UCLA College launches revamped Honors Program following student concerns

The UCLA College Honors department is testing a new program to address student concerns about a lack of structure and opportunities in the current program.

The program will operate alongside the traditional program, which serves about 800 freshmen. It will provide students with research opportunities, require them to complete a freshman cluster and capstone seminar, and require students to regularly meet with Honors counselors to discuss their progress at UCLA, said Noli Martin-Tungpalan, an academic counselor within the Honors department.

Jennifer Lindholm, the director of Honors programs, said the College Honors department developed this program as a response to the most recent UCLA Academic Senate 8-Year Program Review Process for the 2010-11 school year, which reviewed the quality of UCLA’s undergraduate and graduate education. The review found students could benefit from courses that encourage them to interact with others and within their community.

“We want to change how students value education,” she said.

Martin-Tungpalan said these new requirements will inspire students to think innovatively and feel a sense of community. The department is testing the new program this year with a cohort of 100 freshmen.

Capstone seminars, which allow students to complete research projects during their junior or senior year based on their undergraduate experiences, will increase opportunities for research in the curriculum, Martin-Tungpalan said.

“The old program didn’t have a capstone, so there was nothing that would finish off the program,” Martin-Tungpalan said. “Now there’s a little more intentionality about what the final product will be.”

The program is based on responses from two years of focus groups, student evaluations, feedback from UCLA faculty and administrator, and evaluations of successful Honors programs at other universities, Lindholm said.

“We want students to be immersed in the values of the college Honors Program and interact with one another,” Lindholm said.

Students were divided into three mentor groups of about 30 students and will regularly meet with their groups and with their assigned program counselors.

In addition, each pilot student will enroll in an All Pilot Cohort Seminar during winter quarter, in which students will compare their experiences with those of their fellow pilot students and learn directly from the Honors program’s counselor, Martin-Tungpalan said.

“We are encouraging them to explore themselves so they can determine what their actual interests and passions are,” Martin-Tungpalan said. “We want to be a place where they can find who they are and what they want.”

Honors counselors worked with the office of undergraduate admissions to read through College Honors applications and select a group from the applicant pool to invite to participate in the pilot program, Martin-Tungpalan said. They looked for students who were not only involved in high school, but who demonstrated strong passion in their courses and extracurriculars.

Gabriela Gaxiola, a fourth-year Spanish student, provided feedback to help create the new program. She said while she thinks the traditional program has many merits, she appreciates how the new program allows for flexibility and creativity in a student’s coursework.

“If I were an incoming student I would have loved to have this guided program because I would have been able to do so much more in terms of research and been required to have an online resume,” Gaxiola said.

Lindholm said the department’s goal while working with the pilot cohort is to listen to the students’ individual experiences and use these responses to improve the program. She said her eventual goal is to create a single Honors experience that combines aspects of both the pilot program and the traditional program.