An Effective Honors Composition Class Improves Honors Retention Rates: Outcomes and Statistical Prestiditigation

In her essay "My Objections to Outcome [Note the Singular] Assessment," Joan Digby rails against the rubrics and templates of outcomes assessment that have pervaded contemporary higher education, arguing that faculty "enjoy teaching and feel rewarded by the successes of their students. Bingo. That's it. Nothing more to say or prove. No boxes to fill in. Anyone with an urge to produce data can take attendance at Commencement." I must confess that I do just that with the students who have taken my honors freshman composition courses. At the end of each spring semester, our honors program holds an Honors Senior Showcase on the day before commencement. Each graduating honors senior presents his or her thesis work, most in poster form but a few in brief oral presentations, and then each student is recognized in a hooding ceremony. Family, friends, faculty, and administrators are invited to celebrate the students' accomplishments, and I am always curious to see how many of my honors composition students have navigated through four years or more of their major coursework, honors requirements, and thesis projects to graduate from the program. At the spring 2014 showcase, I was particularly pleased with the results. In fall 2010, approximately 45 freshmen were admitted to the honors program, and 12 of these students graduated from the program in spring 2014, a four-year completion rate of approximately 27%. Eight of those incoming freshmen were enrolled in my fall 2010 honors composition course, and six of those eight students graduated from the honors program, a 75% retention rate from my class. Although I only taught approximately 18% of the incoming freshmen, I helped to produce 50% of the graduating seniors. I can hear my colleagues in the social sciences howling at my overly simplistic numerical "outcomes assessment" To start, the sample size was too small, and the data were collected from only one year. Expanding this assessment longitudinally, I have kept an annual tally of my honors composition graduates since the program's inception in 1999. From fall 1999 through fall 2010, which was the most recent freshman class to have reached the four-year graduation mark, I taught 122 students across 10 sections of honors composition. Of those students, 72 graduated from honors, meaning that 59% of the students who took my honors composition course completed the honors program. According to my estimates of incoming freshman class sizes, which have grown from around 25 in fall 1999 to 63 in fall 2014, the overall program graduation rate is approximately 45% Our program does not have current statistics on graduation rates, but the director believes that we are closer to 50-55%. In either case, my honors composition students do tend to graduate at a higher rate than the general honors population. Granted, many more factors than just one composition course play into honors graduation rates. Students encounter various challenges in their major courses, and they work with other honors faculty in seminars and thesis research Some transfer to other schools, some cannot maintain the required 3.5 GPA, some leave the program after achieving their desired MCAT or LSAT scores, and some admit that they never intended to complete the required thesis project but wanted the four years of scholarship money Still, I cannot help but wonder what elements of my course might give students an edge in honors program completion. Like Digby, I am an English professor, yet my training lies in communications, rhetoric, and technical writing, so I focus assignments on discipline-specific research and argumentation from the students' majors. This insight into modes of communication in their chosen fields might aid students in constructing and writing more successful undergraduate research and capstone projects. Also, I focus on issues in honors education to demonstrate different types of argumentative strategies, and I supplement textbook chapters with appropriate articles from Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council and Honors in Practice. …