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
