The Honors Program should continuously examine its approaches to attracting and retaining high-quality students.
Objective
Promote Higher Honors Awareness On Campus
The 2010-11 increase in applications (and eventual memberships) from current students was gratifying, signifying that our attempts to increase the on-campus awareness of honors are succeeding. During this year, we will capitalize on this increased awareness but then turn our focus to a more targeted set of initiatives designed to confront and correct student misconceptions about honors education and honors requirements.
KPI
Increased Promotions Aimed At Raising Applications From Current SHSU Students
The indication of increased visibility comes through the completion of the initiatives. The success of these promotion initiatives will be indicated by tabulating the percentage of increase in applications from candidates currently enrolled at Sam Houston (rather than beginning freshmen or transfer students). A second measure should be the number of applicants accepted into the program. A final measure would be the number of minority applicants making application to the program.
Having reached a peak level of applications from current students, we seek to keep the pressure on in that area, to test the efficacy of our ongoing methods, and to avoid a falling off of successful recruiting from within the student body.
Result
Criterion Exceeded For 2011-12
The Honors College has retained several of our previous successful initiatives for promoting the Honors College to current students, including the Honors College video display in Academic Building IV. We added an Honors College banner hung from Academic Building IV and several other initiatives. We succeeded in retaining the previous levels of applicants from current students. In 2011-12, we added 55 new SHSU students, which equals the record number from the previous year and validates our initiatives. In addition, we increased the number of Hispanic and African-American males applying to and accepted into the program.
Action
Retain Successful Initiatives
We are gratified to have stayed with this effort. The ongoing nature of the 2011-12 success validates our initiatives and charts our course for future actions.
Goal
Enhance The Overall Honors Educational Experience
The honors program should strive to provide avenues for academic and scholarly fulfillment both within and beyond the honors curriculum
Objective
Expand And Enhance Honors Involvement In Undergraduate Research
In order to grow its role as an educational leader on campus and to assume the responsibilities of becoming a college, the Honors College should strive to expand research opportunities and support for honors students as well as to become the center for undergraduate research at the university, both within and beyond the Honors College.
KPI
Increased Participation In The Undergraduate Research Symposium
The 2010 and 2011 Undergraduate Research Symposiums established the Honors College as a campus leader in undergraduate research. The number of participants (across the colleges and the disciplines) was gratifying, so we turned our attention away from numbers and toward enhancing the symposium experience for presenters, faculty moderators, and audience members.
Our criteria will be to establish a baseline of three significant improvements to the previous year’s Symposium experience and a significant uptick in positive post-Symposium evaluations.
Result
The 2012 URS: A Significantly Improved Symposium Experience
To increase our chances of these improvements, we began planning early, with our first planning meeting held on July 21, with full participation from both faculty and students. The three most significant enhancements for the 2012 URS were (1) awards for outstanding papers and presentations, (2) significantly enhanced online registration process, and (3) enhancements in availability and usability of presentation technology. Four $500 awards were made, two to the outstanding presentations and two to outstanding poster presentations. We met with the Instructional Technology division to secure improvements in our online registration mechanism and in the availability of laptops and support personnel during the conference. These enhancements were borne out specifically in both the smooth operation of the symposium itself and in the increased number of positive (and decreased number of negative) comments on post-Symposium evaluation forms.
Action
Retain Expansion And Improvement Initiatives For The URS
While the URS was a better experience for the presenters and the participants, we have already held an assessment and planning meeting for next year's event. We will explore ways to retain the improvements we established. We will target the low-participating colleges and departments. We look forward to an even better event next year, and this year's success solidified our presence as a major promoter of undergraduate research here at SHSU.
Objective
Clarify Honors Requirements And Expectations
With the growth of the Honors College our ability to disseminate information efficiently to Honors students has come under real strain. Our objective is to launch several initiatives to combat this failure of information.
KPI
Enhance And Improve Efforts To Share Information With Students
We have been alarmed to discover fairly significant numbers of students laboring under misconceptions about Honors policies, procedures, and practices. This seriously inhibits our students’ opportunities to complete a productive Honors experience. We must take measures to combat misinformation which in some cases diminishes (or confuses) the Honors experience and in worse cases interferes with the completion of the requirements.
The first measurement of our success will be to produce a substantial number of clarifying documents to honors students. The second indicator will be a reduction in the number of questions about the policies, practices, and procedures covered in these documents
Result
The First Annual Honors Exit/Graduation Survey
Besides designing exit surveys that helped us understand some of the communications difficulties, we launched several initiatives to enhance communication with our students. Among these was a ramped up advising system (in which we advised every honors student every semester), the revision and/or generation of several “frequently-asked-questions” documents, efforts to make direct contact with individual students about program issues, an enhanced informational meeting (the “Mandatory Meeting”), and mentorships between Honors Ambassadors and incoming freshmen.
Action
Actions Dictated By Survey Results
Several of these documents were written, vetted, disseminated, and explained in a variety of forums. The number of questions about such issues as community service and seminar requirements was reduced substantially. While it is difficult to make attributions, our retention rate increased significantly during 2011-12. Our efforts at enhancing (and clarifying) the Honors experience through enhanced communications efforts seems to have been successful.