By Bailey Elise McBride
When H2P students heard the class might be discontinued, they quickly created a Facebook group, “Save H2P!” The gesture indicates just how much the program means to those who take it – and why those who haven’t enrolled in it might want to consider taking it in the future.
The Honors Humanities Project is a four-semester progression of classes that replaces World Literature I and II, World Civilization I and II, a fine art requirement and a humanities colloquium, and has been offered to honors students for nearly 10 years.
“Contrary to popular belief, the Honors College does not operate H2P – it’s a Fulbright College program,” said Bob McMath, dean of the Honors College. “It was started within Fulbright and Fulbright is in charge of it.”
In a letter he wrote to the creator of the Facebook group, McMath said he recently met with Professor Dave Frederick, Associate Dean Chuck Adams and Professor Sidney Burris, honors director in Fulbright College, about the future of H2P.
McMath said the group was “frank to say that the future of the program is in doubt” and requested funding from the Honors College.
McMath indicated that this year alone the Honors College has provided $350,000 for honors instruction in Fulbright.
“I told my colleagues that I would be happy to consider providing some support for H2P,” McMath wrote, “but it would have to be in the context of a significant overall cut in our current level of support for honors instruction,” so that the Honors College can stay within its own budget.
“It’s not the crisis it seemed to be a week ago, I’ll say that,” said Charles Adams, associate dean of Fulbright College. “It’s not in grave danger and isn’t at a crisis point anymore.”
McMath said it bothers him that people think the Honors College is shutting down H2P.
“We like the program and we want to see it continue,” he said. “I think it’s a really important program and that’s why I even agreed to teach in it this semester. Some things are happening that I think are very positive and that I think will ensure the longevity of the program.”
Adams said that when H2P began, the college was in a much different place.
“When we started, the university was 14,000 students,” he said. “Teaching H2P has become a luxury because professors are getting called back to their own departments because of the enrollment growth.”
Adams said Fulbright is trying to entice new professors into teaching in the program, to “bring in some new blood” by adding new incentives for faculty.
Some of the advantages the concerned students have cited for the program were the small, intimate classes in the first years of college, the development of close relationships with professors early on, and exposure to study habits and writing skills not usually taught until upper-level classes.
Each semester of the program focuses on a different time period, arranged in chronological order, beginning with founding myths in the first semester and ending with the Vietnam War and rock ‘n’ roll in the last semester. Each semester of the program is team-taught by three professors, who each lecture on areas they specialize in. Students attend lectures twice a week and participate in a one-hour discussion period with their instructor once a week.
The class focuses on five different pieces of culture each semester as a means for students to learn about parts of history not usually included in other survey-style classes.
These cultural icons include works of architecture like the Great Wall of China or the Brooklyn Bridge; works of literature such as the Mahabharata of India, the Popul Vuh of the Mayans or Othello by Shakespeare; and also the study of movements in history such as the colonization of the New World and Africa. Students learn about each of these periods through the study of primary texts produced within each culture.
The program was the brainchild of a professor no longer at the UA. A grant proposal written and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed for experts from around the globe to come to Fayetteville over two summers to show faculty how to teach the subjects covered in H2P in a productive way.
“From a faculty perspective, the difficulty, attraction and challenge is that the faculty member has to teach things outside of the discipline they were trained in,” Burris said in a previous interview. “Often a Ph.D. in a given area dictates what a professor will teach for the rest of their life – this program allows faculty to teach in the areas they may already have interest in, but are outside of the discipline they normally teach.”
Students often cite that the class is too reading-intensive or too tough for them to remain in the program, which results in some students dropping out after the first day. The class goes from more than 100 students in the first semester to closer to 50 by the final semester.
The class is only offered Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 10:50 a.m., and students must go in order of the four semesters.
“H2P is kind of like acquiring a taste for olives,” Burris said. “Some like them immediately, some dislike them immediately and some start to like them after time.”