students in question. The techniques used herein established, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a form of cheating had occurred between these students. However, caution must be taken as further investigation is requisite to establish whether the Honor Code violation was unidirectional (one student copying off the other) or bidirectional (collusion between the two students) in nature.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Academic dishonesty is prevalent in universities, especially on examinations with a large number of students in close seating arrangements. Cheating on a multiple-choice exam was suspected by observations from proctors of the examination. Application of error-similarity analysis associated with identical incorrect answers demonstrated that the probability of cheating was confirmed (P < 0.00001) between two examinees. Further comparisons with the remaining exams provided graphic evidence that a violation of the University's Honor Code had occurred.

Discovering research across the disciplines: Redesigning a librarian-taught honors course

Academic librarians are leading credit-bearing courses to improve information literacy skills. Librarians at the University of Nevada, Reno teach an Honors College course focused on discovering research in multiple disciplines. This course was converted from a 1-credit course to a 3-credit course. Positive updates to the new course included more flexibility, new content and assignments, and more time to discuss a variety of disciplines. Changes to be revisited for future iterations include rescheduling units and assignments and developing more instructor knowledge of research methods. Teaching a semester-long credit-bearing course helps librarians experiment with teaching strategies that cannot be completed in one-shot instruction sessions.

Contributors

Contributors

The Crisis of Higher Education: Neoliberalism and the Privileging of "Innovation" in The Twenty-First Century.

The authors of this paper maintain that challenging the frame of “innovation” as a privileged keyword for higher education is a fresh and useful intervention in the conversation about the neoliberalization of higher education in the United States. Since our home institution, Purdue, is being celebrated by US News for “innovation,” the focus on the concept enables us to offer a Purdue lens on the topic. The authors argue that three high profile developments that have taken place since 2013 under the leadership of Purdue President Mitch Daniels—the University Honors College, the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Program, and Purdue Global—may also be regarded as “ideological innovations.” Alongside the laudable aspects of each of these developments, we argue that each serves the administration’s plan to decrease faculty power, especially in the humanities, by promoting initiatives that, in each case, increase the precariatization of instructional labor at Purdue and that move curriculum design and the hiring of teaching staff away from traditional academic departments and toward a more centralized model of educational control under the direction of high-level university administrators in and outside the College of Liberal Arts.

Ghosts of Tao House

Ghosts of Tao House