History
The idea of an Honors Program at Elizabethtown College surfaced in 1997 at the President’s annual fall retreat. One of the students in attendance asked if such a program could be developed at the college. The President charged the Office of the Provost to investigate the matter.
As a result, contact was made with the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC). With information in hand from NCHC, the Provost brought the question to the Academic Council. The Academic Council appointed an ad hoc committee to investigate the feasibility of developing an honors program at Elizabethtown.
Their report, filed with the Academic Council in the spring 1998, recommended that a program be developed. The report found that an honors program at Elizabethtown College could help attract a higher quality student profile, improve college retention rates, contribute to a more dynamic curriculum and academic environment, and enhance faculty development and satisfaction.
Shortly thereafter, the idea of a college-wide honors program was defined as one of the twenty-two primary implementing objectives of the Strategic Plan approved by the Board of Trustees in October 1998.
The Academic Council once again took the initiative and appointed another ad hoc committee to write an honors program proposal. With this mandate clearly in place, two members of the Academic Council attended the NCHC’s 1998 annual meeting in Chicago for the purposes of helping to develop the proposal.
In the spring of 1999, the Faculty Assembly unanimously approved the proposal drafted by the ad hoc committee. Shortly thereafter, the Provost asked Dr. Conrad L. Kanagy, associate professor of Sociology, to direct the newly named Hershey Foods Honors Program. The name reflected a major donation to the Honors Program’s endowment by the Hershey Foods Corporation.
The first year (1999-2000) of the Program was spent developing curriculum and recruiting students for the 2000-2001 academic year. Subsequently, the program enrolled its first class of 42 Honors students in the fall of 2000, with an average SAT score of 1300. Of this first class, 21 students graduated from the program.
The program has continued to grow and maintains an enrollment of approximately 10 percent of the student body.In the spring of 2005, the Hershey Foods Company changed its name and subsequently, the program was renamed to the Elizabethtown College Honors Program. Dr. Kanagy stepped down from directing the program, and Dr. Dana Gulling Mead, associate professor of English, was named the new director of the program.
