Catawba College had seven representatives present at the 2016 National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) conference in Seattle, Washington. The theme of this year’s NCHC conference was “Know Yourself.” This year’s NCHC conference had the strongest international presence it has ever had. Some of the international groups that attended were the newly formed Chinese Honors Council and the European Honors Council. In total, there were twelve counties represented at the 2016 NCHC. Catawba had both faculty and students attend this prestigious event to get exciting new ideas to implement into our Honors Program, which has increased exponentially in just a few short years.
The Catawba College Honors Program offers interdisciplinary courses for Honors students, most of which are widely acclaimed by those who enroll in them. Some the recent courses that have been offered include Aesthetic Alchemy, which explained the relationship between art and chemistry, Rereading Harry Potter, which examined sociological and literary perspectives on the series, Real vs Reel Biology, which examined the verity (or lack thereof) biological concepts in movies, and Deviance in Society, which explored why people deviate from what is generally accepted in our culture. The program also offers students to travel both internationally and domestically at a discounted rate. Dr. Vandergriff-Avery explained that “last year students traveled to Raleigh, Washington, DC, Phoenix, AZ, Poland and Germany.”
Out of just over 1,200 students enrolled at Catawba, 165 of them are honors students. This translates to about 13.75% of the student body being in the program, a higher percentage than most other institutions. As a frame of reference, there were only 88 total students in the Honors Program during the 2011-12 school year. While there are many reasons why this growth is occurring, Dr. Maria Vandergriff-Avery, the Catawba College Honors Director and professor of sociology, said “amenities like the Honors Program residence hall and student lounge may have helped attract some students to the program.”
The Honors Program received “a major overhaul in 2001 when Dr. Shelia Brownlow became the director” according to Dr. Vandergriff-Avery. Dr. Brownlow changed the program in many ways including the formation of the Honors Council and faculty board, introduction of the travel requirement, and an honors thesis. She also gave professors the chance to teach subjects they were really interested in. Dr. Vandergriff-Avery became the director in 2011 and has instituted several changes as well including, but not limited to, the conversion of Hurley into an honors resident hall, the creation of the Honors Program Student Lounge, and the continued creation of more sense of community within the program by hosting a cultural and social event each semester.
The two faculty members who attended were Dr. Maria Vandergriff-Avery, chair of the sociology department, and Dr. Salvatore Musumeci, assistant professor of the history department. And though Dr. Musumeci is a new professor at Catawba, he is far from being new to honors. He has been involved with honors and NCHC at his previous institutions for over a decade. For the past four years, he has been heavily involved with NCHC and is currently involved with organizing some of the Master Classes offered at the conference, developing an undergraduate research sharing service, and judging some of the student poster panels, in addition to being on several committees.
I was one of the Honors students who attended this event, along with Collette Simkins, who is the Chair of the Honors Council, Caleb Garner, Peyton Glendinning, and Jonathan Rife. Three of the four academic years were represented; Caleb and Collette are seniors, Peyton and I are juniors, and Jonathan is a sophomore. As for what we did while we were there, Collette, Jonathan, and Caleb participated in an Idea Exchange about student leadership within the honors council; the other Catawba Representatives were there to help attend as many sessions as possible to gather ideas.
One of the sponsors of the conference was Geico, who held an Instagram photo contest for the attendees. The attendees were asked to take a photo of themselves touring the city while using a Geico bag that was given to them at the beginning of the conference. These photos were then posted on Instagram using the hashtags #nchc16 and #cityastext. Collette Simkins won this contest with her photo and received a Starbucks gift card.
The Catawba College Honors Program representatives learned a lot from the event, such as how to effectively use different forms of social media, how to create a successful newsletter, how to best recruit and retain honors students, the importance of art in honors education, and the importance of alternative methods of assessment within Honors classes.
[This article is featured in the Fall 2016 Print Edition of the Catawba Pioneer.]
