George Mariz

Program Reviews and Consultation

NCHC Activities Related to Honors Program Assessment (up to 5):
Member of the following: Publications Board; Committee on Assessment; Frequent presenter at NCHC annual meetings on advising, administration, student and faculty recruitment, curricular change, and Honors housing; frequent site visitor

Activities in other areas or organizations related to honors assessment or site visits, workshops, etc. regarding honors programs/colleges and/or other academic areas
Assessment, honors colleges, faculty recruitment, fund raising.

Self identified areas of special interest and experience
Student and faculty recruitment, students retention, advising, Honors housing, long-range planning, budgeting, curricular planning and change, capstones, working with central administration.

George Mariz Curriculum Vitae

On the Role of the Site Visitor as Consultants & Program Reviewers

An Honors site visitor aids an honors program or college and its home institution to determine its current character and scope, its place within  its institution, an appropriate size, and in answering a host of other questions, some general to all honors program, and a number unique to a particular program and institution.  The visitor should also aid the program or college in determining its immediate and longer term direction.  A site visitor’s function is thus concerned with assessment on the one hand and advisory and exploratory on the other, but a site visitor not prescriptive.  A site visitor will know a good deal about national trends in honors education but will not be an expert on the particular campus undergoing a site visit.  The visitor assists the program or college in determining where it is, and where it wants to go.  Accordingly, a site visit should have a number of aims.  It should provide a program or college with a good idea of its current condition—often a program will have articulated quite well where it is in some respects but not in others regarding its position within its home institution or in terms of national trends, and it may require assistance in creating a larger, more detailed picture.  A site visitor should consult with a very broad variety of campus constituents, and these must include first and foremost, faculty and students in the program.  A site visit also should provide the program with guidance, i.e., a detailed report, that allows it to deal with immediate difficulties, e.g., curricular matters, administrative problems, student retention, and to assist honors to position itself within the institution and the larger honors community for the longer term, e.g., formulating a strategic plan, working with an Admissions Office on recruitment, developing a plan to involve outstanding faculty with the program.  It is not a site visitor’s role to tell a program what to do according to a formula but to listen carefully, to consult with a broad range of opinion, and to help a campus understand its own honors culture and determine its future.  The site visitor must learn the institutional culture and make suggestions that fit that culture, but the visitor must also encourage dialogue among the campus constituencies, and thereby assist them to determine what they desire in the program.  Having stirred that process and collected the appropriate information, the site visitor then provides a report that assists the program and campus formulate a unique plan that provides direction for the future.  There is no one model, nor is there one solution that works for all institutions, and even colleges and universities of similar size and character vary widely, one to another.  The site visit must assist the program and institution to determine what works best in that specific set of circumstances.