Honors Faculty

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:

Include the Honors Program Learning Outcomes in their course syllabus.
Allow their passion for their individual disciplines to shine through in their teaching;
Embrace teaching strategies that empower students to take ownership of course material and approach questions from interdisciplinary perspectives;
Maintain a record of substantive and continued scholarly achievement and campus enrichment;
Encourage students to learn independently from direct sources of knowledge, such as laboratory experiences, original documents and other primary sources, data collections, service-learning opportunities, etc.;
Enhance the critical and creative thinking skills of their students;
Promote the active and interactive learning of their students through such techniques as coaching, mentoring, inquiry-based methods, supervised independent projects, and service learning;
Provide thorough, frequent, and constructive assessment of students’ written and oral work;
Be willing to involve students in their own research, scholarship, or creative activities;
Be widely available to students outside of class time and posted office hours for mentoring, conversation, guidance, and the general enhancement of the students’ academic experience and personal development;
Demonstrate a strong and ongoing commitment to promote excellence in honors education, being fully aware of the Honors College mission and helping to evolve the philosophy of the program as needed;
Be active and dedicated advocates of the Honors College on campus and off; this includes attending honors events, being willing to serve on the Honors Advisory writing letters of recommendation for honors students, attending honors conferences, recruiting new honors students, working with student groups, etc.

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 Faculty Certification

I. Full-time faculty or adjunct instructors who are interested in teaching an honors course must be recommended by their associate dean or department chair to teach an honors course.

II. Full-time faculty must have taught at Palm Beach State College for at least 1 academic year (2 consecutive semester) within the same discipline. Adjunct faculty must have taught at Palm Beach State College for at least 2 academic year (4 consecutive semester) within the same discipline.

III. Honors faculty or adjunct instructors must be certified to teach an honors course, or have taught an honors course within three consecutive years.

IV. Faculty or adjunct instructors who are interested in teaching should reach out to the Honors College Faculty Coordinator to determine if there is a need for faculty to teach within their discipline.

V. Faculty or adjunct instructor will participate and complete in the Honors Faculty Certification Seminar facilitated by the Honors College Faculty Coordinator.

VI. Upon completion of the Seminar, faculty or adjunct instructor will complete and submit for approval an Honors Course Implementation Plan.

VII. Once their Implementation Plan is approved, the faculty or adjunct instructor will be recognized as an honors faculty member.

VIII. Honors faculty or adjunct instructor are assigned to classes on a as needed basis and are not guaranteed to teach an honors course.

Honors Project Contracts – Policies and Guidelines

In Summer 2022, the Honors Project Contracts were sunset to students entering the Honors College.

Students who entered prior to Summer 2022 and attended a Honors College mandatory orientation prior to the summer will be eligible to complete an honors project.

Students must request the required documents to complete an honors project from the Honors College Director or the Honors College Faculty Coordinator. This request must be made no later than the last day of attendance verification as stated in the Academic Calendar for the 15-week or 12-week semesters only.

If a student completes an approved Honors College Project, the following steps are needed to ensure notation of Honors in the student transcript.

Honors Project Contracts

Once the project is complete and approved by the instructor and the Honors College Director, the honors notation should be added to the student’s transcript. Procedures for adding honors notation to a student’s transcript:

First, verify the student earned at least a “B” in the course. If the student did not earn at least a “B,” honors credit cannot be granted. A notification letter should be sent to the student as soon as possible. The student may, if he or she chooses, pursue a grade appeal in the course. Ex post facto policy notwithstanding, the project will be kept open until the student’s appeal rights are exhausted.
Second, contact the registrar’s department to add the Honors Project Option designator on Workday should be added to the class and enter reference number and set the maximum honors size depending on how many students completed Honors Projects in the class.
Third, the honors designator must be added to the student’s class schedule on Workday. Enter the Student ID and choose the term. This brings up the student’s schedule. The Honors College will provide the class that the student has completed the project.
After the above steps have been completed, the registrar’s office will notify the Honors College that notations have been completed on the student transcript.

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.

Sabiduria: Dr. Floyd F Koch Honors Academic Journal

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 Faculty Advisor. Selected items will be published in a document to be submitted no later than the end of the academic year. The document will be produced in Word or Microsoft Publishing and posted to the web, and a limited print run will be made.