Excellence, Innovation and Ingenuity in Honors Education

by Graeme Harper (Author, Editor)

How does the pursuit of an undergraduate honors education support excellence, innovation and ingenuity? This book offers examples of these things as they occur in honors colleges and programs throughout the USA. However, it additionally throws light on questions of how education generally (and in this case, particularly higher education) impacts on what we can do to contribute to our pool of human knowledge, to support individual and social aspiration, to empower creativity and invention, and, indeed, to make positive individual and communal futures through education. In many ways, the writers here explore the contribution of honors education to the world beyond honors. However, equally, they are investigating honors education, from the inside, and contemplating how they can make this aspect of education fundamentally a home of innovative and ingenious practices. The range of discussion in this book stretches from considering active engagement with the global to enhancing approaches to leadership and leadership cultivation, and from applying distinctive styles of thinking to embracing and developing outstanding types of community partnerships. The volume discusses what those in honors education are doing to live up to the promise the ideal of honors popularizes and is said to exemplify.

About the Author
Graeme Harper is Dean of the Honors College at Oakland University, Michigan, USA. Previously holding positions in Texas and Alabama, he spent a number of years in the UK, where he founded the National Institute for Excellence in the Creative Industries. He holds doctorates from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, and from the University of East Anglia, UK. As a member of the Research Committee and the Business and Community Engagement Committee of the Joint Information Systems Committee, he assessed projects engaged in developing innovative educational technologies. From 2003 to 2015, he served as a research evaluator at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, awarding graduate and research project funding. Currently Vice-Chair of the At-Large Division at the Council on Undergraduate Research, his latest book about honors is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Honors Education (2018).