Honors in Practice
The Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College invites faculty to propose a course or sequence of courses that could be used by honors students from any discipline to complete a practicum capstone. These practica could address an emerging field of study in the instructor’s discipline or tackle a local, regional, national or global issue. Courses can be anywhere between 1-3 hours, and we would want to offer the course in the 2023-24 or 2024-2025 school year in fall, spring or a summer session. The Honors College particularly encourages experiential-learning courses. The Honors College will also consider proposals for special topics courses in any field, especially ones that span multiple disciplines. Preference will be shown to proposals where the instructors are willing to work with students after the class term to turn the classwork into honors capstones.
The SMBHC actively seeks classes with an “experiential learning” component that engages students in a crucial problem facing our greater community. Climate change, water security, healthcare disparities, migration, and political division dominate the headlines. Propose a course that challenges students to engage the tough questions surrounding a global, national, or local issue and how they can work to solve it.
We also seek courses that foster an engagement of diversity of thought, experiences, and identities within any field. We are looking for creative curricular engagement with fundamental questions posed by a DEI commitment: from public health inequities to comparative economic disparities to ethical challenges in community development to philosophical and political debates about institutional commitments to DEI.
Submission: By March 24, email your proposal to honors@olemiss.edu. We will select a number of those proposals to support with a summer stipend for course development during summer 2023. We will award $5,000 to develop a new course or $2,500 to adapt an existing course. We will work with those faculty proposers and their department chairs to determine when the new courses will be offered over the next two academic years.
Proposal: Write the proposal as you wish, but keep it to two pages maximum (single-spaced). Please help us see the following:
- exactly what course you would like to teach; include a working title
- something of how you would teach it, e.g.,
- How will you ensure that students engage in active learning at an honors level?
- If you are thinking “experiential learning,” what is the question that will guide your course? How will you combine rigorous academics with exploration through field experiences?
- when would you like to or have to teach it: Fall, Spring, or Summer, 2023-24 or 2024-25?
- any significant budget needs, e.g.,
- Does the course need the additional expertise of a co-team teacher?
- Will it involve field work or travel of some sort?
- Do you anticipate bringing in guest speakers from off-campus?
- Approval by your department chair or dean, noting whether the course will be taught in-load or as an overload.
Selection:
We will offer a limited number of stipends:
- We will only commit to courses we think will attract a sufficient number of honors students.
- While the SMBHC has to consider budget for course offerings, don’t let “budget” restrict your dreaming.
- It helps if a course draws interest from multiple departments, not just the SMBHC.
- It helps if you are thinking of something with “wow” factors (we enjoy being jealous of what our students get to do).
Academic FAQS:
Will this course be a part of my current teaching load or overload when I teach it? We would lobby hard for the course to be part of your regular teaching load in the semester it is offered, but we have to work with the needs of your department.
Will the course be housed in my department or in honors? It would be ideal, but not required, for your course to bear a departmental number. While a departmental course number may be beneficial in drawing student interest (particularly counting the class toward major hours), below are possible honors course numbers:
- Hon 399, Special Topics in Honors: 1-3 credits; seminar format.
- Hon 420, Honors Experiential Learning: 1-3 credits; students work in teams to understand and respond to problems or opportunities in regional, national, or international communities. Topics vary. The course combines significant field experience with robust academic exploration of contexts and methodologies for response.
- May I co-teach this course? If your topic is interdisciplinary, certainly, look around campus for a co-teacher, but, if expertise is not available here, your co- teacher might be someone who teaches for another university. Your class might even be jointly offered on another campus, with shared sessions taught on-line or via distance learning technology.
- What if only a handful of honors students sign up for the class? If at least 7 honors students have registered for the class, it will be opened to non-honors students with at least a 3.00 GPA. If the class involves student travel, however, the SMBHC would subsidize travel only for the honors students.
We will award a limited number of stipends to as wide a range of faculty-driven concerns and approaches as we can manage. We are eager to see what you propose. If you have questions or want to discuss ideas, please contact Dean Ethel Scurlock at eyoungmi@olemiss.edu, Associate Dean John Samonds at jsamonds@olemiss.edu, or Associate Dean for the Capstone Timothy Yenter at tpyenter@olemiss.edu.