Tangible and Intangible Student Success.

First are the obvious benefits. The value that honors programs hold for universities lies in the tangibles. Honors programs help an institution pinpoint and cultivate the talents of its finest students. They help these students achieve undergraduate research and encourage them to seek further inquiry and creative endeavor. They provide the counsel, advising, and encouragement that can lead to nationally and internationally competitive, prestigious scholarships in all academic fields and endeavors. They help bring renown to the university they serve by ensuring that the institution's finest students receive the care and attention needed to succeed in challenging academic and research environments. They can and usually do lead the student down a transformational career path. These are the tangibles. In many ways, they are the tidy end products of what is often assumed to be a successful and smooth four-year process that ends with a happy student holding his or her honors diploma during commencement weekend. And why shouldn't it be? Honors programs, by their very definition, deal with the best and brightest of an institution's student population and can expect these tangible outcomes. Certainly my institution, the University of Nevada, Reno, has an honors program that can attest to the validity of such outcomes. Without diminishing in any way the tangible end product, let me make an equally compelling case for the personal byproducts that are often just as important, just as meaningful, that can be gained from our honors program. In many ways, the true value of any honors program, in both a theoretical and a practical context, lies in the intangibles. Typical honors students are highly, richly, and wonderfully human, not computerized automatons programmed for perfection. They are young, sensitive human beings who, though they may be extremely talented, intelligent, and driven to succeed, are by no means guaranteed to reach their ultimate academic potential. The reality for almost all college students is that at some point the ground can seem to tilt upward, and every step can seem to be tortuous and paved with frustration. Our students can be like delicate flowers, and it is our student enrichment programs such as our honors program that can provide the encouragement and support that help talent rise and help develop the reserve of steel needed to persist and to flourish in a highly competitive college environment. We've seen this to be true at our university Our honors program helps change the lives of the students it serves, both tangibly through academic achievement, and intangibly through a stronger sense of direction and self-worth Let me give you just one example. Late this summer, a December 2013 graduate of our University, Jonathan Carral, visited our campus before heading back to graduate school at Columbia University Jonathan, an honors program student, majored in international affairs. When he enrolled as a student at our university, Jonathan did not see himself as an honors student. He says now that his test scores weren't the greatest. As a first-generation college student, Jonathan admits that even seeking a college degree "was a bit questionable" Yet Jonathan made a key decision early on during his academic career. Following the advice of a friend, just weeks into his experience as a student here, he paid a visit to our honors program office, which has been ably directed by Tamara Valentine since 2004. Jonathan says now that Valentine and her staff "saw something and exposed something in me that I didn't even know was There." What followed was one of our university's most remarkable student success stories. Jonathan earned a Truman Scholarship in 2013, citing his two years of study and public service in China. An exceptional amount of work was involved, including a public service component, research, and a thesis. "The Honors Program doesn't exist to baby the students," Jonathan says, but he adds that the staff of the honors program was always there to interact, to help, to suggest possibilities, to advise, or simply to listen. …