I hand wrote this last evening while having dinner in Syracuse following a pre-retreat gathering with six other Honors Directors from various SUNY schools...
So, I am sitting at Dinosaur BBQ with a brain very full after just two hours of meeting with a (hopefully) comparatively small group of Honors directors. Rockland, Canton, Ulster, Delhi, Brockport, New Paltz and, later, Potsdam were all represented. There were as many different models as there were folks in the room; everything from 'we have 400 students' to 'we just graduated our first'. We were both two-year schools and four-year schools (and even one that is both) and we talked about all manner of Honors.
Here are some things that I learned...
1) Four years schools expect community service as part of their Honors programs. They do not, however, expect their community college transfers (and they DO accept transfer students!) to have done any. They don't lower the overall requirement, but since it is only 40 hours, that doesn't seem onerous. They really seemed to understand that acclimation to the college experience is important and often even more so for community college students who so often have much more on their plates. It was clear that while they felt that service was important, it was not and should not be more important than students doing well in their two-year college and becoming adept in the academic setting. This aligned nicely with what I feel - which is that service is important, but it needs to find its place and trying to universally apply it to a community college setting might be difficult. So much of our population consists of first generation students, returning students, students with full-time jobs, students with children, students with other immense challenges. I'm not saying we can't do it or it shouldn't be part of community college at ALL, I'm just relieved that it is not an expectation.
2) Our "program" is unique. For one thing, it is not a program, though we are in the process of gathering data about it so we can assess it like a program. Many of my colleagues (in fact, I think all of them) have an admissions process. This intake involves things like high school GPA, SAT and ACT scores, applications, and interviews. Students have to APPLY to be Honors, even at the other community colleges. And that works for them. But for us, you really only have to be curious and I think that works for US. If there is even a spark of honors in you, we will find it. Every time I go to events, I worry a bit that our Honors will be dismissed or not taken seriously because it is unique in this way. But I'm new - and what I'm learning is that Honors people seem to embrace and supper Honors as a concept, not as a model.
3) There are as many ways to realize Honors as there are imaginations to dream them up. I told my colleagues about a student at FLCC who discovered Honors simply because she was interested in the topic of the course. As a result, she changed her major, declared herself an Honors Student, and began to take other Honors courses. Prior to this, she often lacked confidence because of a learning disability and bad experiences in the past. When I told my colleagues this story, they nodded. They said things like 'that is cool' and expressed excitement on our behalf that our Honors model allows this sort of self-discovery to happen. The song of the day was 'what works for your campus' and it was a refrain that I'm learning more and more as I attend events like this and talk to other Honors Directors both local to our state and across the country.
4) Capstone is an end word. Someday, I hope that we will have what I would have called a capstone class or project to round out the Honors experience at FLCC. But today, I learned that some don't like that word because it implies that the top has been reached. This is problematic when we think about how Honors is meant to encourage lifelong learning. Why not call it a signature project? Or a milestone course? Whether a student is going from a two year to a four year, two year to the work force, four year to post graduate, or four year to work force, the attributes learned in Honors will go with them. The story is not ending just because the student is leaving our institution, and it seems like even our language should reinforce that idea. It's all about the stories.
We all have stories. And despite the work that seems insurmountable and never-ending, it's the stories that keep the heart of Honors beating, for four hundred students or four. I am proud to be facilitating those stories and helping to write them and I am energized by the work my colleagues are doing across SUNY, across our own campus, and, perhaps most of all, across our classrooms.
What's your Honors story?
-T
"I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into?"
Sam to Frodo, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
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