Dr. Trey Shirley provided information about applying for and developing an Honors Colloquium. These slides detail the new tracks for the Honors College and the process for creating a colloquium. For the 2024-2025 school year, applications are due January 12, 2024.
In addition to a conversation about colloquia, a panel of faculty shared about their success in creating Honors Contracts with honors students in order for the student to receive honors credit in a non-honors section. A few tips and ideas offered by the panelists are as follows:
- The faculty can mentor an honors student through a process of shadowing a professional in a potential field of interest. Following this process, the student submits a short reflection and analysis paper.
- Invite the honors student to look through the syllabus to find either an area of interest or an area the class does not cover, but that the student is curious about. Then guide the student to create a plan for learning about the topic, creating an artifact of their learning, and presenting it to the class.
- If your department includes graduate students or research opportunities, utilize these as a launching point for an honors contract.
- Create an experiential learning opportunity that matches the course content.
- Use a general template that guides any honors student’s choice as they consider what they would want to complete for an honors contract.
- Implement boundaries for yourself (the professor) on what is reasonable for you to accept for honors contracts. Some of the specific boundaries mentioned were:
- Limiting the number of contracts you will mentor per semester
- Limiting contracts to majors classes
- Putting the burden of meeting with the faculty mentor on the student
- Verbalizing the consequences if a student does not complete items on the contract. Most in attendance said they allow a student to not complete a contract without class penalty knowing they will not get honors credit for that contract since it was unfinished.
Honors College Faculty Resources page here.
For more information about the Honors College, please reach out to Dr. Trey Shirley at ats01a@acu.edu.