Hello everybody, that's in the room. We're going to wait a couple more minutes and Karen whenever you're ready let me know when you'd like me to start.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
03:47:50 PM
Welcome to the CAP Honors information session.
I think we maybe should be able to start just because we don't have that much time.
And we have and we have a lot to get through.
Alright, well I was going to say Good morning, but it's no longer morning. Good afternoon everybody. My name is doctor Mark Klingshirn and I'm the director of the capital scholars honors program here at UIS. And I'm also an associate professor of chemistry here at US.
And I also served as a professional advisor as well, so if students if by chance you have an interest in in medical school or any form of medical school, I'm happy to help with that process and kind of guiding you through and all that good stuff.
Very briefly about myself, I've been at uas since since 2006 and I have been director of the honors program since the fall of 2013, so I'm currently in my 8th year as director and today's session is a means of giving you some information about our program. Hopefully you'll want to learn more about us and we can continue some communication with you all moving forward. But as Karen mentioned, we are a little bit short on time today, so I'm going to turn.
Things over to Karen and Courtney. So Karen, if you would please.
Yes hi everyone, thank you for joining us. My name is Karen Barker and I am the senior coordinator and re recruitment for the program and I have been with the honors program since 2005. I've actually been with uas since 2001 but at my current position since 2005 I am a graduate of uas with my Masters in human development counseling.
Um, so anyway, that's just a little bit about me. You'll hear from me here in a minute, but let Courtney go ahead and introduce yourself.
Hi everybody, my name is Courtney turn Husky. I work in the honors program as well. I started working in the honors program in 2015 so I've been with the program for about five years. I also went to uas to my Masters degree in the human development counseling program and we just wanted to welcome you today.
Excellent, OK, so I'm going to go ahead and this is Karen. I'm going to go ahead and go through our presentation.
I'm probably gonna go through it rather quickly because of the time, but if you think of anything, well, I'm talking. Please feel free to use the chat button and ask questions that come to mind and Doctor Kling Shern in Courtney will be monitoring the chat so please feel free to have those conversations while I'm speaking and then if there are any questions that I need to.
Answer or address more thoroughly. We can do that after the presentation during the Q&A. So let's get started.
OK, so a little bit about the Honors Program. Just background for those who may not quite know how we came about, but we used to be our University used to be sacrament state.
Along time ago we became part of the UI system in 1995. As you know, there's three of our campuses. We are the smallest of the three U of I campus is and we operate more like a private institution. We have just a little over, I believe, 5000 total students that attend uas and that's, you know, graduate and undergrad, and on line. So we are very small. Our class sizes average between.
14 and 17 students per class. So you really do get that one on one interaction with your faculty. But so we became you by in 1995. At that point we did not have any lower division courses or didn't allow freshmen or sophomores on campus because of that. So we were an upper division school and then in 2001 we started the honors program, and that's when we had our first incoming class.
A freshman, so it's kind of cool that the honors program paved the way for you IS to be the four year institution that that it is today, and so that started in 2001. And then in 2005 or six they started the traditional program. So if you're looking at UI S Ann, you find that it's the perfect place for you, but you're not so much interested in the honors program. You can still have the option of attending as a traditional incoming freshman, so that's the great thing. Now that there's there's two options for you.
The Honors program was designed by a group of people like, um, the powers that be. They looked at honors programs throughout the United States to figure out the best practices, and so if you are looking at honors programs at other institutions, you'll kind of notice that we may have similar aspects of our program as other programs around the United States do. But like our program is very, very unique because it's taken all those best practices and put them.
Like I said that the honors program started, you know the 1st four year institution, first freshman on campus.
Some of the things that are different between the traditional program in the honors program are one that we have a residential requirement of two years, and so those are the 1st two years of your attendance. So your freshman and sophomore year, the freshman first semester or first year you will live in Lincoln residence home, and the second year you will be living in founders. And the reason we have that is because we have a living learning community that is built into an is the foundation of our program.
Somewhere for where you can see the top of you know your house from the top of our building. You would still be required to live on campus for those first two years. We house at our students with other honor students. So your roommates and your suitemates would all be honor students and that will make a little bit more sense as to why we have this and why we do that and have this living learning community as I kind of talk to you about the curriculum and how the curriculum is set up here in the next few minutes.
Little bit kind of at quick breakdown of the perks of the program one you get a laptop computer, their brand new Dell computers you get in basically the second day or so that you arrive on campus for your first semester. You keep that laptop all four years. We do all the maintenance on 'em all the programming. If it breaks to fix it. If we can't fix it, get you another one. It's yours over winter, break over summer break. You just will return it the Friday before you graduate, but other than that it is yours.
To use for the four years we do give out cap on her scholarship soap, an acceptance into our program or when you're invited to participate in our program. You will be awarded Cap Honors Scholarship. The Honors program also has a mentoring and tutoring program that's built into our honors program, so every single freshman honors student would be assigned a mentor.
Our incoming students get the opportunity of reading biographies of all of our mentors so they can kind of choose their top forward mentor choices based on maybe it's major. Maybe it's interest, maybe it's from where you live. Maybe it's sports. It just kind of depends, and so you would be turning in your choices for your mentor. An our mentoring program puts on events throughout the year. You'll have kind of required meetups with your mentor. They're kind of like your first friend on campus. We also have a toot.
Dream program that helps with tutoring within our cap honors courses. And then we also have the learning hub on campus that would help with any kind of course that is outside of our honors curriculum.
Another great thing about our program is not only the living learning community with the students, but also our cap. Faculty and staff are all located in the Lincoln residence Hall where you would be living your first year. My office is located right next to the mailboxes in the main lobby area, so I'm very centrally located. Courtney's office is down the hallway. Doctor klingshirn is across the Hall from me, so he is also very iaccessible. Plus your writing faculty are also located down the hallway so.
We're having any questions or concerns about a prompt, or want your professor to kind of read over a paper or get some more understanding of what's required. All you have to do is literally walk down the Hall.
Another great thing is that our courses are at discussion and sorry, some.
Seminar style classes, which means since our classes are very small in size, our courses are designed for.
Critical thinking, and so there's a lot of discussion in our classes. Most of our classes are two days a week, about an hour and 15 minutes apiece, and so maybe the first half of the class might be lecture and then the other half might be working in groups or group discussions. That sort of style. So we also do academic success plans with our incoming freshman Courtney. And I just got done with those a couple weeks ago with our incoming freshman.
Fast, so within the second and third week of the semester, Courtney and I carve out time to have individual meetings with each one of our advises and we talk about what worked for them in high school. What didn't work for them with their nervous about we talk about are they eating? Are they sleeping? Do they need tutoring? We look at their schedules. We look at their scholarship that they have to maintain. So we try to make sure that we get these students.
Off on the right site and try to kind of figure out if referrals are needed so that things don't arise after after the fact. So that's the wonderful thing that we do and we really connect with the students that way.
Also on the same kind of topic, Courtney and I are.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:00:04 PM
Please feel free to post any questions here in the chat area. :)
Advisors for our cap honors students. You are considered an honor student for four years, but you would get advising within cap for your first two years and the reason is our cap courses are taken within the 1st two years. They meet general education requirements that all students have to meet and so Courtney are very versed on all majors of advising for those first two years. We have advising guides that are listed on the cap honors website if you're interested.
And you can kind of see what would be required. It's kind of all kind of listed out for your first two years, so there's no kind of question, but you have access to us because our offices are in the building, so it's kind of unique that you're advising stuff is like so centrally located in very iaccessible, even though we transition you into your major.
Your eyes are your junior and senior year. You're still kind of Courtney and eyes for the four years our students come back to us and make sure that they are staying on track to graduate in the four years and we have an honors global requirement that we also communicate with juniors and seniors on that and then the last major, I think part of the program is not only will you graduate from 4 year UIS, you know you'll be institution, but it'll be noted on your transcript.
Man on your diploma that you graduated from an honors program which will definitely put you above and let you stand out above others. When you're wanting to maybe go into Graduate School or medical school or even getting your first job. It's quite an accomplishment and our students should be very proud of accomplishing that and so that is noted on all of that so.
Moving on to the curriculum strength, so I'm going to talk in detail about our cap curriculum in the next slide, but just.
To go over some of the strengths and the things that you will develop going through our course curriculum, one is you're going to develop soft skills working in teams, public speaking. One of the things that Doctor Klingshirn has heard in a lot of conferences and things like that or the employers are always saying that students who graduate from college don't have the public speaking skills that they're looking for for their positions and so.
We think that's like super important and we start off having our students public speak in the classroom. Kind of like right out of the gate so that we want you to be strong.
Confident public speakers. By the time you graduate, we also look for students who already have leadership skills and and.
Experience already coming into the program, we look for those students. The students are, you know, going to be the leaders of the world basically, and so we want our students in our classes will help you develop those skills will get you out there. Volunteering, working in groups in doing those leadership skills. So there's a lot of collaborative work, hence the whole living learning community. Because you're going through the same classes at the same time and so you use those roommates and suitemates.
And that group work to develop those skills.
Also, the foundation of our program is critical thinking, so we want you to it's critical thinking and writing skills to be honest, and so we develop your writing skills. So if you've already taken state English composition an feel like you've got a really good grading, those you'll also have to take our writing composition sequence, which I'll talk to you in a minute that will only enhance your writing skills. Our students become.
Excellent writers, excellent readers. An great critical thinkers. We want you to come up with your own ideas, your own thoughts about things. Think critically about the world and problems and come up with solutions. And so it's really kind of a very unique program. But these are kind of some of these skills that our goal is to help you develop while you're part of our honors program.
Moving on to the cap curriculum. So this is kind of a breakdown of just the courses that you would be taking through the cap program. This is not all the other courses for your major, your minor or anything like that. This is just basically mapping out the courses that you would be taking through the Honors Program every semester for your first two years, you'll be taking honors classes and they go in a sequence. So what you take your first semester you will build on.
Those horses your second semester, third semester, enforced semester. And like I said, every student is taking the same honors classes at the same time, so you will be using your suite mates in your roommates for added support and encouragement while you're going through those classes and that living learning community really comes into play, and that's why we require the two year residential requirement. Cap 102 is of course, that you're going to be taking your freshman year first semester.
I do also want to stay in the traditional program you would be taking classes to meet these same requirements that are courses meet. So as an honor student, you're not necessarily taking a whole chunk. Of course is that that you wouldn't necessarily be taking there actually meeting the same requirements that all students need to meet in order to graduate. So cap one or two is our intra honors class. It is a two credit hour class. It is taking your first semester.
It's a one day week course. It's designed to help you not hurt you if you don't get an A in the class, you're really trying not to get an A in the class. This course is designed to make you think about what it means to be an honor student, what it means to go to liberal arts institution, what it means to be a part of the living learning community. We get you in touch with Bacal T we get you connected with your mentor. It's just.
A really great class to kind of learn about yourself and learn about. You know, honors programs and things like that. Like I said, it's designed to help your GPA, not hurt your GPA in the traditional program, they have a course called Uni 101. I think it's still called 101. I'm not sure, but anyway they have it. An introduction seminar class that's very similar to ours. Then you have kept 111 and kept 1:15. You take cap on 11 your first semester as a freshman. Then you take cap 115 in the spring.
In the second semester of your freshman year, that is the writing composition sequence.
Like I said, these courses are designed to help you to become excellent writers. You do ask them creative ways of writing in that class, Ann. Different projects we hired knew writing coordinator a couple of years ago and she's really revamped those classes and have really made it so interesting for the students. And so if by chance you have English 101 in one or and 102 coming into the University.
Whether it's true dual, credit or AP, just know that those courses will come into IIS. Is meeting hours towards graduation. However, as the member of the Honors Program, you still will be required to take our cap on 11:00 and 1:15 sequence. And from what I've been told now I've been like with the program since 2005. Like I said and I have never had a student come to me that has already had English that was transferred into the universities day, that it's a repeat of information we teach you completely different things.
And you having that experience already can only enhance and make you a better writer in our composition sequence.
Then we have cap 141 and 142, which is our biochemistry sequence is a two semester 8 hours total.
Course sequence it's also interdisciplinary, so it's taught by a biologist and chemist, so you get a little bit of both biology and chemistry through each semester, and the great thing is, is doctor kling sharing teaches the director of the program teaches the chemistry portion of cap 141 and 142, and so you have him at your disposal for any questions and he is amazing at working with students and goes above and beyond.
And so it's wonderful to have him so conveniently located now that course sequence is only required for non science majors. And so if by chance you are a science, major chemistry, biology, biochemistry or even if you are like a psychology major wanting to do pre Med, you would take general biology and general chemistry sequence you would you would opt out of taking cap one 4142. It's only for non.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:10:03 PM
Please realize CAP 141 and CAP 142 are not "biochemistry" courses per se'. "Biochem" is how the students often refer to the course because it's just easier to say.
Science majors and by chance if you have say your non science major and you have AP Biology or AP chemistry or dual credit biology or chemistry coming into IS we would exempt you from having to take that sequence and we would just have you had chemistry coming in we would have you take equivalent lower division not for science majors biology to meet that one 41142. So there is a substitution that can be made for that.
Sequence and students can take that either their freshman or sophomore year, just depending on your major and how that fits in. And then we have our question courses, which is kind of the heart in the meat of our program.
They're called question courses. Who am I? How do you know what is good and what is power? You take 122 your first semester, 123 year, second semester, 225 year, third semester into 26 or 4th semester of your second year, and.
That is, those are sequential and so you have to pass the first one to move on to the second one, third one and 4th one. And what you learn in that first one you build on those concepts and theories throughout the next three classes. And those are also interdisciplinary and they meet the requirements of Humanities and social behavioral science in order to graduate from the University. So you need six hours of Humanities in six hours of social science to graduate.
And those four classes will meet the six hours of Humanities in six hours of social science.
And those are taken sequentially and then we have our cap two 5350 global awareness course, which also means our honors global awareness requirement and that is the topics course and students can take that anytime within the four years is not necessary lead that you have to take that your first year or second year. It just really kind of. Depends on when you can fit that in and we monitor to make sure that you do complete that requirement before graduation and then we have our senior seminar class which is kept 402 which is what you will take your.
Before you graduate, and it's a paper and presentation combination. Don't freak out. I know it sounds really.
Kind of scary at this point. I mean, you're just now looking at school and we're talking bout your senior seminar but never fear. We have a class that helps prepare you with the paper and we have time to help you with the presentation and students actually do very, very well on it. It is such a great experience for especially if you're wanting to go on to Graduate School, so you need a minimum of a seer greater in order to.
Then graduate with honors program and let me just go back. You also need a C or better to remain in the program in your cap 102 class. That class that I told you that you really every student should actually get an A in that. So if you get a C or lower then you will not be able to progress in the Honors Program. But that should not be a problem.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:13:15 PM
Senior Seminar is a great means of exploring topics that are of interest to you. The process is useful for admission to graduate school, medical school. and simply finding jobs after graduation.
Just some of our other requirements here are under global awareness. Requirement is at 14 to 16 hour requirement that just needs to be completed before you graduate. I myself do all the audits on those to make sure that our students are completing those. There's so many different ways that students can be hours towards that. Your cap two 5350 course will absolutely meet hours towards that. It kind of breaks down to four classes for the four years that you're there, so.
If you're looking at studying abroad, those hours were count. Modern languages will count any kind of global course will count and we as advisers kind of go over this really in detail with you and make sure that you're meeting that requirement.
Other than that, you have other general education requirements that you'll be meeting your first two years. Every student has to complete a lower division math and that will depend on your major.
It's either 6 or 8 hours, depending on what's required for your major. We don't have honors level math, so this is Gen Ed Math. You have to create a visual, creative and Performing Arts Course, which is like art appreciation, music appreciation. We have theater. We have all kinds of different things. We also require you to.
Oral communications you have to take which is speech class. You have to take an additional social science, but some of you will be social science majors an end up taking a psychology or sociology class. Anyways to meet that and then this is where some AP and dual credit classes can be taken to meet those requirements.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:14:43 PM
If you are a senior and potentially coming in with dual credit oral communication or AP scores, please talk with us about how they will work for you and count for you.
Admissions process, we do have a rolling admissions process. We have not yet started to review applications for next fall. We only admit students for the as an incoming freshman fall term students so.
We will be hopefully starting to review applications.
Hopefully, maybe by the end of the month or early next month. What happens is you will apply to the University as a general freshman application and then after 8 to 10 days you will get an email that will allow you to Re Enter your application portal. At that point you would if you're interested in honors, you would submit a personal statement into your checklist in the application portal an you must submit.
A personal statement. In order to be considered for honors, we will not review you without having that statement. the University does not require a statement, but the honors program does, and I can tell you that doctor clean sharing really reads those an looks at them. An really it really says a lot about his student. You learn a lot about a student from that statement, and so that's why we require it. So you would need to submit that.
Like this says on here, the University is not looking at ACT&SAT scores for this incoming fall. So for fall 21 they have removed that requirement. If you choose if you've taken it and you want to submit it, you can absolutely do that. However, we are not considering those spores and there will not be any penalty if you do submit those.
And then once you're admitted to the program, you'll get an email. You'll get a letter that says congratulations, we're inviting you to participate in our program, and the way that you hold your spot in the program is by going in and completing the intent to enroll form and accepting the offer of admission to the honors program in that, then hold your spot. So that's kind of the process. Scholarships every student does get a merit scholarship when you are admitted to the program.
I can tell you we don't have specifics at this moment. On fall 2122 scholarships yet they are working on them. I know doctor concern has been instrumental in that. Ann has been working with admissions and other departments on campus to get that grid up and announced, but it is not there yet and once it is available you will be able to find that.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:17:51 PM
Honors scholarship amounts should be announced very soon!
On the financial aid website, under scholarships an it would say 2020 one 22 scholarship chart, the one that's up there now is for this current school year. So don't get confused by that. So you'll want to make sure that you look for 2122.
Also, as an honor student, which is different than the traditional freshman class is that we are able to award you additional money when you come in and perform well or above your required maintenance level. So depending on what scholarship you are given through, honors comes with a UISC GPA requirement that you have to maintain to keep that scholarship, which could range from a 3.0, three .25 three point 5.
Or 3.8 requirement to keep the scholarship for four years, so that scholarship is for four years. As long as you maintain your original you ISD GPA maintenance level and then.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:18:55 PM
cGPA means 'cumulative GPA'. This is calculated by looking at all of your UIS courses.
Even though you're only really taking honors classes, your first two years, but within that first two years you are able to get some academic recognition scholarships by going up to the next maintenance levels. To say you come in and all you have to do is maintain a 3.0. You get a 3.25 year first semester, you're eligible for a $500 a year bump, so that's $250 a semester. Say your second semester. You also get a cumulative GPA with three .25. Again, will give you a second bump, so there's two bumps that you can get within the 1st two years and you can keep that money.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:19:47 PM
Any course taken outside of UIS are not considered in your UIS cGPA. They count toward your transfer GPA.
For the rest of the time, you're at uas for those additional three years. If you get him within the 1st first year. We also have academic excellence scholarships. Those are non renewable, but those are given out at the end of each academic year and they are given to students who have a 4.0 three point, 93.8 cumulative GPA and so there are additional funds for the next following year and then, if you consistently maintain at that high level, will consistently give you.
That additional money, we also have a study abroad program here at uas, and we have an honor scholarship that you can apply to help with the expenses with studying abroad. And then there's also University and owner scholarships. the University scholarship application comes out every December 1st an it is due February 15th and you can find it on the financial aid website on December 1st. It's one application that you can apply for all.
Outside not outside. All uas scholarships that are not like merit. Scholarships like our honor scholarship is not included in that 'cause it's automatically given to you. It's other scholarships. I think the University gives out like I don't know 95 or $100,000 a year, so it's definitely beneficial to just fill up that one application to put your hat in the ring for any of the additional funds so an you can apply for that every single year. You're a student. So even if you haven't.
Marc Klingshirn, Director of Capital Scholars Honors Program
04:21:10 PM
There are about 7 named Honors scholarships. Some of those have multiple awards within that named scholarship.
Accepted the offer of admission to the University. You can still apply for those scholarships in December, so please mark your calendars and don't forget to do that. And then I just talked about this December 1st to February 15th. You apply every year.
Good, I was ahead of myself there. OK that is it. I don't know how we're doing on time. Well I'm just a little bit over so is there any questions that our contact information is there? If you'd like to take a picture of the screen, you can find our contact information on the UI S website.
And you can contact any of us if you have any questions. We are all available in ready to answer anything is just anyone on the call here. I have any questions.
Any questions in the chat that I need to talk or answer?
Nothing specific in chat. I have been adding little sentences to some of the things that you were talking about, just a bit of clarification and kind of fill blanks, but.
Overall, it's been pretty quiet so.
Post something in chat or.
If there are no questions, I'm just going to take that as I covered everything. How about that?
Um, no, but seriously, contact us if you think of absolutely anything we can answer questions about uas in general, or the Honors Program. We're happy to chat with you. We're happy to do. Zoom call.
Or chat over email is completely up to you. You have our contact information. I do suggest if you are interested in the honors program to take a look at our website. Do some looking around on the curriculum page and go to the advising guides on there so you can kind of see how you're two years in. The honors program would be laid out based on the major that you're anticipating. And after that, if you have any questions, let us know as well. We're happy, happy to help.
And assist you in this huge process of figuring out where you're going to attend, so anything we can do to inform you, just let us know.
I think Karen had said this, but I just wanted wanted to stress as well that cap honors is open to any major with the exception of pre nursing and also we have a number of students that are also athletes. So if by chance you would be an athletic team.
Students have been very successful in the program at balancing both of those things so.
Thank you, I did not mention that, so I appreciate that.
Alright, I think we can sign aafp.
Thank you for participating and listening to us. We appreciate you.