Honors Gets the Works

Vol. 2 No. 1

Welcome! Or…welcome back!

Over the summer, Honors Studies implemented some changes.  Here’s the rundown of what you need to know and why changes were made.

One of the most important things we tried to do was simplify the language and detach it from language that was constantly being confused with other areas of the college.  No longer will you hear about the Honors PROGRAM or Honors DEGREES, DIPLOMAS, CERTIFICATES, or CREDITS.  None of these things REALLY applied in the traditional way anyway, so it was time to make a change.  We also wanted to make it easier for students to achieve Honors status upon leaving FLCC.  So many of our programs have gotten tighter and more restrictive, and so many students are transferring to four-year schools (both SUNY and private) that it was time for us to make some changes to help you take Honors with you when you did that. 

So…what do you need to know?  In a nutshell....

• We are now officially called Honors Studies.
• If you earn 15 points of Honors Studies Experience and have a 3.25 GPA when you graduate or transfer from FLCC, you will be designated an Honors Studies Scholar on your transcript, with supporting documentation.
• There are four ways to earn Honors Studies points – three of them have not changed: Honors Studies Seminars (HON classes), Honors Studies in the Disciplines (courses with Honors in the title), and Honors Studies contracts (making a non-Honors course into Honors once you’ve taken at least one Honors course). The fourth way is by attending and reflecting on Honors Studies Events.
•  Honors Studies Events are events hosted or approved by Honors that encompass our learning outcomes and mission through the content of their offering. By attending these events, and then writing a journal and an Honors Reflective Essay about your experience, you will earn at least one point.
•  All Honors Studies Experiences will have the same basic prompt for their reflective essays – where you will be challenged to think about where you have been, where you are, and where you are going in the context of the class or event of which you were a part.

Our goals in Honors remain what they always have been – to celebrate who you are as a learner and to help you hone those qualities that will support you being a lifelong learner.  We’ve crafted a new mission statement to reflect this:

Self-reflective learning meets innovative teaching within and between the disciplines in Honors Studies at FLCC.  Our seminars and activities foster an atmosphere of interconnection, inquiry, and curiosity where students become lifelong learners.  Honors students develop the confidence to contribute to their local and global communities.

There’s lots to talk about this semester, but I don’t want to overwhelm you as you start the Fall 2017 semester, so we will keep this short.  Just remember… all you have to be is curious!  We look forward to working with you this semester and hope that you have a fantastic learning experience.

SAVE THE DATE:  October 18 – the Honors Studies Dinner!  Open to all students!

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling...

Vol. 1 No. 16

Coming Soon in Honors!

New ways to earn an Honors certificate or diploma

Because we know that some programs are really tight and some students come to Honors late, we are trying to come up with new ways for students to make their way to Honors recognition.  We also want to give Honors an even stronger identity and make it an even more vibrant part of the FLCC Community.  To this end, we have some amazing things coming soon – we just have to go through the proper channels before we can fully explain and explore.

New language

Some of the language associated with Honors does a great job of capturing the academic feel of Honors Studies, but at the same time, it often causes some confusion.   Credits, certificate, and diploma are all words used elsewhere in different ways and we think that can make Honors seem like something it isn’t.  It also runs the risk of unnecessarily complicating what Honors means.  There’s already that stigma that Honors is ONLY for ‘the smart kids’ and we are working hard to break that down, too.

New mission statement

As you may or may not know, there are some exciting new things afoot at FLCC – including the powerful core values.  This list of things that FLCC values sounds very familiar to Honors Students in a lot of ways, so we thought it might be a good time to take a new look at our mission statement.  Mission statements are supposed to capture the essence or spirit of whomever wrote it and really convey what it is that group is trying to accomplish.  That said, we are updating the mission statement of Honors to really reflect the new changes happening in Honors across the board.  It’s not a change in our core meaning, just a change in the wording of that meaning.

New learning outcomes

Although on the surface this might not be interesting to students, it really is the backbone of any class at FLCC.  Each syllabus located on the college website contains the learning outcomes for that course; these are the things that the department (and the college as a whole) have decided are the things you should learn in the process of taking the course.  Honors has their own set of learning outcomes, too – which should really show everyone what Honors is all about.  Just like the mission statement, we are in the process of revamping the learning outcomes to fall more in line with what the college is valuing as a whole, while still staying true to what Honors is all about.  In the end, we are a subsection of the college, so we think it’s important to show how all of it is linked.

New documents

We are also revamping everything from the forms that faculty use to propose an Honors course to the contracts that students fill out to ‘Honorize’ a course.  We are even building a core assignment that will frame the self-reflective essay for all Honors Seminars, Honors in the Disciplines, and Honors Contracts.  This kind of paper trail, so to speak, will allow us to show the rest of the college – and the world! – what Honors is all about at FLCC.  It will also allow us to create something that is lasting and easily passed on to the next generation of Honors staff and faculty.

New relationships

We are also building stronger relationships with the Registrar and with the Educational Planning and Career Services offices so as to maximize the awareness of understanding of what Honors actually IS so we can spread the word and help find like-minded students.  While we never plan to have Honors ‘admissions’ – it doesn’t hurt to cast our net wide so that the people for whom Honors is a good fit will hear about us earlier and get involved earlier.

New student involvement

A student club?  Perhaps?  Interested?  Let me know at Trista.merrill@flcc.edu

This is just a small part of what we are working on in Honors and we cannot WAIT to unroll things once we’ve gone through all the proper channels.  So, be watching for news and for exciting things to come.  And we hope to see you at the Honors Dinner sometime in mid-March.

Stay curious!

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often” – Winston Churchill