What is the University Honors Program?

The University Honors Program is the honors college at Portland State University; it is meant for students who plan, after graduation from college, to go on to graduate school or to professional school—in other words, to work toward the Ph.D., the M.D., the J.D., or any of the other advanced degrees. Once admitted to the Program, students are excused from the general university requirements and instead complete the undergraduate degree by the combination of work with the honors college and in their departmental majors.

How does it work?
Once admitted, students take part in the nationally-recognized core curriculum of the honors college and in work appropriate to their chosen academic major. Since we encourage our students to immerse themselves in their chosen academic departments, the core curriculum is designed so that the largest commitment of time to the honors college falls in the first two years; after that, students are increasingly free to focus on work in advanced courses in the major. In the junior and senior years, honors college students are expected to complete at least two upper-division seminars in the Program and to write the senior thesis (usually under the mentorship of a senior faculty member from the academic major department).

Celebrating Forty Years
2009 marks the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the University Honors Program at Portland State University. In recognition of this milestone, we reflect here on the Program’s ongoing innovations and accomplishments in curriculum development, student learning outcomes and assessment, and fulfillment of the University’s core mission.

History
The University Honors Program was established in 1969 by the State Board of Higher Education on the recommendation of Portland State University’s Faculty Senate and administration. Its purpose was two-fold: to provide a demanding and rigorous alternative general education track for students who planned to pursue graduate or professional school, and to serve as a “laboratory” for the development of innovative and interdisciplinary coursework.

The Program has excelled at the first element of this mandate, offering a pioneering core curriculum to thousands of students across the range of majors offered by the University. Many of the program’s alumni have been accepted to highly regarded institutions for their post-graduate education, and gone on to successful careers in many fields. The Program has also instituted key programs to augment the core curriculum, particularly the Visiting Scholars Project and the Washington, D.C. internships.

The Program has also excelled at the second element of its mandate. In the mid-1970s, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $375,000 grant to Honors faculty to support the development of a new interdisciplinary, lower-division course; the current “Studies” sequence for freshmen and sophomores in University Honors is the continually updated and adapted successor of the course resulting from that grant. In addition, faculty from the Program were the principal investigators on a $176,000 1996 joint NSF/NEH curricular development grant that resulted in the design of a cluster of courses for University Studies, PSU’s main undergraduate general education track.

“I doubt it would be an understatement to say that participating in the University Honors Program changed my life. Before enrolling, I had a very successful career as a syndicated cartoonist, but I realized my knowledge base was rather patchwork. Professors Lawrence Wheeler and Michael Reardon actually taught me how to think academically, took the time to create a rigorous atmosphere of excellence, and, in so doing, they now have my undying gratitude--as does Portland State University. Having served since graduation on the Alumni Board, and in various other alumni capacities, I always make time to tell the PSU story to anyone who will listen. In my view, the University Honors Program is one of the crown jewels of academic life at Portland State. I will always look back on my experience there as one of the most challenging and satisfying eras of my career.” - Jack Ohman, UHP Alumnus BA in History, 1999

University Honors continues to innovate and anticipate new arenas of scholarly inquiry. Indeed, the subject at the heart of our curriculum – the development and rise to dominance of experimental science – speaks directly to the questions of political and ecological organization in our society at the heart of the contemporary focus on sustainability. In 2007, after careful discussion with our dean and the provost, we sought a new faculty colleague who would address issues of sustainability through her or his expertise in the history and theory of cities, recognizing the fundamental centrality of the urban to any serious engagement of sustainability. We were delighted when Prof. Hillary Jenks joined us in 2008 to help us carry forward this project.

Learning Outcomes
The Program curriculum’s rich, varied, and robust approach to general undergraduate education – the “Studies” core, upper-division coursework, Washington, D.C. internship, and baccalaureate thesis – provides an integrated framework of cumulative intellectual and practical experiences that enable students to achieve key learning outcomes. Within the department, these learning objectives focus on:

• Providing a rich environment for exploration of the vital tools of research, analysis, and interpretation. This is achieved through a set of exercises in hermeneutics, analysis, and expression integrated into discrete writing assignments. Every course in University Honors is writing-intensive. The freshman course emphasizes training in summary of argument, textual explication, and situating a work within a “knowledge genealogy,” while the sophomore course focuses on the skills required to research, identify, and define a scholarly “discourse community” (a rehearsal of the skills required to produce the prospectus for their baccalaureate thesis). In addition, students in the Program are required to make oral presentations of their work at various points in the curriculum, both individually and in groups.

• Engaging with broad learning domains to comprehend how specific inquiries are situated within larger domains; and critically defining disciplinary questions. In the first-year course, an examination of the emergence of a single domain is carried out through writing assignments and a discussion of key primary texts. In the second-year course, this examination of knowledge-in-context is augmented by individual students’ year-long research projects on “discourse community.” Throughout the curriculum, each cohort not only forms a learning community, but is also asked to theoretically engage with the ways in which the professions themselves constitute distinct learning communities.

• Developing a historical perspective on systems of knowledge production. This is achieved by means of the relationship between the first- and second-year lower-division core curriculum. In the first year, students examine the emergence of experimental science in the seventeenth century from within the pre-existing paradigms of courtly culture; the cumulative success of the natural sciences is then charted up through the early twentieth century. In the second year, the cohort begins study of the classical age, inspecting the emergence of components of the courtly system, until they return to the starting point of the seventeenth century. Students participate in a discovery of the evidentiary archive through a critical examination and discussion of key primary texts.

• Exploring the concrete career experience of academic and professional careers. In the first year of the core, students examine primary texts related to the construction of intellectual disciplines and professions. In the second year, the year-long research project studies how a given discipline frames inquiries and rigorous outcomes. During the Spring quarter of that year, students split into separate liberal arts and technical/professional tracks than explore in greater depth the shaping of the disciplines and the development and practice of the professions.

These objectives embody the “Essential Learning Outcomes” identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

“I regard my experience in the University Honors Program as one of the foremost aspects of my undergraduate education. The skills fostered during the freshman and sophomore years not only taught me to confront diverse bodies of knowledge in a productive and systematic fashion but would later help me to frame the historical and contemporary interests of work specific to my field. Upper division seminars and the senior thesis project provided valuable opportunities to work closely with faculty while developing essential research skills and challenging me to write in a concise and professional manner. The professors of the Honors Program are gifted instructors and fine scholars who, over the course of four years, have also become respected mentors. Their guidance and patience contribute much to the personal character of this rigorous, intensive and highly rewarding program.” - Cassie Miura, UHP Alumna BA in English, 2008

Assessment
Since its beginning, the Program has taken its responsibilities for the assessment of student learning seriously and engaged the corollary responsibility of shaping coursework to the particular needs of a defined learning community. The faculty’s work actually begins before students arrive at PSU, during evaluation of the two writing samples that are required as part of the application dossier. These materials are considered in order to determine what kinds of work supplementary and complementary to the core curriculum may be necessary. In addition, an evaluation is made of the student’s anticipated major or career interest in comparison with work achievements in high school (or college work, for the limited number of transfer students admitted).

In each quarter of work undertaken in the honors college, students are expected to operate in close consultation with Program faculty and submit multiple drafts of their work for intensive review and feedback. For example, in the fall quarter of their first year, students read the text that will be the subject of that term’s assignments independently from the “main” readings of the course, providing them early on with an experience of responsibility for individual preparation of complex material related to the goals of the course. They then complete two preparatory projects – submitting a set of reading notes on the text and an annotated list of the evidence on which the text is constructed – followed by three full drafts of the final assignment for the term, a review of that same text which emphasizes summary of argument, description of the evidence, analysis of the fit between the two, and a discussion of the author’s training and relevant influences. As a result, each student will be able to produce at the end of their tenure in the Program a cumulative portfolio of their work, demonstrating their steadily improving grasp of a body of knowledge and a set of research and writing tools. In addition, each of these integrated assignments, over the span of the entire curriculum, rehearses the skills required for the student to write his or her baccalaureate thesis.

Several alterations of the core curriculum have resulted from this assessment of student work, attitudes, and levels of competency. The shift from a required “senior paper” to the baccalaureate thesis in the late 1970s was one such result, as was the more recent implementation of a two-track system in the final quarter of the sophomore year to address the relationship of disciplines to the professions for students specializing in pre-professional and technical fields.

“I have found my experience in the honors program to be one of the most valuable to my academic career at Portland State that I have had. Through the constructive comments of the program’s faculty members that I have worked with, I feel that I have greatly improved as a scholar. Their curriculum and teaching methods allowed me to experiment for myself what works and what does not in academic writing. This has been incredibly helpful to my academic development without constricting my personal thought or style of prose. Likewise, the interactions that I have had with other students in the program have also greatly assisted me. With a spirit of camaraderie rather than competition, the sharing of ideas in and outside of class has been as beneficial to me in many ways as the classes themselves. The privilege I had to intern at the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives was a great honor and an incredible experience. Not only was I able to have the opportunity to learn archival and museum research first hand, but I formed acquaintances and friendships with researchers, contractors, and anthropologists from diverse academic and cultural backgrounds. I feel as though the experiences that I have had through the honors college have given me more confidence in my preparedness to undertake the rigorous expectations of graduate school.” - Jade Luiz, UHP Student Anthropology Major

Fulfillment of the University's Mission
The mission of Portland State University is to enhance the intellectual, social, cultural, and economic qualities of urban life by providing access throughout the life span to a quality liberal education for undergraduates and an appropriate array of professional and graduate programs especially relevant to metropolitan areas. Successful realization of this mission rests on five values:

1) LEARNING AND DISCOVERY
University Honors promotes learning and discovery at every stage of its curriculum. In particular, the commitment by Program faculty to mentor and advise students through all four years of their education, support students’ post-graduate plans (for example, through letters of recommendation), and direct students to research, publication, scholarship, and other professional opportunities both within and beyond PSU demonstrates the Program’s commitment to this core element of the University’s mission. Our students hail from regions as diverse as the Middle East, South Asia, and Eastern Europe, while the scholarly production of our faculty explores medieval and modern Europe, Asia, and the transnational ethnic and immigrant communities of the United States.

2) ACCESS TO LEARNING
University Honors is a key avenue of access and equity for PSU students. On the basis of most indicators (other than quality of high school coursework and performance on standardized college entrance exams), students in the honors college are representative of PSU’s population; they are frequently first-generation college students, and often experiencing economic restrictions or family obligations that restrict their range-of-choice in undergraduate education. The Program makes available to these students a rigorous and demanding curriculum that enables them to construct highly competitive portfolios for application to prestigious graduate and professional schools.

3) CLIMATE OF MUTUAL RESPECT
Students in the honors college form a learning community that persists through several years of shared coursework. As such, their scholarly work is subject to both peer and faculty review, in individual as well as group projects and presentations. Both positive and negative models of such review are examined in coursework. Classroom discussion, while vigorous, thus adheres to strict evidentiary requirements and standards of mutual respect; it is expected that all student work will be addressed in a spirit of sincere collegiality and that critiques will be framed constructively. Issues of ethical obligation and civic responsibility underpin the Program’s curriculum, from the first-year inspection of the premises of experimental science to the critical encounter in upper-division courses with modes of observation, representation, and difference.

4) OPENNESS AND REFLECTION
The Program has evolved over the past forty years through a transparent process of reflection, assessment, and change. Our approach to both the Program’s structure and curriculum thus adheres to the model of critique and revision that we teach to our students. Within our curriculum, we reflect with our students on the social construction of knowledge, how professional discourse is organized and framed, and the ways in which disciplinary knowledge both shapes its agents in particular ways and also represents interests allied with underlying social forces.

5) COMMUNITY AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Through its integrated curriculum, particularly its program of coursework and the Washington, D.C. internship, the Program shapes students into reflective, informed, civically engaged knowledge professionals prepared to serve and shape the city. The Visiting Scholars Project brings international scholars to campus for both public talks, which benefit the community at large, and in-depth discussion with upper-division seminar students.