Helping Honors Students in Trouble

Although I am no expert in effectively helping troubled students, I hope that the Indiana University Southeast Honors Program serves as a place of refuge and support for all its students, most particularly those who are in any sort of trouble. Because my students, whether in the honors program or in my English classes, are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of any difficulties, I have found the Noel-Levitz College Student Inventory (CSI) and Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) helpful in bringing to light impediments to their success and happiness of which I might otherwise be unaware. Since 2007, when the honors program began, we’ve administered the CSI to each student registered for an honors class at the beginning of the fall semester, and at the start of the spring semester we administer the CSI or the SSI. Thus, some students take two inventories in a year, and some do not; some students take the SSI, and some do not; but all honors students take the CSI at least once. Once we get the results of either survey, I ask the office assistant to begin scheduling appointments for me to meet with each student, share the report, and discuss ways that the honors program and I can help solve any of the problems the results reveal. We employ a triage system, approaching those students who seem most troubled first. In the fall of 2009, I met with more than forty of our eighty-plus students, and in the spring, I met with nearly as many students