(DOWNLOAD) "Editor's Introduction." by Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Editor's Introduction.
- Author : Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council
- Release Date : January 22, 2006
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 171 KB
Description
The accelerating shift from honors programs to honors colleges and from honors directors to honors deans during the past two decades suggests a major shift in the nature of honors administration. In preparation for the NCHC monograph A Handbook for Honors Administrators that I wrote in 1995, I distributed a survey to all institutional members of the National Collegiate Honors Council. Of the 136 responses I received (a 27% return rate), 110 honors administrators listed themselves as directors, 9 as coordinators, 8 as deans, and 4 as other; 115 were administrators of institution-wide programs, 11 of honors colleges, and 10 other. According to NCHC Handbook listings, there are 325 honors programs today and 71 honors colleges. Although the survey and the NCHC Handbook are not comparable sources of data, they suggest that the ratio of colleges to programs, which was roughly 1:11 in the early 1990s, is today more like 1:5 and is increasing each year. It seems worthwhile, therefore, to take a fresh look at the nature and quality of honors administration and to consider how the position has and has not changed during the past couple of decades. In 1986, Rew A. ("Skip") Godow wrote an essay called "Honors Program Leadership: The Right Stuff" for Forum for Honors (the predecessor of JNCHC), an essay that for many of us became the holy text on honors administration. Sam Schuman quoted it at length in his handbook Beginning in Honors (first published in 1989 and now available in its fourth edition), and I quoted it almost in toto in A Handbook for Honors Administrators. Godow's essay, widely perceived as definitive in the mid-1980s, is a valuable touchstone for considering what has and has not changed in honors administration during the past two decades.