University Honors Committee

The University Honors Committee met several times during the fall semester. The primary topic of discussion was the Honors Assessment Project, which asked both current Honors students and alums to evaluate their Honors experience. The results are finally in, and the next step for the Committee will be to communicate our findings to a wider audience and provide actionable recommendations based on the data. Our plan for the spring is to develop a workshop for the 2010 Teaching and Learning Symposium to be held May 19 & 20. This session would provide interested faculty and staff with an overview of the Assessment results and would facilitate discussion about ways to achieve the kind of enriching and challenging learning environment that Honors is all about. You can learn more about the Teaching and Learning Symposium at http://www.learning.wisc.edu/tlsymposium/index.html

Another recurring subject of discussion was the new Letters & Science Honors Admissions Policy. Invitations to apply for L&S Honors were formerly sent to prospective students who met particular academic criteria. Under the new policy, which was first implemented for the 2008-2009 schoolyear, all L&S admits are invited to apply. Data from the past two years shows that this policy change is already having a substantial impact. Fewer applications have been submitted: the past two years averaged 509 applications, compared with an average of 716 applications for the five years prior to the change. While a majority of applicants had previously been Wisconsin residents, the past two years have seen an applicant pool that is two-thirds out-of-state. If you are interested in seeing more data or hearing potential explanations for these trends, please contact me via email: cklynch2@wisc.edu.

I look forward to another great semester with Shared Gov! See you all soon!