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Faculty needed to teach honors seminars
Staff from UB’s increasingly selective Honors College yesterday asked the Faculty Senate Executive Committee for help in finding faculty members to teach first-year honors seminars that students must take to complete the honors program.
Honors scholars must take two such classes, one in each semester of their freshman year. The seminars, in which professors teach small groups of students, cover a broad array of topics. Titles this semester range from “Genome Annotation” and “Philosophy in Literature” to “Credit: From Main Street to Wall Street” and “Visual Imagination.”
In a presentation to the FSEC, Clyde “Kipp” Herreid, director of the Honors College, and Krista Hanypsiak, administrative director, said securing commitments from professors to teach the seminars is a challenge.
A handful of faculty members, including distinguished professionals in the Buffalo Niagara community, offer the courses pro bono. But most of the classes are taught “on-load” by UB professors who must convince administrators that releasing them to teach an honors seminar is a worthy endeavor—a difficult task at a time when the financial crisis is eating away at departmental budgets.
Some FSEC members responded to the Honors College plea, saying they would do what they could to help with problem. Peter Nickerson, a committee member and professor of pathology who is teaching a seminar, encouraged his colleagues to consider doing the same.
“You have to get somebody who’s already taught, and they’ll tell you how fun it is to deal with these students. These students are bright. I’ve learned a lot,” said Nickerson, whose seminar, “What They Died From,” discusses diseases that have afflicted prominent individuals, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Al Capone.
The Honors College helps undergraduates studying in fields across the university build connections with faculty members and peers, serving as a small community within a large research institution.
In addition to the freshman seminars, honors scholars must complete an honors colloquium and six “honors experiences”—studying abroad and completing graduate coursework or research are among options—during their time at UB.
The program helps ensure that intellectually curious students enjoy a rigorous academic schedule while spending time outside the classroom, said Herreid, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.
As of the end of 2009, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences claimed the most freshman honors scholars, with more than 90 such scholars intending to pursue majors in each decanal unit.
This year, for the first time, the Honors College could not make admission offers to all eligible candidates due to space constraints, Hanypsiak said. To be competitive for consideration, applicants must have at least an unweighted high school average of 93 and a combined SAT critical reading and math score of 1300 or an ACT score of 29. The increasing selectivity comes even as the college’s annual incoming class has grown from 250 students to 325 in recent years.
The college helps UB successfully compete with such rivals as Ivy League universities to recruit top applicants.
Freshmen with at least an unweighted high school average of 95 and a combined SAT score of 1470 or an ACT score of 33 are eligible for the university’s Presidential Scholarship, which gives in-state honors students $20,000 per year and more money to those from out of state. This year, Hanypsiak said, the Honors College made Presidential Scholarship offers to 43 students and expects that 62 percent will accept, following patterns in previous admissions cycles.
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