The University of Maine - Honors College

Links

Selected UMaine Resources (for more, check out this list)

Honors in Maine (University of Maine System Honors Programs)

University of Maine at Augusta (Director, Jon Schlenker)
University of Maine at Farmington (Director, Michael Burke)
University of Maine at Fort Kent
University of Maine at Presque Isle (Director, Ray Rice)
University of Southern Maine (Director, Rose Cleary)

Honors Organizations
The Honors College at the University of Maine is a member of each of the following organizations which promote and support Honors education on a national, regional, and state level.

National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC)
Each fall the NCHC holds an annual, five-day meeting, bringing almost 2000 administrators, faculty, and students together to discuss and support Honors education. The 2008 meeting was in San Antonio; in 2009 the meeting will be in Washington, D.C.

Northeast Region Honors Council
Each spring the NE Region of the NCHC holds its three-day meeting at an appropriate site in the northeast. The 2009 meeting was held in Annapolis, Maryland in late March.

The NCHC Honors Listserv
Instructions on joining, using, and leaving the listserv can be found here. This listserv, hosted at George Washington University, is an excellent method to communicate with members of the Honors education community across the world (mostly in the United States, but things are changing…) We expect, with some changes in the NCHC organizational structure, additional such opportunities may arise in the near future.

Publishing Undergraduate Research
An amazing number of journals from across the country are available to publish undergraduate papers. Some publish solely undergraduate work, while others publish undergraduate, graduate, and faculty work. Check these out! Get published! Get noticed!

The Undergraduate Journals & Conferences Directory, housed at Mercyhurst College (Erie, Pennsylvania), is a wonderful resource for both journals and conferences that cater to undergraduate researchers “without regard to the undergraduate student’s institutional affiliation.” They do a good job screening and updating the site.

The Council on Undergraduate Research has a directory of undergraduate journals at www.cur.org/ugjournal.html

Honor Societies

Association of College Honor Societies
This is an organization that tries to make some sense of the myriad honor societies that invite students to join. The Association describes its goals as follows:

The Association shall act as the coordinating agency for collegiate honor societies; provide facilities for the consideration of matters of mutual interest; define honor societies of the several types; cooperate with college and university faculties and administrative officers in developing and maintaining high standards and useful functions; and collect, publish, and distribute information and data.

It’s a good place to start when you receive an invitation. However, it should be noted that while the ACHS includes many well-respected honor societies, it doesn’t include them all; a case in point is Phi Beta Kappa (see below).

Phi Beta Kappa
Founded at the College of William and Mary in 1776, PBK is without question the most recognized undergraduate honor society in the country, probably he world. PBK describes itself as “the oldest and most respected undergraduate honors organization in the United States.” That’s probably very close to the truth. However, not everyone, including some of our very best students, is eligible to join PBK because its mission is confined to “fostering and recognizing excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.” How the liberal arts and sciences are defined often varies from university to university and occasionally is time-dependent. It’s interesting to note that there are only four chapters of PBK in the state of Maine: here at UMaine, Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby. Our UMaine PBK website can be found at www.umaine.edu/pbk.

Phi Kappa Phi
Founded here at the University of Maine in 1900, PKP describes itself as “the nation’s oldest, largest, and most selective all-discipline honor society.” The last phrase is the one that distinguishes it from Phi Beta Kappa and provides the opportunity for membership which includes all of our most academically accomplished students. PKP’s mission is “to recognize and promote academic excellence in all fields of higher education and to engage the community of scholars in service to others.”

Sigma Xi
Founded in 1886 as an honor society for science and engineering, Sigma Xi describes itself today as “an international research society whose programs and activities promote the health of the scientific enterprise and honor scientific achievement.” Students “who have shown potential as researchers” are elected as associate members.

Good Stuff Free

Norm Weiner’s Article for First-Year Students
Norm (a past President of the NCHC, Honors director at SUNY-Oswego, and a good friend) gets it nearly all right. All students, not only first-year students and not only Honors students, and faculty members should read this. This is the link to the original on Norm’s website. We have a version (with a short introduction by Charlie) on our site, too.

Poster Help!
Here’s some good stuff to help you design and produce quality posters for academic meetings. These come by way of Professor Carol Brewer in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Montana. Thanks Carol! Here’s a link to their poster presentation page on their Undergraduate Research Conference site: http://www.dhc.umt.edu/ugresearch/presenting.htm

GPA Calculators
This link is to a “plain vanilla” version of our GPA Calculators page (the UMaine Honors College version can be found at GPA Calculators). Feel free to use the calculators, steal them for your website, or modify them in any way you wish. In fact, if you have some good ideas for modifications, please let me know — I’ll no doubt want to update our page with your changes!

Virtual Places to Visit (or, places Charlie likes…)

Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with nearly 128 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 57 million manuscripts.

Smithsonian Institution
In 1826, James Smithson, a British scientist, drew up his last will and testament, naming his nephew as beneficiary. Smithson stipulated that, should the nephew die without heirs (as he would in 1835), the estate should go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The motives behind Smithson’s bequest remain mysterious. He never traveled to the United States and seems to have had no correspondence with anyone here. Some have suggested that his bequest was motivated in part by revenge against the rigidities of British society, which had denied Smithson, who was illegitimate, the right to use his father’s name. Others have suggested it reflected his interest in the Enlightenment ideals of democracy and universal education.

National Public Radio
NPR is a nationally acclaimed provider of news, information and entertainment programming, and is the media industry leader in sound gathering and production. The world’s first noncommercial, satellite-delivered radio network, NPR is an independent, private, nonprofit membership organization funded primarily through its own service-generating activities. NPR was incorporated in 1970 pursuant to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, but it is not a government agency. NPR is not a radio station itself nor does it own any radio stations, but NPR programs can be heard on more than 770 public radio stations across the United States. NPR’s mission is to work in partnership with its member stations to create a more informed public-one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.

Links

Honors News & Events