Can public university Honors programs deliver the benefits of selective undergraduate education within otherwise nonselective institutions? We evaluate the impact of admission to the Honors College at Oregon State University, a large nonselective public university. Admission to the Honors College depends heavily on a numerical application score.…

Knowing the academic outcomes of students who received contextual offers to higher education is important in understanding whether or not Scotland's Widening Access efforts have been successful in delivering impact to those from socio-economically deprived backgrounds. This study showed that once controlling for academic cohort, sex, ethnicity and…

Sustainability transitions need professionals with specific skills and attitudes that students often do not develop in their regular chemistry education. To foster sustainability change-maker competencies, we suggest augmenting higher education curricula, e.g., chemical degree programs, with transdisciplinary challenge-based learning combined with…

While numerous studies have shown evidence of higher completion frequencies for first-time freshmen who participate in four-year honors programs, research has yet to reveal how honors programs might impact outcomes for transfer students. Based on ex post facto data collected on transfer student graduation percentages at a large public university…

As a "wicked problem," climate change requires interdisciplinary understanding and collaboration in order to prepare future leaders to develop solutions. To this end, as an ecologist and an anthropologist at a mid-sized university in the southeastern U.S., we designed a pair of interdisciplinary, research-intensive courses for first-year…

Research honours programs are traditionally used in Australian universities to build and evaluate research capacity in undergraduate health students. The effectiveness of such programs in achieving this in the current higher education landscape has not recently been explored. This mixed methods study examined 66 health research honours programs.…

Joy, freedom, and benefit--the reasons we are at our colleges and universities. The joy of learning, the freedom to grow, and the benefit of education are all basic human rights, or at least they ought to be. We believe that both honors and faculty development affirm, support, and sustain those rights. We married in 2000, at the beginnings of our…