Writing a thesis is often the culminating experience for undergraduate students enrolled in university honors programs in the United States. Because writing a thesis is one of the most difficult academic tasks that an undergraduate student may undertake, it requires a high level of self-efficacy, or belief in one's capabilities to achieve certain…

Purpose: In distinguishing the education of adults from the education of children, a gray area lies on where to classify gifted and honors students. The purpose of this study was to determine if the attitudes of students at an honors STEM summer camp paralleled the educational needs of adults, namely self-directed learning.…

This study continues an earlier (2021) examination of a program's move from an admissions framework that used standardized test score thresholds to a test-blind holistic review. While the initial study evinced holistic review as a more equitable gateway to honors education for students from underserved backgrounds (as compared to admission…

This essay describes a service-learning course designed with heart-centered pedagogy. Authors examine the relationship between individual and society in service learning and discuss the rationale and processes involved in curricular design to suggest an alternative approach to community engagement. Understanding service learning as going beyond…

Recent scholarship demonstrates a direct correlation between the body and brain in academic performance and general wellbeing. This essay considers mindfulness practice as an integrative discipline in honors education. While exercise offers many benefits to college students, the authors maintain that the mindfulness practices of yoga, qi gong, and…

This (2019) study assesses student perceptions of an honors college relative to other colleges in an institutional framework. Disproportionately low enrollments in honors from specific majors (particularly those in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences) prompt researchers to investigate the culture of honors, perceived…

The 2020-2021 academic year presented many challenges to honors educators, including their ability to support honors education as a community of opportunity in virtual learning environments. This study considers how remote learning platforms emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic illuminated previously underutilized resources, such as alumni. Authors…

Nearly two hundred students, faculty, staff, and community members gather in a series of events to read and respond to poetry written by incarcerated authors. The program engages inmates in poetic self-expression, reflection, and personal growth while challenging honors students to consider what they have learned in literature classes in a broader…

This article describes a collaborative writing project involving narratives of health and caregiving. An interdisciplinary seminar titled "Narratives of Illness and Care" examines literary and medical narratives to better understand disease, therapeutic communication, empathy, and the social determinants of health. During the COVID-19…

The adoption of market theory as a guiding principle of education policy increased the need for assessments of school performance that families could use to compare academic benefits of attending one school to another. Prominent among measures used by states are the school proficiency and growth indicators resulting from high-stakes tests. Using a…

First-year students faced unprecedented challenges while transitioning from high school to university in fall 2020. The coronavirus crisis, economic downturn, social unrest, and a rapid and massive shift to remote learning altered their world in fundamental ways. This essay describes the response of one honors program toward providing extra- and…

The following mixed methods research describes the impact of nineteen students who were given the opportunity to take honors mathematics courses during high school after previously being tracked into grade level courses in middle school. Quantitative results showed significant increases in students' standardized state test scores when moved to the…

Undergraduate peer mentorship has the potential to transform mentor and mentee alike. In an effort to understand the potential positive effects of a peer mentorship program on honors peer mentors, paired sample t-tests of data from a pre-test/post-test of at least 69 honors first-year seminar facilitators shows that respondents grew in their…

The Arts and Science Honours Academy (ASHA) is a unique interdisciplinary undergraduate honours programme at a large research-intensive university in Canada. Data were collected in early 2020 from 108 past and present students, representing the first eleven cohorts of the programme. Triangulating results from quantitative and qualitative analyses,…

This essay presents an innovative, proactive solution to the growing mental health needs of honors students. Authors discuss the ways in which one program at a large public university revised curriculum, created programming, and formed strategic partnership with the university's Marriage and Family Therapy Program to understand and address student…