Editor’s introduction

Since its inception over fifty years ago, the National Collegiate Honors Council has served as an oasis of civility and cooperation in times of academic, cultural, and political turmoil. The presidential speeches and other official remarks at annual conferences echo this fact year after year, not as mere self-congratulation or boosterism but as evidence that even as generations of honors faculty and administrators have worked hard to maintain this tradition within the NCHC, it continues to surprise the old-timers as well as those who are new to the organization. Since honors educators have or have had positions in academic departments and in disciplinary organizations where contention is perpetual on matters both weighty and trivial, the novelty never quite wears off of finding oneself among a group of colleagues who earnestly seek better ways to educate their students as well as make education exciting and honorable throughout the country and beyond. In celebration of this tradition, we begin the 2019 issue of Honors in Practice with the 2018 presidential address and three sets of remarks by the year’s award winners