Honors Goals
Program Goals & Objectives: The following document, prepared by Honors Director Michael Burke, is currently being used to supplant a listing of goals and objectives.
The impact of Honors on Admission, Retention and Graduation: September 4, 2002
BACKGROUND
In the light of ongoing concerns about admission and retention at UMF, and in the context of changes to Honors Programs in the University of Maine System (see below), this may be an appropriate time to investigate the role the Honors Program at UMF is playing in attracting, retaining, and graduating – in a timely fashion – good students. Our conclusion is that Honors plays a significant role in attracting and retaining quality students, and that students who come to Honors are graduating from UMF at a four-year rate which far exceeds the campus as a whole. Having performed this study and drawn these conclusions, Sharon Oliver and I have some suggestions about how to support Honors in continuing this function.
The System-wide context for this discussion is that the Honors Programs in the state are evolving in either of two directions: both the University of Maine and University of Southern Maine are growing larger; in the case of UMaine, becoming almost a freestanding college (though the Director, Charlie Slavin, rejects this characterization), and in the case of USM, growing in size and having a greater presence across the campus (this is in response to an outside review which showed that they were serving only 1% of their population; UMF's program serves about 4-5% of the population). The other direction is towards elimination: both Machias and Fort Kent have effectively suspended their programs. Presque Isle and Augusta seem to be maintaining the status quo, for the moment.
Aside from both pedagogical issues and the other information supplied in this report, and recognizing UMF's desire to position itself relative to other campuses in the System, it makes most sense to have UMF seen as one of those campuses which is strengthening its liberal arts character, rather than one of those which is losing an aspect of that character. Indeed, UMaine and USM will be competing for the very students UMF wants to attract, and Honors may be one of the ways to help compete.
The accompanying statistical chart shows the specific information we found in our review. Record keeping, both for Honors and for the campus as a whole, has been spotty until recently, so these numbers may not be perfect; Kristin Deltano has had to do considerable digging to uncover them, aided by numbers provided by Doug Rawlings. We have much more confidence in the numbers from Fall '99 forward than we do the numbers before then. Still, the results from year to year seem to be consistent, and are compelling.
ADMISSIONS
The Admissions process for incoming students is this: Sharon Oliver reviews student files, and sends me a brief outline of students she thinks are Honors types. We have agreed that students in the top 5-10% of their high school class, and/or who have SATs of 1200 or above, or who show through their academic record in high school (by taking AP or Honors classes, or teacher recommendations) that they might benefit from the Honors experience, are the ones we consider. If I agree with Sharon's assessment, then Admissions sends an invitation to join Honors. If the student is interested, he/she returns the application with a writing sample. The Honors Council reviews the application, and either accepts, rejects, or suggests the student reapply after being at UMF for a semester. In addition, any incoming student who requests an application is considered as well.
One of the interesting results we've found in tracking this process over the last two years ('00-'01 and '01-'02) is that students who have been invited to join Honors are enrolling at UMF at a higher rate than the rest of the applicants, e.g., for the Fall '01 cohort, 87 students received information, and of those, 52 came to UMF (and 27 of them applied to and were accepted into Honors). The yield rate, therefore, among these top students is nearly 60%. This compares with the overall campus yield of 49.3% for that cohort. Again for Fall '02 applicants, we have sent out 88 invitations to Honors thus far, and 52 of those students have sent in deposits or otherwise indicated they are still serious about UMF (the process isn't complete, so we won't have final numbers on enrollments or on applications to Honors for a few weeks), which is almost exactly the same ratio as the previous year. This implies that Honors invitation has an effect on these best students enrolling at UMF, and argues for having an Honors invitation sent out to as many worthy students as we can honorably include, and the wherewithal to serve them when they arrive.
Of the students who were invited to apply to Honors, applied, were accepted
and enrolled, the academic profile is this:
Fall '99, 17 students, SAT average of 1245 (versus 1036 for all Fall '99
enrollees);
Fall '00, 12 students, SAT average of 1224 (versus 1030);
Fall '01, 27 students [largest incoming Honors class in the history of the
Program] SAT average of 1251 (versus 1040 for all Fall '01).
RETENTION
We haven't been able to track the year-by-year retention rates for Honors students until recently, so for the students prior to the cohort of Fall '98 "Retention" rate becomes "Graduation" rate. We are able to track retention from 1998 onward, which shows that 66% of the cohort of '98 are still at UMF, as are 88% of the '99 cohort, and 100% of both the 2000 and 2001 cohorts. This compares with the persistence rate for the campus as a whole for the cohorts from Fall of 1998 through Fall of 2000 of 58.17%, 68.53, and 80.5, in order.
GRADUATION
The four-year graduation rate of students who started in Honors in the years 1992 to 1997 is, in order, 100%, 83.3, 66.6, 50, 75, and 100. The 4.5 year rate (concluding a degree in 4 years plus one semester) for '94-'96 is 100%, 83.3, and 100%. This compares to the four-year graduation rate of the campus as a whole, for the cohorts of 1993-1995 (the only ones currently available), of 40.3%, 29.1%, and 32.3% (bold numbers indicate comparable years).
HONORS PROFILE
As one would expect, the GPA for Honors students is high. The campus-wide GPA as of Spring '02, according to Carla DeGraw, was 3.02. The GPA for Honors students by class, including all their courses (not just Honors) through the end of Fall '01, was 3.53 for first-years, 3.66 for Sophomores, 3.63 for Juniors, and 3.62 for Seniors. We tend to have a higher proportion of out-of-state students as well. Of the current 90 Honors students, 23 are from out-of-state (27.7% of Honors students, compared with 18% of the entire student body).
OTHER
The all-campus statistics above include Honors students, which, given that the numbers for Honors students are in every instance "better" than for the campus as a whole, means that the campus-wide numbers would be lower than they are if Honors students were excluded. It isn't possible to pull Honors students from these statistics in a uniform way (i.e., consistently from each set of numbers), but some decline would be inevitable. The number of students affected by Honors in this discussion is relatively low.
In 1997, for example, we had only four first-year students. The average over the last ten years of first-year cohorts is 13.4 students per year, and we average about 80-90 students who are active in Honors each year. However, recruitment efforts seem to be paying off, as our first-year numbers for the last three classes have gone up to an average of 18 students/year. Ideally, we'd have about 24 new students each year, or 5% of an incoming class of 480.
We have roughly 96 to 120 slots available in Honors classes each year, and enroll about 90 students in Honors classes, as an average over the last ten years. We usually have from 80 to 95 students listed as Honors students at any one time during the year. Recently we conducted a very unscientific survey, to gauge student reactions to Honors. 44% of those responding (25 students) said that Honors was either the main reason or an important part of the reason they stayed at UMF; 68% said that their Honors courses were the best they've had at UMF. Some of the written responses indicated that students wished there were a greater range of courses, encompassing sciences, psychology, and economics.
CONCLUSION
It seems clear that Honors is playing a meaningful role in the recruitment of good students to UMF, playing a role in their retention, and helping to graduate these students in a timely (four year) manner. We are aware of the danger of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here, of assuming that Honors has been the effective cause of students coming to UMF, or staying, solely because Honors has had some contact with them. We realize there are many other factors that go into a student's decision to first enroll, then stay, at an institution, and to graduate in four years. However, the evidence that Honors is having some role seems well-grounded and consistent over a number of years; in a time of increasing competition for the best students, one wouldn't want to assume that Honors doesn't have an important role in all of these areas.
SUGGESTIONS
Thanks to the Betterment Fund Endowment, Honors has a solid base of funding, and costs UMF less to operate than it did ten years ago ($33,096 in 1992-93, approximately $32,230 for 2002-2003, without an inflation adjustment; see Appendix #2). We are able to run the program successfully on the current funding arrangement, and offer the occasional exceptional experience (such as Dan Gunn's trip to Ireland last year with the Joyce Seminar). However, we are always looking for ways to be even more attractive to these top students. For instance, next year we will begin a one-credit writing course, HON 112, which will be attached to HON 101 to ensure that all first-year Honors students who haven't tested out of ENG 100 will get careful attention paid to their writing. In addition, we have a section of LIA set up for Honors students. We'd also like to offer an Honors Science Foundation course in the Spring of '03, which Jean Doty believes can possibly be staffed on a regular basis. And this year, we should have offered two sections of HON 101 in the Fall, since we had such a large first-year class; our experience has been that those students who take 101 in their first semester are not only more likely to stay in the program, but more likely to stay at UMF.
Our ability to offer courses within our current budget is limited by the willingness of a department to release a faculty member to teach the course in-load (see Appendix #1). I work with Chairs to permit these releases, but departments have their own needs, and if the professor must be replaced for the sake of the major, then Honors must pay the cost, or, if the only way the professor can offer the course is as an overload, I am similarly obliged. This makes it difficult for us to offer ten courses per year, which would be ideal. For example, this year we had to cancel a very promising course because the endowment couldn't cover the cost of overloads and replacements, some of which occurred at the last moment (that is, after an agreement was in place that overload/replacement wouldn't be needed), and next year I can already see that we will probably be able to offer no more than seven or eight courses, because of the need for replacements for faculty teaching in Honors.
I have scheduled seven courses already, and have only $1614 left in the instruction budget for any others. If we had increased funding of $6000-8000 per year we could – depending on the recruitment each year and the number of in-load instructors I am able to secure – be able to offer a total of ten courses (including as many as two HON 101s in the Fall), the HON 112 course as needed, and fund the programming I have wanted to try but have been unable to: a capstone experience for HON 101 students of a trip to Greece, or at least to the British Museum; an annual trip to New York or Boston, or Montreal; attendance at national and regional Honors conferences; and guest speakers and lecturers.
Sharon Oliver and I have talked about the benefit of offering scholarships to Honors students. However, scholarships are costly and may be contrary to the philosophy of the campus. Instead, helping Honors provide exceptional programming might help us attract and keep more of those who are among UMF's top students, at a cost considerably less than the cost of scholarships.
Finally, I should mention that this programming would be available to any student, potentially, because unlike a scholarship which is attached to a particular person, these opportunities would be programmatic, and anyone who is able to join the program would be eligible; indeed, we don't exclude students from taking any of our courses, if there is room in them.
APPENDIX
1) Funding for Instruction Instructional budget for '02-'03 is $25,000
($22,000 from Betterment Fund; $3,000 from campus) The estimated costs for the 7
planned courses in '02-'03 are $8386 – Director's salary $3000 – stipends for
faculty $12,000 – approximate, for replacement costs for four instructors Total:
$23,386 Remainder: $1,614 to be used for an 8th course
2) Campus support 1992-93 $33,096 administrative asst: $3904 operating
budget: $8,031 salaries: $21,161 2002-2003 $32,230 administrative assistant:
$7700 operating budget: $9,198 director's salary: $12,332 – Betterment Fund pays
40%, campus pays 60% stipends and/or instruction:
