A series of courses on the Evolution of Ideas introduces interdisciplinary study, develops collaborative discourse, and promotes a sense of community among first-year honors students. The curriculum encourages faculty to use a range of strategies to help students understand an idea and its history while also fostering awareness as to its social,…

An interdisciplinary honors course titled "Minds, Machines, and Meaning" incorporates the notion of the algorithmic imaginary, which explains how people make use of algorithms to create new information infrastructures and communities and how these algorithms shape us in turn. Describing a culminating writing assignment in speculative…

Engineering and pop-culturist instructors team-teach a first-year experience course exploring science through the lenses of history, literature, film, television, and sequential art. Authors present science fiction discourses as unique for synthesizing fields in the humanities and STEM, and they present curricular and co-curricular design…

Teaching interdisciplinary research methods to honors students across disciplines is complex. A pre-capstone seminar, The Art of Inquiry, centers ethical considerations within and beyond individual research interests, helping junior and senior students of all majors prepare for ethical, scholarly projects.

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…

This essay presents common practices for developing faculty in small honors programs and colleges operating with limited financial resources. The author outlines strategies and applications for implementing targeted faculty development, including: transdisciplinary coordinating efforts toward bringing full-time and adjunct faculty together for the…

Successful honors programs inspire and sustain a vibrant and committed faculty. This essay presents an established honors program which demonstrates, through varied faculty commitments over time, honors as a valuable asset in identifying, recruiting, supporting, and rewarding a strong, creative, loyal faculty that benefits the entire institution.…

Humanities have traditionally played a limited role in STEM education, yet their natural connections may be used to enrich academic understanding and student experience. Authors explore their mutuality by presenting an interdisciplinary curriculum, Humanities-Driven STEM (HDSTEM). Unlike other iterations of blended disciplines, HDSTEM provides…

Humanity is in a tight race between planetary catastrophe and enlightenment. It is not clear which will prevail. The old paradigm, that of materialism, individualism, and fierce competition, is failing at all levels--economic, social, political, and environmental--and bringing life as we know it to the edge of a precipice. At the same time, a…

This article describes one program's thoughtful and strategic transition to a college and subsequent innovations to its curricular framework. Acknowledging that such a change affords honors practitioners the opportunity to implement best practices established within the honors community, authors describe the unique evolution of the honors college…

This paper highlights the design process and implementation for an "all majors" undergraduate course that allows students a chance to reconnect with the natural world. During this course students explore a wide range of biological and physical science based topics that seek to highlight human intervention and our impacts on the planet.…

In this reflective essay, we explore how we and our students experienced trust and opened ourselves up to being vulnerable in two iterations of a course that was built on the pedagogies of ungrading and co-creation in teaching and learning (CCTL). As approaches that fall under the broader umbrella of critical pedagogy, ungrading usually involves…

"Honors Work: Seeing Gaps, Combining Gifts, Focusing on Wider Human Needs" describes the authors' collaborative work with high school girls to bring Canadian activist Leigh Boyle and "The Lipstick Project" story to Maine in April, 2017. "The Lipstick Project," which Boyle founded and directs, is a women-run volunteer…

This article describes an interdisciplinary, partially online honors course entitled Video Game Theory and Design. The article reviews the literature surrounding video games and technical communication and then outlines the learning objectives for the course. The authors describe individual and team-produced assignments and suggest game design…

One of the major obstacles toward tenure and promotion in honors programs and colleges is that "Honors" is not a discipline. This does not mean, however, that honors education is not a profession. There is sufficient evidence across the country to indicate that there are educators in higher education who choose to work in honors programs…