contemporary contexts – Houghton STAR

Despite a recent program cut back in September, the college is looking to reinstate and perhaps add another honors program to its offerings as well as renovate the current structure of honors at Houghton. During a meeting with the college board of trustees in late October, it was strongly suggested by the members that a third honors program with a European focus be reinstated. “We had already been working on revisions to honors before the board of trustees met in October. We’ve been concerned that despite the quality of our three first-year honors offerings, enrollments have been weaker than we would like over the past three years,” said Linda Mills Woolsey, dean of the college and one of those who met with the board. She cited the current economic climate and increased competition with other schools’ honors programs as likely causes.

In a recent proposal for a comprehensive revamp of the honors program, Benjamin Lipscomb, professor of philosophy and director of honors programs at Houghton, explained that although “[t]he students we have enrolled remain (by and large) impressive, … there have been too few of them to populate our three gateway programs, and we have not been able to be as highly selective as we were in the past.” In an interview he added, “We did form a waiting list for the first time in a while this last year… but there had been a couple of years in which basically there was no waiting list. We had … a three-tiered system [for admission] in which there was ‘yes,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘no.’ We had a year or two there after we switched from London to Contemporary Contexts … at which it was basically, ‘yeah, probably, we think you’re a yes’ or ‘no.’”

Although not set in stone, under consideration as replacement for a third honors program is a semester-long study abroad option similar to the London honors program cut back in 2011. “A number of trustees look back to the recruiting success of London Honors and would like to see us have a distinctive program with the same recruiting power,” said Woolsey. She added that the program “will probably be a return to a semester abroad with a focus on modern and contemporary culture, a stronger global focus, and some service components.” Eric Currie, vice president of admissions, also added that “in trying to recruit some of the students who have had significant scores that go for full tuition at other schools … some of this semester abroad opportunity … has an engagement level that seems to spark their interest.” Such a program will take a while to redevelop, however. “I reported to the board that we were undertaking revisions and their request was that we speed up the timeline,” Woolsey said, adding that the intent was to have the new freshman honors program available to students in 2015-2016.

In addition to a third freshman honors program, also under consideration by the college is a full four-year honors program. Starting with one of the three main “gateway” honors programs (Science Honors, East Meets West, or a third new program), students completing one of the programs will be offered the opportunity to take one-credit “seminar” classes on a specific topic. Completion of a predetermined number of seminars will allow students to graduate with an honors diploma and transcript. Seminar topics will be varied, but will most likely be in the social sciences or humanities. However, it was stressed that it was hoped that honors students from all disciplines might be able to participate in the seminars. “Arts could be in it too, and there’s every possibility for people in the natural sciences, mathematics to pick one or two works that would be accessible to someone who hadn’t been through the whole curriculum,” said Lipscomb. “We’re going to try to make that set of offerings as diverse as possible. … The point is mix and mingle, not to extend the gateway programs as segregated phenomena.”

While Lipscomb says the four-year honors program has been approved “in principle” by the board, obtaining official approval is still in the works. However, it is expected that proposals for seminars will be submitted this spring and will be included in the course offerings for the next academic year. “We’re going to send out an email blast the beginning of December to prospective students who are thinking about honors, letting them know … there’s this extension of the program … and we’ll be talking about it on the recruitment weekends.”

Also in development, but still not yet in the works, is a potential honors program for transfer students and Houghton students who display honors potential later on in their undergraduate careers. “As we predict, watching national trends, we might see more and more of … people for cost reasons doing a couple years at a community college and getting an associate’s degree,” said Lipscomb, and the intent of a transfers program would be to accommodate such trends. Also included in the target demographic for such a program would be so-called “late bloomers:” students who, according to Lipscomb, “get a ‘no’ in the honors recruitment process because they clam up in their interview… [when] it turns out they… get into college coursework and discover themselves and turn out to be really excellent students.” For now, the idea of a transfers honors program is still very much in its infancy, with the reinstatement of a third honors program and the creation of a four-year program being among the current priorities of the college.

With recent low enrollment numbers in Houghton’s three first year honors programs – East Meets West, Science Honors, and Contemporary Contexts – the college has decided to cut Contemporary Contexts for next year to focus on recruitment and effectiveness on the two remaining programs.

Science Honors focuses on researching and analyzing scientific data, while students build a model on what they are researching. The other two programs, Contemporary Contexts and East Meets West are integrative; they combine courses on philosophy, art, literature, political science, or history, and involve experiential learning overseas during Mayterm.

Originally, Houghton College started its first honors program in the mid-1990’s. This was the First Year Honors Program (FYHP), which was a semester abroad in London. The program became very popular amongst prospective students. Professor Ben Lipscomb, director of honors, said, “We found that we were interviewing and turning away people.” So as demand and interest grew for the honors program, East Meets West was created, said Eric Currie, vice president for enrollment management. This not only allowed options for the incoming freshmen, but also allowed the college to enroll more students into the honors programs.

Another program, Science Honors, was then added a few years later “to recruit students for a particular set of majors,” said Lipscomb. So in response to the higher rate of college enrollment, the number of honors programs increased from one to three programs.

Honors programs themselves “exist for two overriding purposes,” said Lipscomb. “One is to recruit ambitious, high-performing students to the college,” and the other is “to produce great sophomores.”

Previous students who were accepted into honors echo Lipcombs’ remark. “I would not have come to Houghton if I hadn’t gotten accepted into the honors program,” said Collin Belt, a junior who was in Contemporary Contexts. Essie Fenstermacher, a previous student of East Meets West of last year, said, “Applying for the honors program made me focus more on Houghton. Having to put in that extra effort made it more of an investment.”

Lipscomb commented that in recent years, however, “recruitment numbers have been lower and that reflects itself in the honors selections process.” With student enrollment in the college decreasing and with honors programs being expensive to run, “let’s fill two programs more adequately instead of having three programs slightly under-enrolled.”

Dean of the College, Linda Mills-Woolsey, added, “If we can get the two programs fully enrolled or almost fully enrolled, we can have the same number of honor students as this year.” This year’s total enrollment of 48 students in the honors programs is significantly lower than the projected 73 students.

In hopes to increase the recruiting process for the honors programs, Contemporary Contexts, which evolved out of the FYHP, will be cut for next year. When talking about choosing which program to cut, Mills-Woolsey emphasized that “the things that has handicapped Contemporary Contexts is having it change every year. That has made it harder to market.” Dr. Lipscomb added, “What Contemporary Contexts struggled to do was to be a recruiting tool for the college.” And because of “its western travel destinations, it was consistently more expensive to run.”

Lipscomb continued to add that Science Honors has “bumped up the number of physics majors over the last four or five years, and we are interested in seeing how it will do with less competition.”

Mills-Woolsey stated that “whatever the future holds for honors, it needs to hold that sense of stretching and that sense of adventure.”