Asbury University Honors Program’s Policies in Need of Change

This is an article that I wrote for a journalism class at my university.

The Asbury University honors program is now in its third year, and students see the need for policy changes concerning service hours.

The university’s honors program started in the fall of 2021. For students in the program, there are several requirements that they have to fulfill during their time at Asbury. One of the components of the program is students are required to complete 80 service hours across their four years in college.

“Ideally, on-campus service is academic in nature through tutoring in the Center for Academic Success or supporting events such as the Honors Program Colloquium Speaker Series and the annual SEARCH symposium competition,” states the program’s web page.

I am an honors student at Asbury, and in my orientation to the program as a freshman, the honors students were told that by serving others in college, they are forming lifelong habits. This is what I expected to see in the service hours requirement.

Students have several options for getting their hours. They can join an off-campus nonprofit, help with setup and teardown of honors events, serve as Spiritual Life Assistants (SLAs) or First Year Experience (FYE) leaders, or find some other outside opportunity and get approval through the honors office.

However, some honors students see problems with the guidelines that the program has laid out.

According to program guidelines, all on-campus activities are capped at twenty hours per semester. The exception to this is working in the Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) as a tutor or academic coach. Even if a student works forty hours during Welcome Weekend as an FYE leader, they will only get to count twenty of them as service hours. But no matter how many hours students spend working in the CAE, they won’t cap their service hours. This is a problem.

“Things that I would argue are of high importance are disincentivized via various caps on hours,” says Zachary Fazio, a sophomore in the program. “Meanwhile, in a quasi-biased manner, things like tutors in which students are also paid are not capped.”

“Capping SLA would only make sense if things are capped consistently,” says Joy Hibshman, a junior in the program. Even though she is a writing consultant for the CAE, she goes on to say, “It's just not consistent and if anything, it feels like CAE hours are what should be capped.”

Even if the honors program leadership wants to encourage their students to tutor, one of the problems with it is that working for the CAE is a paid position. And if you’re getting paid, is it really service? If the goal is to form the habits of a servant’s heart, it doesn’t seem like this is doing the job. As an honors student myself, and a Latin tutor through the CAE, I’m not working for the CAE to serve others. For me, it’s just another job that also happens to count toward a requirement for the honors program.

“I think the volunteer hour policy is both good in theory and poor in practice.” says Fazio. “Rather than creating individuals that actually want to serve we are simply creating individuals that are seeking the faster way to check a box.”

The current policies need to change. Leadership could put a twenty-hour cap on tutoring hours to make it equal with other service opportunities. But a more effective plan of action would be to remove the capping system completely. It’s difficult enough to find opportunities that fit into the busy schedule of an honors student. If honors students are able to find forms of service that fit into their schedules, they should be allowed to pursue them without worrying about the program capping their hours. If the goal of the honors program is to form responsible adults who work hard, but also take the time to serve others, putting a limit on the areas of service that students are passionate about is not only unhelpful, but detrimental.