Honors Program Discussion

At 05:01 PM 2/5/2007, Alton Miller wrote:

Our assignment: In collaboration with your team, design a learning experience that advances what we value most about undergraduate education at Columbia and is informed by your understanding of AAC&U’s concepts of liberal education and inclusive excellence. Be prepared to present your proposal, briefly.

Thoughts about how our challenge differs from the task of designing a traditional honors curriculum . . . and a recommendation for an approach to "inclusive honors."

We should put premium value on "inclusive diversity" -- and we should consciously work to avoid creating a separate educational track that would produce "honors students" a cut above the rank and file.

On the one hand this seems to be a perhaps Orwellian denial of the concept of "honors" -- or a dishonest simulation of levelling.

On the other "inclusive honors" can be seen as an effort to raise teaching and learning standards across the college -- incrementally at first -- by focusing on teachers, students and courses most suited to this purpose, and then expanding the base. But how to evolve toward both "honors" and "everyone"?
All Columbia College courses target learning and performance outcomes that include
- knowledge
- skills
- attitudes
In part, our mission is to send all our graduates off with
- a degree
- a resume (we put a premium on learning by internship)
- a portfolio (we put a premium on "body of work" demonstrating competence)
With the inception of an honors program, we should also aim to equip our graduates with an enhanced set of values, about which more later. This would be a fourth bullet, under knowledge-skills-attitudes.
My suggestion is that a Columbia College honors program is not a new course or series of courses, but a set of criteria to be met by any teacher who seeks an "honors" designation.

Our honors program, therefore, consists of courses distributed throughout the departments, courses which have been enhanced in their teaching and learning methods, but not in their course objectives. Some enhancements to include:

more writing: courses meet criteria that include process, page count, revisions, perhaps eventually displacing the "Writing Intensive" courses...
more critical reading...
more rigorous research requirements...
and especially more team-developed discourse, deliberation, debate...

The most important feature of my suggested honors program: in pursuit of an honors program that privileges "inclusive diversity," Columbia College criteria would include the stipulation that each of these courses would adopt a grading system by which grades are awarded on the basis of team accomplishment rather than individual achievement, for at least a substantial portion of their grade. With diversity valued as a high priority, the faculty member would be charged with responsibility for insuring diversity among team assignments. Team members with different learning styles would make their individual contribution to a collective effort. Using the AAC&U's broad definition of diversity, this should be possible even in classes where all the students are of the same ethnicity, or the same sex, etc.

Criteria would be established by an Honors Faculty selected by the Provost. Any teacher would be eligible to propose a course for certification as an honors course, perhaps with a supplementary stipend to provide additional incentive.

To graduate with honors, a student would be required to declare intent, and then take at least 3 credits in honors courses every semester of his/her enrollment at Columbia College, with a minimum of 16 credits total, achieving a GPA within those courses of at least 3.0.

The honors program would not be launched until there were syllabi developed and certified in every major and in LAS courses sufficient to enroll 10 percent of the student body in one course per semester. The numbers work out to an average of about four courses per department, or fewer if LAS courses assume a greater percentage.

Faculty development programs would be a practical necessity, to provide resources for both full-time and part-time teachers who lack a full set of skills to conduct classes according to the guidelines.

To sum up,

At Columbia College, Honors is not a separate track, but an enriching of the curriculum. The intent as well as the effect is not to create a cadre or caste of honors students, but to provide opportunities for all (or most) students, for learning enhanced by the values of "inclusive diversity."

Honors courses' learning outcomes would include

knowledge
skills
attitudes
values

Within "Values," "Diversity" is on a par with "Ethics" as a principal virtue nurtured by a Columbia College education. "Diversity" is not a matter of empowering minorities. It is a matter of enhancing the education and student life of every student, teaching them how to live and work comfortably in the real world of diverse ideas, cultures, and life styles, and the benefits are as profound to the white middle-class male as to any representative of a disenfranchised minority.

Expanding only slightly, I would elaborate on values to include

ethics
diversity
social responsibility
civic engagement

As a side effect of this expansion, we might want to consider service learning or some other device for connecting the life of each classroom to the world outside, to be included among the criteria.

Thanks for reading this far,
Alton Miller

*************************************
Alton Miller, MFA
Associate Dean
School of Media Arts
Columbia College Chicago
altonmiller@mail.com
www.altonmiller.com
312-344-8221
*************************************

At 12:48 AM 2/7/2007, T______ wrote:

Hey Everyone:

I just wanted to jot down and send out some thoughts in response to Alton’s points of suggestion about inclusive excellence and enhanced learning experiences.

I think what he’s taken the time to write is very thoughtful. The intention is very clear and the execution of implementing the “honors program” little by little into departments with driving support by well-structured syllabi and certified faculty is definitely the way to go. What I want to know a little more about is what will distinguish these courses and what about the courses will draw in our target students. I’m not sure that “more writing, more reading and more rigorous research assignments” are going to be popular selling points amongst students at an arts college. There are students who are seeking out what we’ve been calling an “enhanced education,” but I get the feeling that the type of students who are at Columbia are the type who are seeking out educational experiences that are enhanced through richer opportunities, and not so much with a greater course load.

I’m feeling a little reluctant about the very idealistic approach of “instilling values in students.” I too believe that knowledge, skills and fostering healthy attitudes in the classroom are all very important. I believe that a degree, a résumé and a culminating body of work are absolutely necessary for job placement, and certainly for what a good number of people consider a successful career. On the other hand, I wonder if asking teachers to equip students with values is stripping students of accountability. While it’s true that even some college-age individuals haven’t fully developed their value systems, I believe that if teaching is done right, students should reach a level of ability to determine their own set of values. In the New Millennium Studies course, we learned a lot about mindset and values. We learned how sometimes, since there is such diversity among people, it’s more effective to work on sharing a mindset with someone before you can expect them to share your values. I believe that through an enhanced educational experience, students will collaboratively develop a healthy mindset that includes the beginnings for internalization of the benefits of diversity – as Alton mentioned – better decisions about social engagement, and better methods for self-evaluating in areas such as ethics and civic responsibility.

Finally, I want to reiterate that doing an art project in science does not mean that there is effective arts integration going on – one approach to enhanced learning. What I mean by that is, collaboration or team efforts don’t mean that all students are actually receiving a high-quality education. I think that a student’s collaborative efforts in the classroom should be reflected in his grade for the course – especially in an enhanced learning course – but I think that assessment based on group achievement is counterproductive on the basis that in our capitalist society, reward for collective accomplishment is held below individual accomplishment. This brings us back to how we’ll guarantee that these enhanced learning experiences, or “honors courses,” are more than just a traditional honors program and are more inclusive, relevant and effective than any writing intensive course might claim to be. Will it be through faculty development in pedagogy that enhances learning through new ways of seeing, interpreting and responding to information and situations? Will it be through closer attention to the student and better placement strategies? I think we’ve talked enough about what our goals are for student achievement, now we need to start conversation about how we’re going to back up our claims and support our own system.

I hope that my thoughts have at least inspired more questions about the specific qualities of enhanced learning at Columbia College. I would really like to help continue the dialogue about what Columbia is in the position to offer to students that few or no other colleges or universities can offer.

Looking forward to seeing you all on Friday,

T______

At 10:22 AM 2/7/2007, Alton Miller wrote:

Good for T______... he is moving the conversation from brainstorming to collegial discourse & disputation in the best tradition, and I appreciate his insights and his feedback on my comments.

The value of engaging some of these ideas in advance of Friday -- including my perhaps peripheral observations -- is that we can come to our "live" discussion with certain understandings (definitions?) already behind us, as it were, whether we agree or disagree.

Because I may be the only one at the table who wants to take up time on Friday dwelling on the question of "values," I'm going to engage that subject here so that on Friday we can wave past it with a nod.

The real difference between a BFA and a BA is not that a BFA has (slightly) more credit hours, but that a BFA has fewer credit hours in the humanities (LAS, Gen Eds) and focuses more on the skills and knowledge necessary for a craft.

Analogously, the real difference between training and education is that with training the balance is more skills, less knowledge... you can be trained as a computer programmer or an illustrator or even as a certain kind of actor or musician without ever taking a course in European History or Biology or The Hero in World Literature. But you can't be "college educated" in any meaningful sense without being able to do college level writing, critical reading, and critical thinking -- or without taking courses like those mentioned.

Educators accept that they are also teaching attitudes (often through modeling) and values...

... attitudes are typically more attached to the subject matter (if I'm teaching Advertising or Math, and if I'm a good teacher and not just someone who reads from the textbook, I necessarily communicate a perspective on the entire industry or discipline)...

... values are typically more general (though a good teacher will use the immediate subject matter for illustration.)

Values are historically a key element of education. Not because church-sponsored colleges want to teach you the fear of God, or "progressive" schools want to make you "productive citizens," but because we are bombarded with cultural propaganda 24/7, people seeking to manipulate our behavior and structure our thinking, even our perceptions. We are not value-neutral creatures... we either inherit and absorb values uncritically or we develop them critically.

The difference between the educated person and the uneducated (even if highly skilled) is in part a commitment to the axiom that

everything we know,
and
everything we accomplish in our lives
we do standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before.

This is fundamental to the world-wide project of higher education. The scholar's and artist's ultimate objective of contributing to the world's store of knowledge and beauty, presupposes the fact that nothing is created from nothing.

This leads to the understanding among academics that free inquiry is essential... that the virtue of collegiality is indispensable (unlike the often livelier fields of law or politics)... that academic freedom is an enshrined liberty that predates freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc....

And it leads to the understanding -- in this privileged, protected sanctuary of the academy -- that we are all connected, that every perspective has value, that it's better to be mutually engaged than psychologically and intellectually isolated, that every decision has ethical harmonics that can't be blithely ignored, that the common good is a reality even though you and I might define it differently.

This is the context for my uncontroversial observation that values are a necessary component of the Compleat Education . . . specifically ethics, diversity, social responsibility, civic engagement.

T______, to your point that the values of our capitalist society privilege individual achievement over team achievement, two responses:

In fact, increasingly, we are hearing from the workplace that effective teamwork skills are at least as important as individual skills... Robert Reich was fond of pointing out that team sports and the arts were better training fields for the modern workplace than the 3 R's. By adding the dimension of diversity, we making an additional contribution to this idea, by suggesting it is not enough for a blond blue-eyed guy to work effectively within a team of Nordics... rather that these team skills are greatly enhanced by the ability to work as part of a very diverse team.

The values of the marketplace have been trying for centuries to displace the values of the academy, and for the most part have succeeded in "lower" education -- the public schools are pretty much designed to create competent, compliant laborers in the industrial economy... (which ironically has resulted in less effective education for the new information economy). But principled academics in higher education protect an environment where the market can be met critically -- premises examined coolly with the benefit of the broadest context -- producing informed alternatives to whatever angle the economic establishment is touting this week.

Columbia is a college, not a trade school. This is in part what we mean when we say our graduates should not go into the world merely prepared to pick up their tools and join in their discipline -- they should become leaders in their discipline, and leave us prepared to learn how to re-invent their discipline and author the culture of their times.

Finally, to your excellent point about whether more reading and writing "are going to be popular selling points amongst students at an arts college" -- It will very likely be the case that many students (most students?) will prefer to go more in the training direction than the education direction -- this is a trend among college students everywhere, who see immediate career advancement as their sole or top academic priority. That's why I think we can roll out an honors program with courses that could accommodate as few as 1,200 students, or 10 percent of our total.

Keep in mind, however, Mark Kelly's point -- or was it Royal Dawson's? -- that increasingly a number of our students are asking for more challenging courses in a more challenging curriculum. If an honors program -- a Columbia-style inclusive program -- doesn't respond to that interest, what will?

Again, thanks for reading this far.
Best,
Alton