The National Collegiate Honors Council 2020 Conference (NCHC20) will be held virtually this month. Four associates from Post will be sharing presentations – Linda Kobylarz, Caitlin Grant, Jim Whitley and Beth Johnson.
During this event, there will be an opening plenary event with author and Harvard Professor Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt. Following her opening, there will be on-demand session library, sponsors and vendors sharing information about graduate programs and internship opportunities, scheduled Q&A sessions and virtual networking.
There will be three presentations given by our colleagues. Kobylarz and Grant have recorded their presentation entitled “Imagine More…An Online Honors Program that Connects Minds and Hearts.” The session discusses the implementation of the online honors program at Post University in January 2020 with 30+ courses.
“Building the online honors community goes beyond the classroom by making available honors online chat rooms, a student lounge on Facebook, a LinkedIn honors group, a variety of virtual workshops and coffee chats with other students and the honors program team, and regional face-to-face events,” said Kobylarz.
The presentation, “Opening Big Hearts and Minds to the Strategic Value of Your Honors Program” was recorded by Johnson and Kobylarz. The focus is to highlight the significance of an honors program, since it is often undervalued at some colleges when budgeting plans are made.
“Honors program advocates and higher education administrators have big minds and big hearts when it comes to valuing the success of their students. But these two groups often feel like they are at odds because they look at student success, and the strategy and budget distribution that drives it, through two very different lenses. The result is that honors programs are often underfunded, understaffed, and undervalued at many institutions,” shares Johnson and Kobylarz.
Whitley’s presentation is called “Nurturing Differently-Abled and Exceptional Students.” The addition of the Transitions Program and the Individualized Education Plans at Post will be discussed, explaining how they provide differently-abled students an opportunity to attend college and be set up for success.
“In this discussion, we will share details of the Post University approach to nurturing students, attempt to identify best practices that can be potentially be used by other schools, and consider how roundtable participants might import some of these student-centric measures at their respective schools,” said Whitley.