Honors Forum Council Minutes -- Monday, April 24, 2000
Present:
Amelia Rauser, Tina Levith (for Jon Ramsey) Ruth Copans, Anita Steigerwald, Phil Boshoff, Michael Arnush, Sue Bender, Francesca Cichello, Katie Cella
Absent:
Jon Ramsey, Kim Helms
Workshop assessment: 30 Faculty, Linda Simon & Mary Lynn speakers: concerns regarding curriculum, including the mix of 1-cr. and 3 or 4 cr. courses; integrating the Honors experience into the larger course content; developing, maintaining and increasing the diversity of the curriculum (14 courses for fall & this was a struggle). HFC involvement in curricular assessment and development needs to stay strong in order to bring about broad disciplinary representation in the program.
Brochure: Revised by Jon, to be read carefully for tone & content. Please respond to him within the week with any suggestions.
Overseas Honors Programs: Michael and Ruth discussed recent conversations they have had with the directors of the Skidmore programs in Bath, Paris, and Madrid. All three programs can accomodate HF student projects (internships, independent studies, add-ons to courses), and are prepared to do so; the mechanisms in place that have students work with the overseas faculty and remain in contact with an on-campus Skidmore faculty member should continue to work effectively.
Honors Housing: Anita reported on the Residential Life offer to provide an Honors house in Scribner. 6-7 students, both HF & non-HF, have submitted a proposal for a house. Ruth will serve as the academic advisor to the HF house & will act as liaison between HF events & HF House events; another faculty member of the Council will serve as advisor to the HF Exec. Committee's events planning.
Accepted Candidates days: Successful in terms of AC turnout, and the group lunches seem to be worth the effort; the individual meals (such as the one with Michael, Amelia and one AC) seem not worth the effort. We need to monitor how effective these attempts will be to attract these top h.s. students to the College to determine if we should continue with this initiativenext year.
Academic Festival: some kinks need to be worked out, such as the technology requirements, but the overall structure is now in place. The AF will include approximately 80 students participating in 27 presentations, slightly down from last year but successful nonetheless. The student committee has worked assiduously to focus the timing of presentations in the late afternoon and evening in order to maximize the opportunity for all members of the community to attend.
HF101: Four student assistants (Andrew Cencini, Lauren Sweeney, Kylie Cohn, Jaime Casta) have been enrolled and hired to act as mentors fulfilling a number of roles - as liaisons to the faculty, as tutors, as role models, as facilitators of discussion and as teaching assistants. Michael recommended that the course be mandatory in this first, experimental phase, and will ask Ann Henderson to include this in communications with incoming class. Sue and Michael plan to meet with the four students over lunch to discuss their roles & the curriculum.
End of year admissions: Open to student body with 3.4 or better GPA. To apply before grades are in- RSVP's to go out over the summer. Michael will send an email announcement to all students shortly.
Data Collection: Year-end report to include overall assessment of 99/00 curriculum, including assessment of data collected from student evaluations. Rebecca will work on converting the data to a few graphs.
End of year event: Program assessment along with a student symposium to be scheduled in the HF lounge. Michael will recruit approximately 15 students to provide meaningful feedback on their Honors experiences. Web questionnaire will be designed & made available in order to obtain feedback from students not at the year-end symposium.