During the Feb. 28 spring 2023 Honors Town Hall, council members and faculty addressed stipend cuts, housing adjustments, plans for Schichtl and the need for a new online communication platform.

The Schedler Honors College stipend is being cut in half for its incoming freshmen — from $2,000 to $1,000 per semester. 

A student, who spoke anonymously through the event’s provided Google form, said, “It is disheartening that honors is no longer a full ride and now only pays for a small portion of our expenses and takes away from the feeling of being valuable and secure that the people in honors used to have … Very surprised to know that I’m in honors with other scholarships and still taking out loans.”

The program’s seniors, the class of 2023, are the last to benefit from full rides. The class of 2024 receives $5,000 a semester while current sophomores and freshmen receive $2,000.

Patricia Smith, dean of the Honors College, responded to this concern by sympathizing with students who have to work to close the gap not covered by their scholarships and, as a result, have to miss out on opportunities to participate in the honors community. 

For incoming students, it will be even more difficult, Smith said, offering context for the cuts.

Smith said funding for higher education in the state has not increased in nearly 20 years, while the cost of running an institution has. 

Every dollar that the honors program receives has been a dollar of tuition paid by non-honors students.

“If you think about that $4,000 a year that you’re getting, that is $4,000 that’s being spread across the 10,000 students at UCA,” Smith said. “That $4,000 times 300 students is $1.2 million — spread across 10,000 students, and they’re paying more in tuition to cover your scholarship.”

Funding for the honors stipend was cut by millions of dollars to ease the financial burden on the UCA community.

Smith said, “I agree that most people, students and faculty have no idea that that’s going on. People were shocked to learn that our students aren’t on board, and maybe [they] just take it for granted.

“Some assume that is still the case, and they do so bitterly because they feel like honors is continuing to take away from programs that they’re trying to support as faculty, and have no idea that, in fact, we’ve seen millions of dollars cut from our budget in less than half a decade. It is a reality, and I get it. I hate it,” Smith said.

Discussion at the town hall shifted to cover the transition in housing, with the addition of the honors house at 425 Donaghey Ave.

Smith said she planned to hold a meeting with the 17 students selected to occupy the house in the fall to discuss the extent to which the house will be open to the rest of the honors community since most honors spaces are shared and made available 24/7.

Smith said she is cautious about offering unlimited access to the new house.

“Before this year, I would have said, ‘I would trust any honors student to be in the space at any time.’ But, this year, we’ve had theft of property, we have had damage of property, we have had things go missing from the kitchen, we’ve had entire legs ripped off the tables and chairs torn down to fragments that were no longer recognizable as furniture,” Smith said.

Smith said that this was the first time in the 41-year history of honors that something like this had occurred, but that she would still like to make the space open for commuting honors seniors.

Due to the recent mistreatment of honors housing property, Milan Novakovic, the residence coordinator for Farris Honors Hall, has started the progress of getting cameras installed in Farris, something the hall has not needed in its 16 years of housing students.

Novakovic said he plans to address these issues during a mandatory Farris housing meeting March 14 in the dorm’s courtyard, and also announced that after his graduation in May, Farris and New Hall would share their first-ever full-time coordinator. 

Smith said with the program’s accepted addition of 15 seats, it may bring back the honors village structure, which would involve both New Hall and Farris Hall containing 100% honors students.

“Considering budget cuts that we are all being forced to make, we’re really excited to be able to make that move,” Smith said. 

Smith said that the program also hopes to grow by setting up articulation agreements with other universities’ honors programs, allowing their students to transfer into UCA’s University Scholars Program.

Besides changes in housing, the program is also expecting to move offices and classes from McAlister to Schichtl.

Schichtl will be home to both the Department of Honors Interdisciplinary Studies and the Center for Global Learning and Engagement at some point in 2024, Smith said.

Images of the proposed design, which depicted concepts from honors students and the Center for Global Learning and Engagement members, were shared with those in attendance.

The design included a library, a student lounge, classrooms, office spaces, a sensory garden and an outdoor classroom complete with a moss wall, accessible swings and barbecue grills.

The library, named after Norbert O. Schedler, the founder of the honors college, caters to those wanting a meditative or nondenominational prayer space, Smith said.

A final transition under consideration was the honors online forum platform. 

Students said the program’s current dependence on GroupMe for communication was “impersonal”, unhealthy and “hostile.” 

One student said, “there’s this sense that when you say something, you’re both saying it in front of a huge audience, and you’re saying it to the void.”

Donna Bowman, professor and freshman curriculum coordinator for the honors college, said that in her Core II: The Search for Community freshman class, she and her students are discussing helping the community switch to Discord in the coming year.

Bowman said that, because Discord — a voice and instant messaging platform — offers students the ability to make threads that branch off from the main chats, students would be able to more easily curate what information they wanted to be notified of and participate in. 

Discord would allow students to host streams and chat rooms, which would offer other conversational alternatives, should the students need something other than text. 

Bowman said that her class is working to propose a design structure or a rule set for the Discord community.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Hannah Malone, president of the Schedler Honors Council said, “This is just the conversation. The important part about what we do is what we do after this.” 

Malone said that it is important for honors students to keep both themselves and faculty in check because “that’s how this relationship works and that’s how we grow.”

The Honors College will take part in the campuswide Day of Giving on March 9 and also intends to bring former Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Chris Jones to campus March 16 in Doyne Hall.