NCHC’s Honors Semesters Committee has generated more than twenty full Semesters that feature experiential learning through a combination of interrelated courses integrated by a focus on the specific setting of each project. Semesters are offered regularly to invite Honors students nationally into a learning experience away from their own campus to sites abroad and in the United States. Students earn transferable college credit as they combine field studies, research, internships, seminars, and a living-learning immersion that taps the resources of a Semester’s location as it builds a community of inquiry.

The Honors Semester Committee also sponsors Faculty Institutes. These Institutes provide professional development opportunities for faculty interested in understanding the underlying design and assessment principles of this form of active learning The Institutes are exercises in site-specific, place-based learning, and offer workshops to participants who want to design adaptations of NCHC’s projects for their own campus or for foreign-study sites.

Past Honors Semesters have been in Washington, D.C., the Grand Canyon, New York City, El Paso, Appalachia, the Maine Coast, Iowa, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Greece, the Czech Republic, Spain, and the Southeast coast of the United States, on topics ranging from local culture to global concerns.

A listing of past Honors Semesters participants is available here.

Alumni of the very first NCHC Honors Semester -- the Washington Bicentennial Semester  -   http://www.wbs76.org

NCHC’s Honors Semesters Committee undertakes several related projects throughout the year. Primary among them are:

City as Text™
Sometimes called CAT, and broadened into Place as Text to encourage applications of this approach to active learning in various settings, City as Text™ refers to structured explorations of environments and ecosystems. Designed as on-going laboratories through which small teams investigate contested areas and issues in urban environments, or competing forces in natural ones, these exercises foster critical inquiry and integrative learning across disciplines. A mini-version of this approach is included at NCHC’s national conferences.

Semesters
Site-specific educational projects in which students earn upper-division honors credit that applies to their graduation requirements at home, NCHC has offered 29 of these since l976, at both national and international locations. These are theme-based clusters of courses drawn from several disciplines. They include an extended field laboratory based on CAT designs , as well as term-long directed research projects on problems better analyzed at this specific site than elsewhere. The projects are presented in a public symposium at term’s end. All aspects of NCHC’s Honors Semesters are experiential, from living/learning arrangements in which students  function as a community to fieldwork immersion into local culture.

Institutes
Faculty who want to acquire greater familiarity with design elements of CAT as a learning strategy, and who are considering applying these field explorations either to their own campus courses/programs or for use in international study, are invited to participate in a “short course” on CAT. Several Institutes are offered each year. Articles on the concept and uses of this methodology have appeared in JNCHC and other publications. Most recently two monographs have been published: PLACE AS TEXT (2000) and SHATTER THE GLASSY STARE (2008). For information on these and other printed materials please visit the Pub Board table at the Idea Exchange (Saturday) or the Pub Board book sales station.

Las Vegas/Death Valley: Death and Desire in the American West
In March 2010, the Honors Semesters Committee sponsored an institute in the Las Vegas/Death Valley area. Participants in the Las Vegas/Death Valley: Death and Desire in the American West Institute explored the built and natural environments of Las Vegas and Death Valley, contrasting the image and reality of these visually rich yet seemingly empty locations. In these superb venues for social, cultural, and natural exploration, participants experienced on-site exploration, readings of natural history, and analyses of literature and film. These experiences, combined with reflective and analytical writings and discussions, provided a sense of the ecological and social conflicts characteristic of extreme landscapes.

For more details, please see the booklet produced by participant Sara Quay.

Las Vegas/Death Valley: Death and Desire in the American West

Neighborhoods, Niches and Community Needs
July 28-August 1, 2010
Brochure
Registration

An immersion experience in Chicago. This Institute will take up issues of identity, community service and local action, and the multiple ways in which this regional capital has made and re-made itself over the past three decades.