Nebraska Wesleyan Honors Academy

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Historical Enrollment Data

Students

Enrollments

Credit Hours

Current Make-up of WHA

• 15 departments • 60 High Schools • 120 teachers • 1500-2000 enrollments in the last

few years – about 1300 students

Enrollment by Department 2010-11

Department Percent

Enrollment English 58.73 Mathematics 11.13 History 8.46 Modern Languages 7.24 Psychology 6.49 Physics 4.95 Religion 1.79 Chemistry 1.07 Art 0.14

Professional Development

August Workshop • Annual • $150.00 stipend paid • If they cannot attend, we take the meeting to them. • Some time spent with me and then meetings with

department personnel – Assessment – Expectations – Sharing best-practices – Q and A

Curriculum Fund

Teachers use this for • Taking classes • Implementing technology advances in their

classrooms • Attending conferences in their field • Taking their students on fieldtrips, etc.

Faculty Involvement

• Some departments are great • Some needed more motivation

2010 Nebraska Wesleyan Study 183 students on campus in 2009-10 with WHA

credit ● their gpa was 5% higher than CLAS as a whole ● they had an 86.7% 4-year retention rate vs. 67% ● 11.5% increase in graduation rates (2003-2005

grads) ● 20% reported they would graduate early ● 16.8 % completed additional major and/or minor ● 50 % said having WHA credit positively

influenced their decision to matriculate.

More Interaction would lead to better understanding for everyone

Discipline specific workshops for the larger groups

Modern Language Workday

World Language Workday March 9, 2011 WHA World Language Event: March 9, 2011: Class Visits – please plan to attend a 9:00 and/or 10:00 class session as indicated below: 11:00 – Meet with Marian to discuss general Honors Academy information. 11:45 – Lunch in the NWU cafeteria and the opportunity to visit with your WHA colleagues. 1:00 – Meet with Rita Ricaurte, Sara Dietzman and Yuko Yamada to work through discipline specific issues and ideas. 3:00 – Take part in a language “Conversation Hour” with WHA instructors, NWU Language Instructors and NWU language students over tasty food and drink.

Language instructors enjoying each other’s company

Department Liaison and Language Instructors

“I loved it. I learned something that I am going to use in my class next week and something that I think will help my WHA class be a little more rigorous. Thank you so much for setting this up for

us. I really appreciate it.” Malia Pope, Lincoln North Star High School

March 3, 2011 -

NWU – WHA Physics Workshop 9:00 – 11:45:

• Activities in Lab Room 121 of Olin Hall to include: • The use of clickers in the physics classroom • Computer simulations • A chance for WHA instructors to share effective techniques

and approaches to various concepts • Micro-computer Based Labs (MLB’s) • Meet with Marian to discuss changes in WHA • 12:00 – Lunch in the cafeteria • 1:00 – Forum Lecture: • "Discovering the Quantum Universe at the Large Hadron

Collider" (Olin B) • Ken Bloom, associate professor of physics and astronomy

at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has played an instrumental role in the Large Hadron Collider project.

• 2:00 – Discussion with Bill Wehrbein concerning his

expectations for assessment and the relevance of N-AAPT, NATS, and The Physics Teacher. We should have you on your way by 3:00.

The Hadron Supercollider WHA instructors have lunch with Ken Bloom and NWU faculty and students Followed by the lecture

Collaboration • “I want to thank you for

taking the time to prepare and meet with us last week. The morning was particularly beneficial for me. When you teach high school physics you are pretty isolated and being able to discuss ideas, lab techniques and classroom ideas with other physics teachers was refreshing.”

Bruce Esser, Marian High School

Religion Workshop

English Workshop – April 21, 2011 10:30 – 11:20: You will meet with me and go over some general Honors Academy information. Let me know if there is any topic in particular about which you need more information. 11:30 to 12:45: You will attend a section of Sarah Kelen’s ENG 001 class in which she will be discussing writing introductions and conclusions with her students. This class will be in Old Main (building number 1 on the map) in Room 208. 12:50 to 1:45: We will enjoy a nice lunch in the Student Center. 2:00 – You will attend Dr. Rick Cypert’s Greek Drama class where they will be discussing Aristophanes’ “The Clouds”. This class is in Old Main room 128. 3:30 – You will attend the annual “Holder Lecture” The Lecture is in Callen auditorium in the lower level of Smith-Curtis. "From Athens (Via Alexandria) to Baghdad: Medieval Arabic Rhetoric as Dialogue" Dr. Maha Baddar of Pima Community College's Writing Department will be the presenter.

Nook Workshop

• Brought in a Nook specialist from Barnes and Noble

• Used departmental and Honors Academy funds to purchase a Nook for each participant

• Lively discussion on the use of electronic readers and the benefits and disadvantages of such devices.

English Workshop

• “I really did enjoy the day and am glad I came. It was nice to "network" with the other instructors. I also enjoyed visiting the comp class because it was good for me to see that what I'm doing in my class is very similar to what is being done on campus. It was also an enlightenment to see that college freshmen are not that different than some of the high school seniors I have.”

Jane Holecheck, Sidney High School

Mathematics

Goegebra Workshop

16 Calculus Instructors

Dr. Dave Fowler and math chair

High School instructors back in a college class

Interactions across various levels

Geogebra Modeling

History Workshop Nov. 11th

• Writing in the history classroom • History Day incorporation

Going Forward • Feedback suggests that this

type of interaction is very beneficial to the instructors. They especially appreciate sitting in on a class and having the opportunity to demonstrate what they know to the campus faculty.

• Department liaisons report greater acceptance from their peers of the Honors Academy program after this type of event.

• The high school instructors are asking for a discussion about where all of this is leading.

• What will the high school : college transition look like in 10 years? How do we best prepare for that?

• Big picture strategic thought needs to go into this question on several levels. (11-13 education)