What is an Honors Instructor at Penn State University?
Guidelines for Schreyer Honors College Teaching Faculty
Position Paper
The purpose of honors education is to provide an intellectually challenging education to highly motivated and advanced undergraduate students. In addition, the vision of the Schreyer Honors College (SHC) is to improve educational practices and to be recognized as a leading force in honors education. Therefore, special care needs to be given to the selection of honors faculty.
Along with high quality and innovative undergraduate instruction, the SHC is charged to see that Schreyer Scholars, who must eventually complete research or creative projects to graduate with honors, are able to gain maximum access to the myriad of academic expertise and institutional networks available at Penn State. The honors course experience contributes in a primary way to meeting this goal. To this end, honors instructors need credentials and employment status that qualify them not only to effectively teach traditional undergraduate course material, but also to teach at an enhanced and accelerated level appropriate for Schreyer Scholars, to provide an entrée to the current research conducted in the discipline, to model inquiry by sharing their own work, and potentially to serve as a thesis supervisor. As a result, Schreyer Scholars should generally be taught by professors who are both excellent researchers and excellent teachers.
While there are many measures of quality for research and teaching, one imperfect yet helpful initial guide for the SHC is to ascertain whether the instructor for an honors course is a tenure-line faculty member. Tenured and tenure-line faculty at Penn State are scholars who are recognized nationally and internationally as experts in their fields. This recognition results from the fact that the products of their research and scholarly creative accomplishment are periodically evaluated and published by academic journals and presses and other appropriate venues outside of the University. The rationale for limiting Honors teaching to these faculty members lies in the fact that the University's promotion and tenure process assures this level of scholarship. Furthermore, our hope is that the Honors courses taught by these faculty members might stem from, center around, or be enhanced by their particular area of research. Thus, such courses will offer SHC scholars the opportunity to work directly with professional scholars who will effectively model the research skills that they will likely need in their own graduate school and professional careers.
Exceptions for non-tenure-line faculty can be made, but it is appropriate and necessary for the SHC to review the specific credentials of non-tenure-line instructors. Non-tenure-line teaching faculty may be consummate teachers, but they must show evidence of an ongoing research agenda or creative accomplishments (as appropriate to the discipline). That said, researchers must also show some evidence of teaching experience or related qualifications. Academically credentialed administrators and other professionals must also be able to provide evidence of being well-rounded scholars.
The prospective non-tenure-line honors instructor/department needs to submit a description of the course with a proposed syllabus, a CV with a brief description of the instructors’ teaching credentials (such as prior courses taught, courses/workshops taken on pedagogy, and related teaching experience), ongoing professional background (such as a research program and/or recent publication), and a brief discussion of how the professional background relates to the course. The proposals from fixed term or adjunct faculty also need to be accompanied by a letter of recommendation from one or more of his/her administrators, i.e., Dean, DAA, Department Head, or Division Head. Each applicant will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and granted clearance to teach one course. Upon positive review of the Honors course evaluations, the instructor will then be approved on a continuing basis.
However, the SHC reserves the right to evaluate and reconsider any faculty member’s involvement in honors instruction.
Penn State’s university faculty senate has described core competencies, activities, and strategies for enhanced learning to include “writing, speaking and other forms of self-expression; information gathering, such as the use of the library, computer and electronic resources, and experimentation or observation; synthesis and analysis in problem solving and critical thinking, including, where appropriate, the application of reasoning and interpretive methods, and quantitative thinking; collaborative learning and teamwork; activities that promote and advance intercultural and/or international understanding; and activities that promote the understanding of issues pertaining to social behavior, scholarly conduct, and community responsibility.” All SHC instructors must be mindful of appropriate enhancements and find ways to continually improve learning in honors coursework.
Many administrators, research faculty, Fixed Term I faculty, and other adjunct faculty have good expertise and much to offer Schreyer Scholars. We welcome their participation in honors education at Penn State along with tenured and tenure-line faculty.
Reviewed and Approved By,
SHC Faculty Advisory Committee:
Clay Calvert
Mark Dirsmith
Terry D. Etherton
Renata Engel
Melinda Kuritzky
Arnold Markley
John Moore
James Pawelczyk
Richard Robinett
Date: March 25, 2004
Questions should be referred to:
Judy Ozment, Associate
Dean
E-mail: o96@psu.edu
Phone: (814) 865-4257
Address: 10 Schreyer Honors College
University Park,
PA 16802
