Honors as a Changing Neighborhood

Authors

Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison, University of BaltimoreFollow

Date of this Version

2024

Document Type

Article

Citation

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (2024) 25(1): 11–18

Abstract

Honors programs were conceived for traditional-age suburban middle-class majority-culture students who live on campus or nearby and do not hold full-time jobs or have family responsibilities. While the college population of this century is much more diverse and just as academically capable, first-generation students from traditionally marginalized populations see honors communities as unfamiliar, scary, and unwelcoming neighborhoods. Honors programs seek diversity but practice assimilation with exclusionary admissions policies, curricular inflexibility, and an emphasis on place-dependent community building that invites students to come into honors space rather than taking their offerings out to meet them where they are. Lack of funds or personal flexibility often prohibit full student participation on campus. Honors programs can become more inclusive by reimagining their programs so that they do not casually require extra money and time, hence redefining what constitutes the twenty-first-century honors “neighborhood.”