Strategic Vision for the Honors College

Strategic Vision for the Honors College

As the University embraces the concept of an Honors College, it is critical to lay out the vision of what an Honors College can do with and for students at Millersville. Building the Honors College is a process that will involve all interested faculty, students, administrators, staff, and members of the Millersville University community. Thus the Honors College will finally be what we make it, and the process of creating a special community of learners is part of the College concept. The fully developed Honors College will be a new and exciting entity, different from the current Honors Program in a number of crucial ways, and unique in its ability to provide stimulating and innovative educational experiences for talented students.

The Honors College is first a community with the flexibility to change and grow; it is also a place or locus of activity in which change takes place. With the high level of visibility, support, and involvement required, the Millersville University Honors College can become the crucible in which ongoing change takes place. To enhance academic and cultural environments, and to invigorate recruitment and retention, the Honors College will build upon the current Honors Program. Outlined below are directions in which an Honors College could move.

Academic and Cultural Communities

As the visible core of academic and cultural life on campus, the Honors College is conceived as a place where students live, study, work, and create a community of learners.

Integration of Living, Study, and Work Space
In a new facility fitted for the purpose, the site of the College will include public space for informal gatherings where students, faculty, and others will find an amenable environment to discuss and share their ideas and ongoing academic projects, a place where they can conduct the social part of the life of the mind.

The space will allow casual contact among faculty, student, staff, and administrative colleagues, and it will be available for organized meetings on planned topics.
The space will be accessible to all students--open to the public without compromising security for adjacent offices, housing, and secure areas.
A space will also be provided for 24-hour access to desks, tables, and comfortable seating for individual and collaborative study--a place thoughtfully set up to encourage and promote reflection and quiet work.

These spaces will be useful and attractive; care will be given to make the rooms inviting as well as accessible, places where people will want to be, where academic and social activities are nurtured by stimulating design. The spaces must silently convey to those who use them that the College and the University value beauty and principles of design as part of academic life. In these spaces students will interact, work, and reflect Here they will plan and present group discussions and presentations as part of the ongoing process of learning and sharing with others the questions and issues they are actively exploring as part of an academic community.

Access to Appropriate Instructional Technology

Facilities of the Honors College will also include spaces where electronic media can be employed to facilitate research and to support multimedia learning and teaching-an innovative "laboratory" space where students can be connected to the World Wide Web and share information with others.
An electronic or "smart classroom" is envisioned, one that reflects uses and applications of computers that are at this moment being developed; in short, this must be flexible space designed as a collaboration among technicians, educators, and designers to meet current needs and to anticipate ongoing developments and changes.
Coordinated with media space but probably distinct from it, the College will provide a seminar classroom conducive to face-to-face discussion, lecture, and interactive learning among gifted faculty and motivated students.

All these spaces will be designed to accommodate students with disabilities and to nurture learning within congenial surroundings.

Innovative Living Space
These facilities are envisioned as part of a College that allows students to live where they can participate easily in the academic community. Not merely an academic dormitory or as honors wing, but living space designed to respect privacy and to support social interaction, the facilities will call for thoughtful planning.

Possibilities for housing include suites of sleep/study rooms that share common areas for leisure and utility. The maximum number of students sharing lavatory and kitchen space should be kept small to encourage people to respect one another's privacy while they build the social skills that create a humane community.
The College is committed to active recruitment and support for ethnic and racial minority students whose presence in a living-learning facility will provide a microcosm of the wider world. A regional university in many ways, Millersville will benefit from the creation on campus of a noticeably diverse population of highly motivated, talented, and active students who learn from each other and from the community we build together.
Space may also be provided for faculty-in-residence, allowing visiting scholars and artists to become a part of the living-learning center for the time of their stay at the University and allowing permanent faculty to reside (perhaps only for a specified period) in close proximity to students within the Honors College. Providing a live-in option to newly hired faculty would also encourage new members of the University community to learn from the students as they provide guidance and serve as role models for the students.
The College will explore the feasibility of offering residential rooms to exchange students from overseas, further diversifying the community and widening. residents' experiences.
This living-working environment will support retention by inviting students to participate in and to be part of the academic community they themselves are building.
Retention will be supported by careful selection of resident assistants who share academic values.

Proximity of Office Space
Honors College facilities will ideally include the necessary office space for director, assistant director, clerical staff, and student workers who guide and support the activities of the College. The integration of administrative space with living and learning facilities will enable the College staff to meet and interact with the teaching faculty and participating students in casual and supportive ways that build community and acknowledge the interrelationship of giving, receiving, and modifying necessary elements of community life.

Directors and clerical staff will get to know and will be known by residents, faculty, and visitors, because the space will be open and accessible to all.
Integration of offices, academic and social spaces, and resident facilities will enable observation and interaction necessary to assessing the outcomes of the College as educational experiment. In such an environment, data about successes, failures, problems and achievements will be assessed as part of daily life and work; and the records necessary to document the reasons for retention, attrition, and quality of life will be easily kept because the data are readily available for collection and evaluation.

Curriculum

The Honors College represents building upon the firm foundation of an established Honors Program and aims to undertake a thoughtful and thorough review of current courses while actively promoting experimentation with innovative pedagogies and curricula.

Emphasis on Multicultural Experiences
As acknowledged by the current program, proficiency in languages should become a part of the honors curriculum to support liberal education and to prepare students for graduate study and for the virtually shrinking community of the planet. This can be accomplished in various ways.

Collaboration with the Foreign Languages Department already suggests that evaluation of students' secondary school experience can validate language proficiency and place students in appropriate coursework as needed. To require language proficiency is to acknowledge the importance of communication across political and cultural borders.
The College will prioritize multicultural experiences and language study to ensure the completeness of honors curricula and to encourage understanding among diverse populations.
In addition to languages, the curriculum will explore and continue to support awareness and understanding of diversity by seeking honors course offerings from ethnic studies on campus--African-American and Latino Studies--and from Women's Studies and International Studies.
Asian histories, cultures, and arts will be included in the curriculum and promoted by the Honors College as both a part of the existing University and as a proponent of innovative and experimental courses.
The Honors College experience must include encounters with diverse perspectives and diverse populations.
The College will serve as a focal point for diversity in practice and in academic subject matter.

Science and Mathematics
As the twenty-first century opens, it seems a truism that science and technology continue to be central to everyday life and to academic study.

Acknowledging that the Honors Program has recognized the importance of mathematics and science, the College will continue to support and reevaluate the ways in which higher mathematics and laboratory sciences are integral to the honors curriculum.
Interdisciplinary connections among the traditional areas of learning would enhance the current requirements, and the College must be vigilant to continue selfcurrent issues in assessment to ensure that courses and requirements reflect the most comprehensive and the sciencesinextricable from ethical. For example, developments in genetic engineering and electronic communication have become and ideological considerations.
The College will explore course proposals that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Education, Psychology, and Social Sciences
Itself an experiment in community building and group interaction, the Honors College will provide a meaningful context for social sciences to explore and develop current lines of investigation. The College is an educational experiment--one that suggests the contiguity of education and social sciences as academic disciplines. Already among the innovators in pedagogy, the School of Education now provides a Perspectives course for Honors and represents a significant number of honors students among its majors.

The College will strengthen and develop ties with Education to continue and grow as a laboratory for pedagogy, supporting Pedagogy Seminars and innovative curriculum in education.
In psychology and the social sciences, the Honors College will encourage and actively solicit faculty to create, teach, and implement honors courses.
Connections with International Studies and ethnic/women's studies on campus will promote practical experiences for students in business, economies, geography, history, political science, and sociology/anthropology, social work, and other social sciences.
Numerous opportunities exist for students to participate in and to observe diverse social dynamics in and near Lancaster County. The College will take a leading role in supporting and providing travel, study, and research in diverse social settings. The summer and winter term living-learning projects undertaken by students--and the cooperative and internship opportunities that materialize and grow with the College--are full of potential for social science development.

Humanities and Fine and Performing Arts
In the arts and humanities aside from languages, the College will actively support and nurture a level of respect and involvement that is sometimes overlooked in a technologically and scientifically advanced culture. The role of the arts and the necessity of self-expression for a high quality of life must be acknowledged and supported beyond the scope of current Honors Program requirements. The avenue for growth is already paved.

Western Literary and Western Intellectual Traditions courses can grow into explorations of global concerns. African, Asian, Central and South American, and Indigenous Peoples have contributed and are contributing to contemporary life in ways that must be acknowledged as we build a global community. These courses will be reevaluated, other course alternatives will be explored, and honors college students will be provided with wider-and deeper perspectives on arts, humanities, and cultural studies relevant to the present and within which we will build the future. For example, intellectual traditions must not preclude spiritual and cultural traditions that encompass human emotions and physical expressivity too often excluded from the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy. Current ascendance of cultural studies seems to signal reevaluation of the term "intellectual" to move beyond "European ideology" toward a more inclusive concept.
The College will support fuller investigation of "traditions" to explore the connections between social, artistic, and humanistic constructions, recasting the social science and humanities courses now required into more commodious molds and stimulating new courses, approaches, and curricular structures:

Flexibility in Curricular Development
The principal vehicle for these changes will be the creation and implementation of course designations which, if approved through the established University mechanisms, will allow faculty and students to engage in courses designed for mutual exploration of areas that should not be ossified into "content" and "structure." That is, faculty should be encouraged to propose and lead courses for honors credit that meet general education criteria as they address timely issues and break new ground in their methods. One example could be a course on hatred as a social and cultural focus--hate and fear, forces that have unfortunately galvanized human potential, can be associated with devastating results from genocide in the historical past to violence in today's world. Other topics could include:

an investigation of architecture from artistic, social, and theoretical perspectives;
music in contexts of history, ideology, and communication;
scientific method reevaluated from socioeconomic perspectives;
information technology as a cultural force

The possibilities are limited only by imagination and intellectual curiosity.

Faculty must be encouraged to propose and lead courses in which teachers and students are co-learners on a quest to articulate questions, to bring multiple perspectives to bear on those questions, and to formulate tentative or potential answers.
The College curriculum will challenge the notion of in-struction as an activity of authority-experts (teachers) filling receptive vessels (students) and will address the core of education, the leading out and drawing forth of creative responses from co-participants in a collaborative community of learning.

Service Learning
Another area for curricular development that the College will pursue is active in-service learning.

Winter sessions and summer sessions provide blocks of time in which students could engage in service to the community and organized internships. When coordinated with the Office of Cooperative Education, full-semester or yearlong experiences are also feasible.
Honors students should be encouraged to utilize existing programs for overseas and experiential learning; the College will provide leadership by enabling students to integrate service into individualized curricula.

Beyond hands-on internships in areas of career interest, honors education should widen students' horizons and introduce students to service as an integral component of the educational process. Moving beyond a model of learning as passively receptive, the College will prepare students to give actively of their labor and creativity to address social and community needs first-hand. Student volunteers gain as they give from their store of talents.

Providing liaison with local organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, the College will facilitate students' involvement with community needs.
Adult literacy initiatives and latchkey programs need volunteers.

Providing college credit and exploring ways to integrate humane service into the curriculum--as an element in specific courses, as a required component, or as a College community expectation--the Honors College will enable students to learn about themselves and their environment through service.

Tutoring peers, secondary, and elementary students has proven to benefit tutors as it supports learners.
Activities and working groups can identify and address additional issues where community needs can be met by College participants.
With coordination between College students, faculty, and local community leaders, students will address needs for day-care, adult role models, and family support that at present escape many students' notice.

The Honors College will lead campus initiatives to work on these and other local needs that service-learning experience will uncover. Overseas and cross-regional exchanges will provide students with observable models of service as practiced in urban, rural, and diverse contexts. Fieldwork in inner-city locations is feasible in nearby Lancaster, Philadelphia, and the District of Columbia. Models for cross-cultural experiences exist now in programs offered at Lancaster Theological Seminary and can be adapted and developed to take Millersville University Honors students into areas they need to have seen and experienced first-hand if they are to act responsibly as Commonwealth citizens and lawmakers after graduation.

Lancaster County Prison may need volunteers and interns to work with inmates.
Assistance to AIDS patients, Hospice clients, and various group homes in the immediate area will benefit both the recipients and the students who contribute their time and talents.

Assessment mechanisms must be developed for activities to reflect College credit, but it is very likely that practical outcomes will be reflected in students' self-awareness and deepened perspectives, hopefully continuing beyond their undergraduate years.

Overview of the College Experience

Seen as a continuum from matriculation to graduation, the Honors College experience can be outlined as follows:

Freshmen

First-year students will participate in a College-wide reading program orientation beginning in summer and continuing throughout the first year. Books recommended by faculty and administration will be identified and scheduled for discussion throughout the first year, bringing together freshmen, faculty and staff, interested administrators, and upper-level students who will discuss current readings in small groups outside the classroom. Publicizing the readings will also encourage in-class use and critique for faculty who choose to participate.
First-year students in a residential College will be oriented to academic life by living in proximity to upper-level students, faculty, visiting artists/scholars, and the administrative offices of the College.
Courses will include sections taught in the College facility.
Weekend activities will provide students with enhancement for the academic and cultural environment.
Twenty-four-hour study space and social areas will promote studious and social habits.
First-year students will begin to explore choices of major, minor, and concentration areas by focusing on General Education and Honors College course work.
Development of an Honor Code will orient College students in the expectations and behaviors of academic honesty and research methods.
Students will be introduced from orientation onwards to the values and the purposes of liberal arts education through advising and group meetings.
They will be guided to anticipate academic and career plans that begin to be mapped from the first year--for example, pre-professional options must be seen as early as possible if medical, law, or public service and education careers are under consideration.

The first year is critical for later success and requires special attention and planning to assure that as early as possible students are able to see the path unfolding before them; orientation for first-year students must be continuous and comprehensive, offering every opportunity for students to adjust to University demands, to respond to opportunities, and to anticipate the possibilities for growth that lie ahead.

Sophomores

Sophomore will participate actively in exploring and selecting major and minor fields of study.
They will assist with first-year student orientation and participate in selfgovernance and advisory capacities in the College.
They will participate in service-learning projects and continue to grow in research interests and skills, mindful of the thesis project that College students will undertake beginning in junior year.
As General Education course work comes to completion, sophomores will build on proficiencies and interests cultivated by first-year experiences. They will plan and apply for College research grants, for national scholarships, and for in-service programs for winter, summer, or junior year experiences at home or abroad.
They will plan and participate in events for cultural enhancement within the College and host activities for the University and wider communities.
Second-year students will explore career and post-graduate options in order to make relevant decisions about continued course work.

Juniors

Juniors will continue to grow as they did in the first two years, now pursuing major and minor areas with a sense of direction, integrating General Education with areas of specialization through guided and independent research.
The honors thesis, proposed in sophomore year or early in the third year, will begin as supervised research in collaboration with faculty mentors) during the third year.
Some juniors will have spent or will spend a session or term in residence off campus in overseas exchange, in-service, or internship capacities.
Those in residence will provide experienced leadership to the governance and maintenance of the College and its activities as they continue to grow in academic and social experience.
Informally and in organized group meetings, juniors will share research interests and in-service experiences with students and the larger community as they begin the transition to graduate status.
Junior recitals, presentations, and performances will punctuate the year.
Juniors will actively explore post-graduate opportunities and create a plan of action for their future career goals.
Graduate and professional school plans must be made by this point, or at the least options must be explored, decisions made, and contingencies considered to keep options open.
Public service plans including Peace Corps, Americorps VISTA, or other alternatives should be taken under consideration seriously. The College will sponsor information sessions especially for sophomores and juniors.

Seniors

Seniors will complete the honors thesis and the requirements for major and minor areas of study.
They will provide leadership for the College in its programming and planning, sharing their experiences with underclassmen and developing ongoing areas for maintaining and improving the functions of the College.
Senior thesis defenses will be open to interested students, faculty, and community members to share the fruits of research and concentrated study.
Seniors will organize and showcase their projects in an annual College Symposium and will celebrate graduation as a commencement of postbaccalaureate plans soon to be realized.

Alumni/ae

Alumni/ae and friends of the College will be regular visitors and participants in cultural, academic, and in-service activities. Announcements and invitations will be coordinated with the Alumni offices.
If the College has performed its task successfully, alumni will maintain supportive ties to the College and University, encouraging recruitment, retention, and development.
Seeking to create life-long learning experiences, the College will nurture connection with graduates as they pursue professional and graduate education, as they build careers, families, and communities beyond the campus.

As the greatest resource for continuity and growth, alumni will be informed of initiatives and included in planning. If the College succeeds, it will be included in the plans and lives of its graduates.

Recruitment and Retention of Students

Connections with Local High Schools

The Honors College will develop relationships with local high schools, identifying highly motivated and talented students. This may include identification of students who are taking AP courses; science fair winners; participants in Governor's Schools; successful competitors in writing, public speaking, and debate contests; recipients of recognition for musical, artistic, or dramatic achievement; student leaders in school and community activities; and students who have excelled in other ways that would make them good candidates for the Honors College. The Honors College will actively recruit students who are members of the National Honor Society or who have been recognized through the National Merit Scholarship competition.
Selected students will be invited to Millersville, perhaps for a week-long summer workshop or a series of non-credit weekend workshops in winter. These workshops, coordinated through the Honors College, will expose students to a challenging and stimulating environment comprising academic, cultural, and social experiences and introducing them to Honors College students and faculty.
Students who have participated in these workshops will continue to receive information about activities of the Honors College and will be specially invited to attend cultural programs and participate in certain activities with Honors College students. Ongoing contact with high schools students will assist in identifying appropriate scholarship recipients.

Recruitment and Retention for Diversity
Coordinating efforts with Offices of Admission, Financial Aid, Advancement, and Alumni, particular attention must be given to recruiting students from racial and ethnic minorities for Millersville University; the Honors College will adopt as a high priority contacting, encouraging, and recruiting African American, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, and other students currently under-represented on campus. Acknowledging the cultural and ideological biases latent in numerically-based profiles and extending Honors Program policies of admitting students who do not fall within standardized test and high school class rank guidelines for invitation to the honors community, the College will seek students from all groups who demonstrate creative, artistic, and conceptual skills not clearly measured by numerical evaluation. Increased scholarship movies will enable and support matriculation at Millersville.

While inviting and motivating all students who can be identified by scores and ranking, the College will also invite students based on their accomplishments in arts, sciences, and service areas.

Motivation, talent, and intellectual curiosity are sometimes difficult to measure; however, evidence of successful musical performance, artistic production, community service, and group leadership is available from current Honors applications and will be credited highly in Honors College screening for admission and scholarship awards. References from teachers, guidance counselors, and community leaders will be sought and respected as part of a holistic selection process. Talented and energetic students will be sought, recruited, and admitted to Millersville's Honors College particularly when students add diversity to the College community. This goal can be reached in several ways.

Working closely with the Summer Honors Program for minority students, the Honors College Director will track and encourage applications from students who succeed in the Summer Program.
Scholarships are now and will be to an increasing extent targeted for promising minority students.
Taking care to include and respect cultural differences, the Honors College will recruit from high schools with high minority-group populations and from those noted for diversity. Many recruiting opportunities will be utilized.
Proposals are now under consideration for on-campus experiences to be provided for high school and middle school students who might otherwise have no contact with Millersville University.
Liaison and cooperative sponsorships with student and alumni/ae groups on campus will link the Honors College to African-American, Latino, and Asian-American students; development of honors courses with faculty from diverse backgrounds and cultural identities in all disciplines, and especially in Women's Studies, African-American Studies, and Latino Studies, will connect honors education with scholar-teachers who serve as role models, research advisers, and agents of positive change.

With active recruitment, these initiatives will change perceptions of the honors concept in positive ways, moving toward inclusive rather than exclusive patterns. With the visibility and obvious support of the University, the Honors College will provide a core of culturally diverse students and faculty to serve as a model for the entire academic community. Particularly by attracting gifted and motivated students from diverse groups, the College will encourage students from all groups to expect from Millersville a culturally inclusive educational experience. The presence of more minority students in the academically challenging Honors College will enhance current initiatives that assist disadvantaged minority students in pursuing University courses. Active Honors recruitment will mitigate what can become institutionalized prejudice and negative bias. Recruitment supports retention by aiming at a diverse student population in which a wide range of backgrounds and experiences can find and create supportive groups within College and University communities.

Administrative Structure

In order to achieve the vision described above, it will be necessary to consider various models for the administrative structure of the Honors College. With the increased prominence and visibility of an Honors College, the University may want to explore the possibility of establishing various mechanisms to continue and improve communication between the Honors College and other University entities, to facilitate the development of an innovative and stimulating curriculum, and to ensure appropriate assessment and accountability.

Channels of Communication
It will be advisable to explore ways to maintain close communication with departments, programs, and individuals across campus. The Honors College can become part of a network, facilitating the exchange of information among students, faculty, staff and administration. It may also be appropriate to consider making formal connections between the Honors College and Deans' Council.
Curriculum Committee
With a simple change of name from University Honors Program Committee to Honors College Committee, it makes sense that the structure and function of the curriculum committee continue to exist as it is until such time as cogent reasons materialize that suggest a need for change.

March 2000