The next issue of JNCHC (deadline: March 1, 2023) invites research essays on any topic of interest to the honors community.
The issue will also include a Forum focused on the theme “Regime Change in Honors,” in which we welcome perspectives, insights, and analytical narratives about the impact that changes in higher administration have on the success or hardships of honors. We invite essays of roughly 1000-2000 words that consider this theme in a practical and/or theoretical context.
The lead essay for the Forum is by John Zubizarreta, Director Emeritus of the honors program that now bears his name at Columbia College, South Carolina. In “A Defiant Response to Regime Change,” Zubizarreta describes the perils and possibilities that new higher administrators can create for honors programs and colleges. He lays out a range of potential advantages, problems, and responses, suggesting ways that honors directors and deans can make the best of peremptory change or, when necessary, resist it. His focus is always on the well-being of the students, the program or college, the staff, the faculty, the honors administrators, the institution, and, above all, the quality and integrity of education. The backbone of Zubizarreta’s essay is his narrative of the prolonged, tortuous, and eventually successful resistance and revitalization of honors he led at Columbia College with the help of a former president and advocate of honors, along with his colleague who succeeded him as director and scores of loyal alumnae and friends.
Contributors to the Forum on “Regime Change in Honors” may, but are not obliged to, respond directly to Zubizarreta’s essay. Questions that Forum contributors might consider include:
- Describe (or imagine) a strategy for responding to a difficult regime change and suggest how other honors administrators might adapt such a strategy.
- Was Zubizarreta’s resistance worth the emotional toll it took on him and his program? Would it have been worthwhile even if it had failed? Why?
- In adopting a strategy of accommodation or resistance, does being a dean rather than a director provide greater or lesser freedom of choice?
- Imagine a situation where a university or college president demands that the honors program establish a minimum SAT score in order to look competitive in a regional or national context, a mandate that would virtually eliminate the racial diversity of the program. How could a director best respond to such an official directive?
- How should an honors director or dean respond to the growing institutional and national trends to scale back or even eliminate academic programs that are deemed unnecessary toward earning a job-ready degree?
- What role can site visits and external program reviews play in resisting threatening administrative plans for honors?
- When is it fair (or not) for an honors director or dean to involve students in a struggle with higher administration?
- Recount a regime change that has presented you with challenges and describe how you responded. In retrospect, how would you evaluate the effectiveness and integrity of your response?
Information about JNCHC—including the editorial policy, submission guidelines, guidelines for abstracts and keywords, and a style sheet—is available on the NCHC website.
Please send all submissions to Ada Long at adalong@uab.edu.
NCHC journals (JNCHC and HIP) and monographs are included in the following electronic databases: ERIC, EBSCO, Gale Cengage, and UNL Digital Commons. Both journals are listed in Cabell International's Directory of Publishing Opportunities.
