LIBERAL ARTS WITH AN URBAN FOCUS
The interdisciplinary Honors curriculum is designed to provide students with writing, research and critical thinking skills that prepare them for graduate or professional school.
“We’re trying to demystify the ways researchers and scholars read, write and think together,” Glascott said.
The program’s core curriculum replaces students’ general education requirements. Honors students develop research skills and deep knowledge of the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities all presented within the context of the city of Portland.
One of the amazing advantages of Portland State is its location in this incredible city where there’s so much opportunity.
“One of the amazing advantages of Portland State is its location in this incredible city where there’s so much opportunity,” Glascott said.
This urban-focused curriculum may take the form of measuring trees, setting up cameras to monitor urban wildlife, or sifting through the archives at the Oregon Historical Society.
In their third year, Honors students can get credit for experiences outside of traditional courses, such as research opportunities and internships. Since fall 2016, Honors students have completed 242 internships with organizations including the Northwest Film Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Immigration Counseling Service, the U.S. Embassy in Norway, the American Councils for International Education in Azerbaijan and many others.
Two study-abroad trips are available through the Honors College: a spring break sustainability seminar in Borneo and a month-long summer program in London. For many students, these study-abroad opportunities are their first time out of the country.
In their final year, Honors students apply what they’ve learned by designing their own in-depth thesis project. All Honors students conduct a research project, present their research and write a thesis that is published in PDX Scholar (pdxscholar.library.pdx. edu), the PSU Library’s online journal.
“My experience in the Honors College was so valuable because it offered a unique perspective outside of my architecture major,” said Jonathon Brearley, an Honors College graduate now pursuing a master’s in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The curriculum expanded his “understanding of architecture’s role in the academy and the world.”
A CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY
Honors students and alumni frequently point to community as one of the most vital elements of their Honors education.
“My favorite part about Honors is the close community,” White said. “Every once in a while, I’ll be in a degree-specific course, and I’ll find out that a peer is in Honors. Before even speaking to them, there is already a foundation of mutual classes, professors and friends.”
It would be very easy for a group of high-achieving students to have a community that was competitive, but our students are really rooting for each other.
To help build that camaraderie, Honors students share a student lounge and computer lab, a peer tutoring writing program and a dedicated faculty adviser. They also have the opportunity to live in Honors housing at Stephen Epler Hall. A few years ago, the College started a Community Fellows program to strengthen these bonds even more. Fellows—sophomores, juniors and seniors who are paid a quarterly scholarship for this work—organize events like movie nights and midterm de-stress parties.
“The students are really hard-working and generous to each other. That’s one thing I really admire,” Glascott said. “It would be very easy for a group of high-achieving students to have a community that was competitive, but our students are really rooting for each other.”
A TRANSFORMATIVE HISTORY
Honors education at Portland State has undergone various transformations over the past 50 years. It once had no required coursework; now there is a rigorous Honors-specific curriculum. The thesis once was optional; now it is required. The first Honors class was quite small; this year there are early 800 Honors students in 49 majors. Among the current Honors students, 27 percent are first generation-college students; 34 percent are from racially or ethnically marginalized groups; and 39 percent are Pell Grant-eligible. Federal Pell Grants are limited to students from low-income families. The number of transfer students in the Honors College is also growing—they now make up 30 percent of the Honors student body. (See the sidebar “Welcoming transfer students.”)
“Those are extraordinary numbers for an honors college, and they make us quite distinct,” Glascott said.
PSU’s Honors College has a higher percentage of both first-generation and historically underrepresented students than any other honors program in the state. Oregon State University’s Honors College population is 8 percent first-generation students and 10 percent historically underrepresented students. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon includes 16 percent first-generation students and 23 percent students of color.
Lawrence Wheeler, humanities and applied linguistics faculty, directed PSU’s Honors program from 1992 to 2011 and was himself a member of the first Honors class.
“To have taken part in developing projects that led students to realize that they could work with great competence in a demanding curriculum preparing them for graduate study, that they could engage in meaningful dialogue with internationally-known scholars, that they could thrive in the rigorous atmosphere of internationally-known laboratories, clinics, museums and a host of other institutions, has been an indescribable privilege,” he said.
Showing students that they are capable of doing high-level work in a rigorous academic environment can have lasting impact. The 2018 Strada-Gallup Alumni Survey, which polled college graduates from across the United States, found that college students who strongly agreed that they were challenged academically were more than twice as likely to say that their education was worth the cost and more than three times as likely to say that they were prepared for life after college than alumni who did not feel they were challenged.
A LASTING IMPACT
Alumni outcomes suggest that the Honors College succeeds in its mission of transforming lives. According to exit surveys, 30 percent of Honors College graduates go directly into graduate or professional programs and another 45 percent plan to enroll within two years of graduation.
But to the students who live the experience, it’s about more than numbers.
As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations, Melanie Billings-Yun—the student who scraped together savings from her minimum wage job to attend PSU and join the second year of the Honors program—will speak at an alumni panel this fall. (The celebration has since been postponed due to coronavirus health and safety measures.) Students from different generations of the program will come together to talk about what they’ve done since graduating and how the Honors experience affected their life paths.
“I will forever be grateful to PSU and the Honors College for building that bridge for me,” Billings-Yun said. “And, I am sure, for so many others.”
SUMMER ALLEN is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications.