High-Impact Practices Updating a Required Honors Course and Keeping Honors Relevant at the Same Time

Ryan Voogt, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Lewis Honors College, University of Kentucky
Pearl James, Associate Dean, Lewis Honors College, University of Kentucky

Some Honors colleges and departments have courses required for all honors students. Traditionally, this has often been a “great books” course. Honors faculty and administrators looking to update their required courses--whether to increase student engagement or to make curricular changes-- will be able to discuss ways of approaching this issue with one another after a presentation. The presentation will include a case study of how the Lewis Honors College introduced and improved its required firstyear seminar to make it one of the most beloved honors and university courses at the University of Kentucky. The presentation will consider approaches to (re)building a required course, what kind of maintenance such a course will require, pitfalls to avoid when conceptualizing a required course, the challenges of faculty specialization in a shared or multi-disciplinary course, and considering how Honors education can maintain itself as critical to training and education by its practices as well as an emphasis on interdisciplinarity.

In the workshop portion which follows, discussion facilitators at tables will allow participants to drive further discussion of the raised topics or other topics of discussion related to required courses and Honors.