In a plenary address at the 2023 NCHC annual conference in Chicago, the former Vice Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee issued a challenge for honors students and educators to use their voices and positions of local leadership to promote peace. The call for peace advocacy extended in Chicago resonated with the large audience, as leadership…

We report an intervention, performed during the Fall of 2024, in which a large language model artificial intelligence chatbot was introduced as a tool for pre-exam study and postexam reflection within an honors general chemistry course (CHEM 110H) at Penn State University. Through a combination of a structured 75 min instructional session and…

This study examines the impact of instruction modality on student learning outcomes, with a focus on disparities observed pre- and post-pandemic. Using administrative data from a public university spanning seven pre-pandemic and five post-pandemic semesters, the analysis controls for endogenous sorting using fixed effects. The findings suggest…

African American students are under-enrolled in gifted and honors programs due to external and internal factors, which are explained in this Executive Leadership Portfolio (ELP). To address this problem, I have studied the APEX program, a predominantly African American honors program based at East Side Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware, and…

The following mixed methods research describes the impact of nineteen students who were given the opportunity to take honors mathematics courses during high school after previously being tracked into grade level courses in middle school. Quantitative results showed significant increases in students' standardized state test scores when moved to the…

Peer mentoring programs are typically designed to support students transitioning into university. However, recent work has highlighted the importance of supporting transitions through and out of university. The Australian psychology honours year is a particularly stressful period that involves transitioning through university into the research…

This article looks at how membership of a community impacts learning for individuals. Community membership and learning have received much attention from scholars and practitioners alike (for example, in Wolfensberger, 2012; Inkelas, Jessup-Anger, Wawrzynski, & Benjamin, 2007; Wenger, 1998). Specifically, many studies have focused on learning…

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.…

This quasi-experimental, concurrent, mixed method, action research study sought to evaluate how an elective 1-credit course informed by mindfulness and culturally sustaining pedagogy influenced honors students' academic self-efficacy, self-compassion, and their meaning-making about what it means to be an honors student. Theoretical perspectives…

A growing body of international research has highlighted the importance of students studying mathematics at an advanced level. In Ireland, the subject has been assigned a special status with the introduction of an education policy called the Bonus Points Initiative (BPI) in 2012. Students are now awarded an extra 25 points in their final State…

Faculty and administrators often present risk-taking as something honors students must do, but rarely do they take risks themselves. In an ideal situation, communal risk-taking would subvert institutional power dynamics, free students from grade-associated anxiety, and enable them to build dynamic partnerships with faculty. This paper discusses…

Honors colleges have offered an academically rigorous option for growing numbers of diverse students. This study took place at a large, public university that required undergraduate students to complete a thesis to graduate from the honors college. In 2017, 97% of students who began the honors thesis prior to senior year completed it. Thus, the…

Meeting the intellectual needs of high-ability students does not end upon graduation from high school. However, limited attention is paid to the important topic of postsecondary advanced learning in the research literature. In this systematic review, we identified 52 empirical studies published during the past 15 years. Results suggest various…

Honors students are increasingly choosing the community college as a viable alternative to beginning at a four-year college or university, especially given the United States is still emerging from a great recession and student debt is increasing. These high achieving honors students are also expecting an excellent return on their investment in…

This paper describes the development, implementation, and follow up study of a program for undergraduate research in education, student teachers as action researchers (STAR). Students in a new urban education honors program at a large public university were given coursework in action research, developed a research plan in their practicums,…