Foreword

By 7:05 p.m. on November 10. 1983, over 300 people had crowded into and overflowed the City Council Chambers at Missoula. Montana. The occasion was the hearing before the Montana Department of Health and Environmental Sciences on a request by Champion International Corporation for a modified permit to discharge treated wastewater year round from its kraft paper mill at Frenchtown. This event, I think more than any other in recent times focused public attention on the beleaguered Clark Fork River and served as a catalyst for action. Click the Download button to the right for the entire foreword

Opening Doors: Facilitating Transfer Students’ Participation in Honors

Those of us who reflect on our work as honors educators and administrators are more certain than ever that honors programs and colleges are critical sites for development of equity, diversity, and inclusion in higher education. Numerous roundtable discussions and research presentations at recent regional and national honors conferences signal this awareness as do equally numerous honors-related publications, including two monographs released through the National Collegiate Honors Council; Setting the Table for Diversity, edited by Coleman and Kotinek, and Occupy Honors Education, edited by Coleman, Kotinek, & Oda. Lisa Coleman opens the former volume with a series of questions that frame the conversation on diversity in honors: Who is in our honors programs, who isn’t, and why? Do we serve all members and potential members equally by providing them with the support systems, the resources, mentors, and faculty and staff with whom they can identify? Do we help our students and ourselves address difference and do so in a respectful and constructive manner that enables all students to feel welcome and at home in the honors space? Do we construct curricula and create experiential-learning and service-learning opportunities that serve the ends of diversity (equity and inclusion) and social justice? Clearly, the need for honors programs to recruit, retain, and meaningfully engage diverse populations of talented students is widely acknowledged

Contracts for Honors Credit: Balancing Access, Equity, and Opportunities for Authentic Learning

Research indicates that a majority of honors students across the country are able to earn honors credit through the fulfillment of honors contracts. These learning contracts grant honors credit to students who perform additional work in non-honors-designated sections of other courses. Despite their popularity, little has been written on the design and delivery of honors contracts. An inaugural annual honors contract system is presented, involving student reflections on contract fulfillment and programmatic assessment of learning outcomes. Students (n = 38) demonstrate an understanding of interdisciplinarity, alternative ways of knowing and being, and intellectual humility while faculty (n = 28) indicate a high level of satisfaction with contracts’ design and output. Strengths and weaknesses are discussed. The author concludes that despite legitimate concerns about the effects of contracts on honors curricula and community, these agreements provide flexible ways for offering rich learning opportunities to students. A historical overview of honors contracts is provided

SPLITTING THE BABY: AVOIDING FORECLOSURE WHEN HOMEOWNERS HAVE UNCERTAIN OR CONFLICTING INTERESTS

Avoiding preventable foreclosure has become a common theme for lenders, consumer advocates, and policymakers. Finding alternatives to foreclosure has been difficult, even in the best of circumstances. Past scholarship has explored conflicts of interest between the various lenderside entities and suggested ways to promote foreclosure alternatives despite these conflicts. Thus far, insufficient attention has been given to avoiding foreclosure where homeowners are similarly unable to speak with a clear and united voice. This Article explores how homeownership can be preserved in cases where a homeowner is not able to secure the full cooperation of all borrowers on the account. This Article briefly surveys the foreclosure prevention landscape and the relatively recent changes that have altered the calculus of when foreclosure can be averted. It reviews existing literature on situations where internal conflicts on the lender’s side prevent or inhibit foreclosure avoidance. It next addresses the circumstances in which borrowers might be unable to present a united front in negotiations with the lender. This section includes a discussion of why these problems are of particular societal concern and why, in many cases, the most equitable result requires one owner or the other to retain ownership of the property. This section also discusses the cases of special concern where domestic abusers try to force a home into foreclosure as an extension of a pattern of abuse and control. The Article proceeds to address the mechanics that make foreclosure prevention particularly challenging where full cooperation from all borrowers or owners cannot be secured. It discusses partial solutions that advocates, judges, or other interested parties may be able to use to solve or avoid problems with existing law and prevailing policies, and highlights specific policies that lenders could change to resolve these problems in mutually beneficial ways. Finally, the Article argues that the diverse rights and interests of parties involved in a mortgage foreclosure cannot be adequately protected without joining all interested parties in one judicial action. The stakes are too high for non-judicial foreclosure