Honoring Student Writers: Studies and Stories of Writing in Honors Colleges and Programs
Edited by Steven J. Corbett and Teagan Decker
What immediately comes to mind when you hear the phrase “honors colleges and programs”? Those less familiar with honors education might think in terms of academic units, programming, student support services (and even student housing) designed for the privileged, the best, and the brightest. But those who have been involved with honors education would likely start thinking about concepts like diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. A quick search on CompPile with the term “honors” turns up 157 citations. In perusing these citations, up to at least 1990, you will repeatedly see the words “superior” and “gifted” used to describe the students gifted and superior enough to populate honors colleges and programs. However, after 1990 you are much more likely to see words like “talented” and “high-achieving” used to characterize honors students. For the past 35 years, it’s clear that the idea of honors colleges and programs has shifted in important ways. (Although, granted, there still exists a journal called Gifted Education International.)
In the introduction to the (2023) collection Honors Colleges in the 21st Century, editor Richard Badenhausen reports on the compelling proliferation of honors colleges over the past three decades. According to Badenhausen, in 1993 there were roughly 23 honors colleges across the country. By 2021 that number had exploded to 248 (p. xii). And there are good reasons why. Badenhausen writes:
It is not too difficult to fathom why honors education has been such an area of strength. Honors programs and especially honors colleges have long embraced many of the solutions that higher ed leaders have sought more recently in areas tied to student belonging, wellness support, innovative course design, student-centered pedagogies, and bridges between the curriculum and co-curriculum. (p. xii)
In terms of student belonging, and how far honors education has advanced in the past three decades, the National Collegiate Honors Council (2022) “Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education” emphasizes diversity in its Mission Alignment:
The honors program or college aligns itself with the mission of the institution, responds to its strategic plan and core values, and embraces student-centered practices while actively welcoming diverse faculty, professional staff, and students into its community.
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It employs program-wide goals and student learning outcomes that further its own clearly articulated mission to serve its diverse student population while also supporting the overall aims of the institution.
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Honors programs and colleges routinely develop and revise their program/college missions and strategic plans to ensure alignment with institutional planning and goal setting, including the development of a diversity strategic plan that reflects the mission and values of the institution in this area.
Aligning with this mission, an entire section of Badenhausen’s collection is dedicated to honors colleges as leaders in the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. In that section, for example, Teagan Decker, Joshua Busman, and Michele Fazio in “Honors Colleges as Levers of Educational Equity” argue that
universities all too often serve more as sorting mechanisms than as ladders to success, keeping socioeconomic structures largely intact. Honors colleges can and should strive to act as levers of equity in this scenario of entrenchment, but the nature of this project looks very different depending on the institution’s own class position vis-a-vis its students. (p. 301)
One thing that most honors colleges include in their programming are honors-designated writing courses. For example, in their article “Embracing Opportunities in and beyond First-Year Honors Composition” (2022), in the journal Honors in Practice, Teagan Decker and Scott Hicks–inspired by the work of Annmarie Guzy on first-year writing in honors education–write:
As a course that tends to fixate on what comes next, it necessarily functions either as a higher education “gateway” (a course that welcomes students into higher education) or “gatekeeper” (a course with high rates of withdrawal or failure that devastates beginning students’ grades and motivation, thus hindering their progress and, worse, barring them entry altogether) …
Instead, first-year composition might be a course that allows students to pursue intellectual and scholarly interests, decenters the instructor’s disciplinary specialization, and provides students a welcoming entry into academic, professional, and civic communities. First-year composition can and should embrace the high-impact practices identified by Kuh (2008) that already distinguish honors programs–just as first-year honors composition can and should embed high-impact practices in their design and practice, so as to prime honors students to take part in and develop themselves through the high-impact practices amplified through their honors college. In particular, first-year honors composition can embrace undergraduate research, what the Council on Undergraduate Research defines as “[a] mentored investigation or creative inquiry conducted by undergraduates that seeks to make a scholarly or artistic contribution to knowledge” (Council on Undergraduate Research, 2021). (pp. 133-134)
But, it’s been over 20 years since the last book-length treatment of writing in honors education, Annemarie Guzy’s (2003) Honors Composition: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Practices.
For this collection, writing researchers from all areas of writing studies are invited to share their thoughts, experiences, and studies on honors education and writing. (Qualitative and quantitative empirical research studies are encouraged and welcomed. Work by and with graduate and undergraduate students are also encouraged and welcomed.) Some possible topics include honors education and writing …
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in relation to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access
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in relation to writing pedagogy
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in relation to WPA or other administrative work
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and identity and intersectionality
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and multilingual students
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and emotions
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and failure or intellectual risk-taking
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and high impact educational practices
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and freedom of choice/ the locus of control
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and dispositions
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and writing transfer
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and disciplinarity
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and WAC/WID
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and Writing Centers
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and performance
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and experiential learning
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and assessment
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and majors, fields of study, or career paths
Submission Guidelines
This collection will consist of two types of chapters:
(1) Longer, research chapters of about 7,500 words. For these chapters, please send a 300-500-word proposal. Also, let us know if you believe you currently already have a fitting full manuscript.
(2) Shorter, narrative chapters of about 1,500-2,000 words. Please send a 150-200-word proposal/teaser.
Chapter proposals will become part of an overall proposal in search of a potential publisher.
Please email proposals to Steven Corbett at stevencorbett133 and Teagan Decker at teagan.decker.
Proposal deadline: December 15, 2024.
Steven J. Corbett, PhD (he/him)
Associate Professor of Composition & Rhetoric
Division Head of Communication, Composition, & Rhetoric
Writing Program Administrator
College of Arts, Humanities, & Sciences
Methodist University
Fayetteville, NC
Teagan Decker, PhD (she/they)
Professor of English
Dean, Maynor Honors College
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Pembroke, NC