The University of Tennessee has succeeded in creating a program that has many attributes of an elite small college within a large university.
The Chancellor’s Honors Program, as it’s known, is attracting more top students to UT with an enriched curriculum, smaller classes, and higher standards that also serve to enhance the standing of the university as a whole.
“We’re giving very excellent students a reason to come here and then making sure they get the education they deserve,” says the program’s director, Associate Provost Timothy Hulsey. Since he took the helm two years ago, the number of incoming freshmen selectively admitted to the program has risen from 487 in 2013 to 620 this coming fall even as admission standards keep going up.
This year, for the first time, every entering student will have an ACT score of at least 30 and a high school GPA of least 4.0. That compares to an average ACT score of just under 27 for all of UT’s more than 4,000 incoming freshmen. The 32 average ACT score of the Chancellor’s Honors entrants puts them in the top 3 percent of all ACT test-takers, equal to the threshold for some of the nation’s most selective schools.
Worthy candidates who’ve shown an interest in the program are invited to campus with their parents for hosted events. “We show them around the campus and introduce them to faculty in majors they are considering,” Hulsey says. The tour now includes Fred D. Brown Jr. Residence Hall, the first new dormitory on the campus in over 40 years, where two floors are dedicated to rooms for 300 Chancellor’s Honors students.
But that’s not enough to satisfy Hulsey. With seven more new residence halls due to be built within the next five years, he’s intent on getting one of them totally dedicated to honors students as was the case at Virginia Commonwealth University where he headed their honors program before coming here. “It’s a recruiting advantage to be able to tell prospective students and their parents that they are going to be in a dorm with all other honors students. Their eyes light up,” he says.
Once enrolled, Chancellor’s Honors students are committed to a curriculum that includes at least 28 hours of honors courses out of the 120 hours typically required for graduation. Most take many more, choosing from the more than 200 honors courses the university offers, spanning 55 departments. While there’s diversity among the honors students, about 60 percent are concentrated in STEM disciplines, especially engineering and pre-med sciences.
To stay in the program, students must maintain at least a 3.5 GPA, and to graduate they must also write a thesis that is not required of other students. The graduation rate is close to 90 percent, and Hulsey reckons that the vast majority of them go on to graduate school. “If we turn out undergraduates who go into top graduate programs, it will do a lot for the reputation of the university,” he says.
Beyond the academic requirements, Chancellor’s Honors students must also perform a minimum of 25 hours of community service per year. There’s a close working relationship with Knox County School’s acclaimed community schools program. Member agencies of United Way of Greater Knoxville are another beneficiary.
The program has a degree of self-sufficiency in that honors students have their own dedicated set of advisors, their own student council, and their own convocations. There are also perks that include priority in registering for courses and library privileges the same as graduate students, which allow them to check out books for longer periods.
In Hulsey, they have a leader who is recognized not only as an administrator but also as an academician. A clinical psychologist, he’s currently serving as president of Phi Kappa Phi, which is said to be the nation’s oldest and most selective collegiate honor society for all academic disciplines.
One thing that’s lacking is the number of merit scholarships. At the very top, there are 15 Haslam Scholars in each class who get all expenses paid for four years, and Peyton Manning has recently added two more. Beyond that, pure merit awards are limited.
For all that’s been done to raise the caliber of the student body as a whole over the past decade, UT is unlikely to become a top-tier university anytime soon. But the Chancellor’s Honors provides a catchment for top students who might otherwise go out of state.
Joe Sullivan is the former owner and publisher of Metro Pulse (1992-2003) as well as a longtime columnist covering local politics, education, development, business, and tennis. His new column, Perspectives, covers much of the same terrain.
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