Category: Honors Courses

Honors Activities – Leadership Challenge Course in HON 102

Published on by Ryan CragunLeave a comment

Dr. Jen Wortham had her HON 102 students participate in the Leadership Challenge Course. The Leadership Challenge Course provides students with opportunities to work together to try to overcome challenging obstacles. Dr. Wortham includes some snapshots of what the students learned using the GroupMe app. Some of the comments from students:

I learned that groups work better when we can communicate well. – Laura Montgomery

 

I learned to always listen to others’ ideas and try them even if you don’t think it will work. – Maddy Lucas

 

I learned that you need to look at things from multiple perspectives to solve problems. – Lauren Koelln

 

It’s easier to balance everything by working together. – Emily Brooks

 

It’s important not to give up when a plan isn’t working but to be creative in finding a better solution. – Caroline Vocatura

 

Sometimes you have to step back and make a game plan before attempting to solve a problem. – Allyson Hicks

 

It’s not always necessary to have a designated leader in a group. – Madeleine Matolak

Honors Courses – BIOH124

Published on by Ryan CragunLeave a comment

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

BIOH124 is a non-majors Honors Biology course that is being taught as an intro to human genetics. The professor, Dr. Sarah Cuccinello, developed a karyotyping activity that is unique to the Honors version of the course. The photos above show the students engaged in this activity. There are also some pictures of them using micropipettes for the first time. The micropipette practice is preparation for some genetics experiments they will be conducting in a couple of weeks.

Conferences – Florida Communication Convention

Published on by Ryan CragunLeave a comment

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Dr. Kristen Foltz and Dr. Chris Gurrie took 13 students from their Honors Speech courses to the Florida Communication Convention this past weekend. Of the four awards given at this conference, UT Honors students received two of them: runner-up for the best work/poster overall and the best oral presentation.

Honors Courses – Speech for Business

Published on by Ryan CragunLeave a comment

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Students in Dr. Chris Gurrie’s Honors Speech for Business and the Professions class recently participated in the Leadership Challenge Ropes Course.  Students worked together in groups, focusing on challenges that would enhance their communication competency. Charles Yezak and his student leader, Faith, led the students through obstacles and then discussed the purpose of each obstacle and how it related to communication and teamwork. Purposeful communication in teams won the day, illustrating how vitally important working as a team is in business communication and life.  These are the kinds of enhancements that are added to Honors Courses at UT.

Honors Courses – General Biology – Honors

Published on by Ryan CragunLeave a comment
(Illustration from Anatomy & Physiology, Connexions Web site. http://cnx.org/content/col11496/1.6/, Jun 19, 2013.)
(Sickle cell next to a red blood cell.  Illustration from Anatomy & Physiology, Connexions Web site. http://cnx.org/content/col11496/1.6/, Jun 19, 2013.)

Honors courses at The University of Tampa are designed to enhance the educational experience of Honors Program students.  Kimberly Dobrinski, Assistant Professor of Biology, developed several experiments for the students in her General Biology (BIO 198) Honors course that students in regular sections of General Biology do not get to do.  In this post she describes the experiments they conducted.

In order to instruct the students on the associations between red blood cell morphologies and human disease I developed a new assignment. Using funds from the Honors Program provided to supplement the course content, the students were presented with red blood cell slides.  The students determined which diseases they were observing from four possible diseases: Alcoholism, Iron Deficiency Anemia, Malignancy, and Sickle Cell Disease, basing their analysis on the slides with red blood cell morphologies, patient history, physical exam and laboratory tests. The students seemed to really love the exercise and I am happy to say they did very well! In fact, one of the correct answers for their case study was iron deficiency anemia and I even had a student come to me after class and tell me he had been diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia. He was so excited that he now understood how the diagnosis was made and what his own blood cells would look like. It made for a very personal experience for this student. For all the students, this exercise allowed them to engage their problem solving capabilities to solve real-world problems. As many of the Honors students will be pursuing a career in some aspect of medicine, I think they really enjoyed getting a taste of how clinical laboratory science works and how doctors make a diagnosis based on this type of analysis.