Honors Meeting Minutes

November 14, 2017

Math update: Karla W. Math 3AH Sp2019 as split section, math worried about enrollment and budget unsure how paid. Challenges in filling course, fall offering missed too many students (AP students didn’t need it, continuing students didn’t know about), hoping Sp offer will fill. Placement exam was not good predictor of success.

Splitting classes discussion, not best situation, don’t get full honors experience. Standard cllass size 35 students vs 30 students for split section.

Disc of enrollment in honors classes. Not all are full, but some are full. But Honors does not have budget, not sure if we can offer additional classes.

Humanities C not accepted by UCI, thus some students must withdraw if hum major and transferring to UCI.

Status of instructional budget: folio given to Karima, budgets dating back to 1988 to demonstrate past practice of separate instructional budget for honors courses. Werle unilaterally removed this budget, must be restored to previous system of separate budget for honors courses. Deans meeting soon to discuss. Alannah will meet with Karima this week.

No new curriculum passed due to centralized state office not able to update articulation.

Gary Luke to teach HUM 10A in summer, Deidre Cavazzi will teach summer HUM 10B course.

Margot Lovett to chair Honors Board.
Guided pathways discussion: not implemented appropriately at most schools. Goals ultimately are to funnel into majors and to offer courses in a particular sequence that are guaranteed to be taught even if low enrollment.

Update on outreach events in October 2017: SVUSD did not coordinate well with activity directors, poorly planned events, very few seniors in attendance, large groups of students spent day elsewhere. As an example of poor planning, El Toro High School students only given 2 weeks notice of the event.

Discussion of Humanities Core year long course: honors students are unit-heavy, especially bio majors. Bio majors finish with 20 honors units, others majors typically with 15. Thus requirement for humanities courses to be reduced for bio majors to one instead of two for those taking both Bio 3A and 3B. Consensus reached within committee: effective immediately, bio majors only need to take one humanities course.

Eng 1BH students, Inform database doesn’t count AP Eng students as well as those who have taken Eng 1AH (Eng 1A only).

Honors Info Letter received by all students in Honors Program: Honors letter should have additional details regarding recommendation for course sequence. Due to the rule that a course may only be designated as a prerequisite if half of the students would fail if they did not take the prereq, it is not possible to designate English 1A as a prereq for Humanities. However, within the Info Letter we should make it clear that while not required, Eng 1A is highly recommended. Must already know how to write before taking humanities.

Reminder, UC applications are due in November. Due to new electronic application, counselors recommend that students complete the application at the Counseling Center so that staff can assist with any computer glitches. Also, any students affected by Canyon 2 Fire or Northern California Fires from October are receiving an extension to December 10, 2017.

Tonight is Family Night at Saddleback, Honors Program trying to have a table. However, securing a table has become extremely difficult, as reserved tables are taken by other groups due to lack of official table assignments.