History

The Robert Donald Clark Honors College had its roots in two earlier programs. A departmental honors program was adopted in 1928 for juniors and seniors who stood in the upper 30 percent of their class. They could elect to participate in the program, which consisted of special reading under professors in the department in which they were majoring, and an honors thesis and examination. It had been introduced only a short time before into this country by the president of Swarthmore College, Frank Aydellott, after his experience as an honors student at Oxford.

In 1949 the Sophomore Honors program began. It was created because of a concern with general education. The Curricular Review Committee, of which Robert D. Clark was a member, wanted to give students a distributive education including humanities, social sciences, the sciences, and philosophy, that gives an overview and an understanding of life, and which can be built further upon after college.

The Curricular Review Committee faced a problem, though. At that time almost all the State Universities admitted all high school graduates to the university. This meant that there were a lot of remedial courses to prepare students for university level courses. There were special courses for students who weren't prepared, there were special courses for athletes, but the majority of courses were geared for the average student. The best students, however, were left to drift.

Hoyt Trowbridge, a member of the Curricular Review committee, proposed the Sophomore Honors program. Only students in the upper 20 percent of the class could elect to take their general education requirements--English, history, social science, biology, and the sciences--as a part of this special program.

These two programs succeeded in part, but as a whole, failed. The trouble with the Sophomore Honors program was that almost all students elected to take some of the honors courses, such as literature and history courses, but almost nobody took science, because the science courses were too elementary for science majors. Very few students ever completed the program to earn Sophomore Honors, and there was no real connection between the Sophomore Honors and the coexistent Departmental honors programs. The latter program had only a few students in each major.

Knight Dunlap's books on community inspired Robert D. Clark to create an honors college--a community for the honors program. After some initial funding troubles, the program was adopted with massive faculty support. The only major concern of the faculty was that this new Honors College would take away their best students. This proposal, however, kept majors in the department.

Once it was adopted, this community needed a location. After the boxes were cleared out, the basement of Friendly Hall was home to the Robert Clark Honors College. Later, the college would be moved to the Chapman Hall by director Alan Kimball.

In the early 1970s near destruction struck the honors college. During those unstable times, honors students, who were predominantly white, felt self conscious that they were unfairly privileged. The previous year the university had overspent its budget, and with the rapidly declining enrollment and increasing instability in the honors college, the faculty committee recommended that it be eliminated. Robert D. Clark, the president of the university, rejected the recommendation, but sequestered the honors college funds, while allowing the honors college to continue operating. With the help of a new director, Edward Diller, the honors college was soon revived. He convinced honors students that they could best serve society by continuing their education.

Years later, the Clark Honors College is thriving. The concept does so well that it's not surprising that most large universities have honors colleges. The Clark Honors College gives its students the benefits of a small community within the larger confines of the university. A recent graduate said this about the community offered by the honors college: "I've had all the advantages of a small college education, within the structure of a large university. The intimacy with the professors and the other students has been the defining advantage of the honors college."

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