Honors program updated to national standards, restuctured classes

By Harold Bosstick, News editor

Incoming freshman honors students will find that they are different than any other honors students before them, due to changes recently made to the program.

Greg Bierly, geography professor and director of the honors program, said these changes include restructuring of elective classes, the addition of core honors classes, and other changes as to how the honors program will interact with general education requirements.

The new core honors classes will still vary in subject, but will all be focused on specific tasks according to the level of the class, he said.

He said GH101 will focus on familiarizing students with research and using academic resources; GH201 will introduce students to "great works" that include music, art, theater and philosophy and how they affected history; GH301 will bring ideas from GH101 and GH201 together at a higher level; GH401 will be composed of independent research that would produce some type of scholarly product, such as a thesis paper.

Bierly said these classes will cover the science and math elective, social and behavioral elective, LAPS E, multicultural or international cultures elective, and the capstone credits for general education, and honors conversion and electives can cover both general education, and major and/or minor requirements. This was done so that honors shouldn't cost extra in terms of time, classes and tuition.

He also said that all study abroad credits will count as honors elective credits.

Janis Halpern, coordinator for academic programs abroad and honors revisions committee member, said she's "excited for students" because of this change.

She said that, in the past, Bierly supported converting study abroad credits into honors credits; the changes to the program makes that practice more official.

Halpern also said the changes will "ensure [that] students from all areas…can now become involved" with study abroad.

"I'm very excited," she said, referring to the added benefits students recieve for studing abroad.

This change to the program does pose a slight problem for the honors peer advisers, upper-class honors students who act as mentors to incoming freshman honors students.

Bierly said since the advisers are on the old system, they are finding it difficult to advise the new students about classes beyond taking GH101 their first semester if at all possible.

"The peer advisers that are involved in the existing system are aware of the new program and are learning it like everyone else," he said, "and I'll say I've already had three-way conversation between peer advisers, incoming students and myself to try to establish these things."

Laura Froelicher, the honors department's coordinator for student programming and outreach and organizer of the peer advisers, said the older students are being trained in handling the system, but also said classes are just one of many aspects of the peer adviser job.

She said another part involves helping new students adjust to the honors lifestyle and helping the new students fit into college life.

"[Peer advisers] are still taking the same types of classes," she said. "They can still speak to the experience."

Bierly said the changes took place for two reasons.

The first was to "align [the honors program] with national standards" put down by the National Collegiate Honors Council, which establishes guidelines for honors programs and requires that a certain number of college credit hours be honors credits, Bierly said.

"The program as it had existed in the past was a little bit light in terms of [national standards]," he said. "So our new program actually goes well past the mark that the NCHC proposes, but by doing that we've also tried to build in more flexibility in how students can approach honors so that it is not entirely burdensome."

He said the second reason was because faculty and students wanted more structure to the program, saying that the new program will help students "develop them sequentially in terms of both the knowledge that they gain and the skills that they get some experience with along the way."