While honors faculty should reflect the make-up of the faculty at the college, they must exemplify excellence in the classroom and motivate the students to do the same. Honors faculty will:
Grading in Honors Courses
Intellectual risk-taking is a foremost value in honors education. Faculty should be sensitive to the ways that course evaluation thwarts experimentation and risk-taking. For this reason, course evaluation should be based on methods and measures that accurately assess creativity, imagination, and critical thinking. Mastery of course objectives should be stressed over accumulation of points and percentages. In this sense, a certain ‘artfulness’ comes to bear in assigning grades.
Beyond this, grading in honors classes should not force students into competition with one another for a limited number of “A” grades. In determining grades, faculty should compare the honors student to all students at the same level, not simply to honors students in isolation. At the same time, faculty must completely evaluate the student’s command of course material. Where course expectations are not met, there should be no hesitation to award a low grade.
Honors Project Contracts – Policies and Guidelines
Honors credit may be earned in any regular credit class at Palm Beach State through a process called “honorization.” The student and instructor enter into a contract that details the work that will be done in the class. When the terms of the contract are fulfilled, the honors credit is earned. A minimum grade of ‘B’ in the course is also required for awarding honors credit.
The work designated as honors must be over and above what is done in the regular course. Honors work should build upon techniques and methodologies taught in the course; however, the material and research should go beyond normal course instruction. For example, a student in “English Literature After 1800” might write a paper about a Yeats poem not covered in class. Or, a student in “Earth Science” might write a paper on the El Niño effect.
Honors Project Contract Process:
The process for “honorizing” a course through an Honors Project Contract is:
- The student who wishes to do honors work approaches the instructor and asks if the instructor would be willing to oversee an Honors Project.
- If the instructor agrees, the student and faculty member work together to define what the topic of the Honors Project will be and what model it will follow. The Honors College has established seven different models for Honors Projects:
- Traditional Research Paper
- Interview Model
- Web Page Model
- Teaching Model
- Product Creation Model
- Rhetorical Analysis Model
- Service-Learning Model
- The general guidelines for all projects, regardless of model, are that they must:
- Be from 2,000 to 5,000 words,
- Include a cover page,
- Include a works cited or References page with documentation and citation in the body of the paper of all references listed (the number of references is dependent upon which model is followed),
- Use either Modern Language Association (MLA) or American Psychology Association (APA) style format (instructor's choice),
- Be error-free and presented in 12-point font.
- Once the details are agreed upon, the student and instructor complete an honors contract with contact information, course information, and project information, including a tentative title, the model type, a description of the project, and an instructor’s statement that explains how the Honors Project exceeds the normal expectations of the course.
- In the section titled “Signatures of Contract Agreement,” the student and instructor sign the contract.
- At this point, the contract should be forwarded to the Associate Dean who will sign the contract and forward it to the Honors College (MS #29).
- When the contract reaches the Honors College, it will be reviewed to verify that the student is eligible to do honors work. If the contract is approved, the Honors College Manager will sign the contract and notify the student and the instructor to proceed with the project.
- As the term progresses, the student and instructor should meet regularly to discuss research and other matters relating to the project. At a minimum, three meetings should be scheduled to guarantee adequate oversight.
- As the project nears completion, a mandatory poster session presentation will be required to complete the project.
- Completed projects should be reviewed closely by the instructor for quality, grammar, and correct citation.
- Once approved, the instructor signs the contract under “Signatures of Project Approval.”
- The contract and project will then be submitted to the Honors College for review and processing.
- The contract is deemed fulfilled; honors credit is granted; and an honors notation is added to the course on the student’s transcript.
Ex-Post Facto Contracts/Late Projects
Students may not begin the honorization process for a course after completion of the term. Deadlines for project submission are established at the beginning of each term. These deadlines should be adhered to as closely as possible. Under no circumstance will projects be accepted after the deadline unless special circumstances outside the control of the student.
Use of Copyrighted and Other Restricted Material
The use of copyrighted material must not exceed “fair use” standards established by the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107-118. All copyrighted material, including direct quotes, photographs, lyrics, etc., must be properly cited. In addition, written permission from subjects must be obtained to publish photographs.
For further reference, please consult http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107.
Summer Term Honors Projects
Honors students may honorize one course during the 12-week summer term.
Faculty Payment
Each instructor who oversees an Honors Project Contract to completion will earn a $125 payment per contract.
Faculty Contract Limits Per Term
To ensure adequate mentoring, faculty are limited to overseeing ten (10) Honors Project Contracts per academic year.
Faculty Responsibility in Honors Project Contracts
The instructor is the most important link in the project chain. In the end, it is the faculty member who will determine if the submitted work is worthy of honors credit. As far as specifics go, faculty responsibility in the Honors Project Contract process is multi-faceted:
Syllabus
An instructor who is willing to do honors work with students is encouraged to put a note on his/her syllabus indicating this. The note might also refer the student to the Honors College Web page for more information.
Rejecting Honors Project Requests
The Honors Project process is collaborative and time-intensive. There are many valid reasons why an instructor may decide to deny a student‘s request to do honors work. Honors students are encouraged to be polite in entreaty and to accept “no” gracefully.
The Integrity of the Honors Project Process
Faculty are the guardians of the Honors Project process. From conception to completion, honors research should be original and closely supervised. Where recycling of prior work is suspected, instructors are urged to either cancel the project or take appropriate corrective measures. It is for this reason, also, that an honors project may not be based on the augmentation of regular coursework. Because the project process is intended to take the student into specific extra-curricular research, a longer or more research-intensive version of a course assignment unfortunately does not qualify for honors credit.
“Grading” Honors Projects
Technically, the honors project does not receive a grade. In terms of meriting honors credit, the project should be thought of as earning either a pass or a fail; that is to say, either the project is worthy of honors credit or it is not. When an instructor signs an honors contract indicating successful completion of the project, he/she affirms the following: “I certify that the above-named student has satisfactorily completed the Honors Contract in this course according to the standards of Honors.” The grade request on the contract form is for the final course grade. If this is not known at the time of project submission, please leave that blank.
If the faculty member deems that the submitted work is not honors level, then the contract should be regarded as not fulfilled and, therefore, not signed. The unsigned contract and the project should be submitted to the Honors College (MS #29) for filing. Pay/grade forms cannot be processed for unapproved projects unless the project is received in the Honors College.
Unfinished Honors Projects Contracts
About twenty to twenty-five percent of all signed Honors Projects Contracts are never completed. Understandably, there are various and predictable reasons for this. Instructors who know that an Honors Project Contract will, for whatever reason, not be finished should contact the Honors College Manager so that a note can be put in the database. Beyond this, instructors are urged not to hold the non-completion of an Honors Project Contract against a student in the calculation of the course grade. Honors work is superadded to regular course requirements. Thus, failure to complete Honors work should not be construed negatively.
Faculty Stipend
Projects forwarded to the Honors College that are either too short (less than 2000 words), that do not have the minimum number of secondary sources, that lack proper documentation, or that fail to comply with all published guidelines will be regarded as inadequately supervised. For this reason, the faculty stipend will not be processed for these projects.
The Associate Dean’s Responsibility in Honors Project Contracts
Because a payment is processed along with the project, the Associate Dean plays a key role in the Honors Project Contract process. During the contract approval process, the Associate Dean should review the contract from the instructional vantage. Will adequate oversight be offered to the student? Any doubts should be addressed and resolved at this point; if these concerns cannot be allayed, the contract should not be approved.
The Honors College Manager’s Review in the Honors Project Process
The Honors College Director will review submitted projects to verify that they are of the required length, that they follow the chosen model guidelines, that citations are formatted correctly, and that they comply with all published requirement. Projects that fail to meet honors standards are returned for revision. The Honors College Manager will also read all projects with an eye towards possible inclusion on the Honors College Web page, for submission to Sabiduria, for consideration in the Portz Scholars competition, and for other various types of exemplary recognition.
Sabiduria
Each academic year, honors students will be invited to submit research papers and other items (poems, photography) for inclusion in the Sabiduria publication. The deadline for submission will be a date in the Fall semester determined by the Honors College Manager. Selected items will be published in a document to be submitted no later than the end of the academic year to the Faculty Advisor for Sabiduria and/or Honors College Manager for final review. The document will be produced in Word or Microsoft Publishing and posted to the Web, and a limited print run will be made.