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Annmarie Guzy teaches honors composition at the University of South Alabama. This essay discusses her observation that students who took her class were more likely to complete the honors program, which led to her wondering what elements of her course might give students an edge in honors program completion. As an English professor with training in communications, rhetoric, and technical writing, she focuses assignments on discipline-specific research and argumentation from the students' majors. This insight into modes of communication in their chosen fields might aid students in constructing and writing more successful undergraduate research and capstone projects. She focuses on issues in honors education to demonstrate different types of argumentative strategies, and she supplements textbook chapters with appropriate articles from "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council" and "Honors in Practice." Perhaps this awareness increases students' engagement in honors education and their commitment to the program. What she does in her class helps her honors students to graduate, but their graduation rate does not dictate what she does in her class.

Annmarie Guzy, an expert with almost three decades of experience in post-secondary honors education, responds to Jerry Herron's essay, "Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy," which argues that "a well-conceived admissions policy tells us much more than whom to recruit; it becomes the basis for a quantitative defense of what we do with data and puts a convincing dollar value on the good evangel of excellence." Annmarie Guzy is skeptical about administration's increasing overreliance upon quantitative data to the exclusion of all other assessment measures. In this essay, she addresses whether numbers effect authentic, productive change in institutional and educational practices, or if instruments are merely rotated or existing ones revised until the desired results are achieved. Administration may be satisfied with attractive numbers that they can sell to their constituencies, but educators with their boots on the ground in the classrooms need something a little more substantial to guide honors students to successful program completion. As a faculty member, the author sees the results as simply a way to satisfy administration rather than as any true reflection of instructional quality or student performance. [For "Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy," see EJ1081987.]

In "Costs and Benefits in the Economy of Honors," Richard Badenhausen identifies several pressing issues regarding the economic status of honors in the current financial climate of higher education, including the role of faculty in addressing those issues. In her response to Badenhausen's essay, Annmarie Guzy, a faculty member at the University of South Alabama, argues that honors program directors should take the initiative in ensuring that honors faculty are informed about and invited to participate in discussions concerning the honors program's financial status. By opening these lines of communication, honors directors can also become more intimately aware of the increasingly difficult professional decisions that faculty have to make as a result of the "new normal" economy. In this essay, the author suggests that honors directors should consider allocating some funds to enhance faculty knowledge about the economics of honors in the following ways: (1) provide compensation for honors courses and projects; (2) promote National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) resources; (3) subsidize travel to honors conferences and workshops; and (4) share the financial information that the honors directors think the faculty members should know. While many of the recommendations cost money, the author suggests that the investment will enable faculty members to be more effective advocates of and participants in honors education. [For "Costs and Benefits in the Economy of Honors," see EJ1082243.]