In line with the university’s goals to continue to attract the nation’s best and brightest students to this university, the honors department is devising two new programs, set to debut next fall.
A committee led by Dean of Undergraduate Studies Donna Hamilton is currently reviewing seven proposals for two brand new programs, designed for incoming freshmen that would focus their interests and challenge students in new ways. Honors Director William Dorland said honors humanities, Gemstone and departmental honors will still exist as separate options for incoming freshmen.
The creation of the new options has also led to a significantly larger budget for the honors program than in previous years. This year, Honors received approximately 20 percent more funding than it did last year, which will make more faculty and events available to honors students.
More controversially, honors students’ introductory course to the university — Honors 100 — will no longer be administered entirely by undergraduate student teachers.
Instead, the class is now divided into halves: every other week students will attend a large lecture taught by university faculty rather than just smaller student-led classes for the entirety of sessions.
Initially, some students were concerned that the loss of small group time would be a huge blow to the Honors 100 experience.
“One of the initial reactions was that people were unhappy ” said Joe Caputo, a senior architecture major and former Honors 100 section leader.
Caputo now leads the peer mentoring section offered in the new curriculum.
“I think the first day went well,” he said.
“The goal was to make everyone happier but some people got angry,” Dorland said, explaining the lecture component of the class was considered a way to make the material easier to digest.
“Also, we wanted to place a greater emphasis on developing college-level writing skills,” Dorland added. “It’s hard to grade your peers’ work on the same level that a professor can.”
The creation of the college impacts current students to some degree, but looks more toward the future: next year, students will be invited into the Honors College at large and given an opportunity to choose which program fits their interests best. Currently, students are accepted by invitation only into different competing programs.
There are about 1,000 students involved in the various honors programs today. Dorland hopes the creation of new programs will decrease the size of each individual one and therefore foster more close knit communities.
“The number of students in honors has increased 25 percent over the last five years,” Dorland said. “It became hard to build a sense of community. Honors wasn’t like Scholars in a sense that you really bonded and built a sense of community with other people in your program.”
pino@umdbk.com
