Honors College to close by end of year under Resiliency Plan; will transition to honors program, eliminate key staff
By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news
One of Southern Oregon University’s most elite programs – its Honors College – is on its way out as part of $10 million in cost cuts detailed in the Resiliency Plan approved by the Board of Trustees in September.
The college has been part of SOU and housed in Susanne Homes Hall on the Ashland campus since 2013. This year’s cohort — 140 students strong — is the largest yet in the Honors College’s 12-year history. It will also be the last group that Cherstin Lyon will oversee as director, as the college is scheduled to close its doors at the end of the school year.
The university cost-cutting plan pares $10 million from university spending in the next three to four years, including $5 million this year alone, from what had been a $71 million budget.
“(The Honors College) is an exceptional program, but it has been created at a price point that we are no longer funded to sustain,” said Casey Shillam, provost at SOU, in a phone interview with Ashland.news.
“There just simply isn’t a way for us to continue maintaining it because … it’s been scaffolded in a way that even by trying to pull one piece out of it, then other parts will have unintended negative impacts and negative consequences. Instead of trying to piecemeal and take it apart, we really have to rethink it and restructure it in a way where we’re building a new program that has a very different kind of philosophy and it has a much broader impact of accessibility to a lot of different programs.”
Provost sees path forward
Since the Resiliency Plan’s adoption in September, SOU has extended scholarships for students to include the dozen quarters they were promised when they applied for entrance into the college, according to Shillam.
Winding down SOU’s Honors College
Part One (this story): Focus on what the changes are — perspectives from college provost and director
Part Two: We hear from students and support staff about their take on the changes
This story is part of an ongoing series on the impact of SOU’s Resiliency Plan, the university’s guide to making “a fundamental shift in our financial culture.” If you have personally been affected and wish to share your story, reach out to
Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].
“One of the things that we took into consideration when we developed this Resiliency Plan was absolute 100% commitment to anything that we had offered for support in financial aid,” Shillam said. “Any remission offers for athletes, for honors scholars, for any of the different populations of students to whom we provide either remissions or scholarships, we put that commitment into our budget.
“Cherstin’s done a really incredible job planning out how to ensure that both the junior and senior classes this year are able to complete all of the requirements for the current (Honors College) as it has been developed,” he added.
The impacts of pending cuts to the $800,000 annual program are still evolving for the college, which currently has two full-time employees, Lyon and Tabetha Savage, the college’s administrative program assistant.
Both positions will be eliminated in 2026. Lyon, who has tenure, will be transferred to SOU’s History Department effective in January, but will continue to oversee the Honors College through June 2026.
Savage has seniority and is slated to take another job elsewhere on campus.
The college will transition to a program, with one half-time employee next year, though it is unclear when a halftime employee will be hired to develop a new Honors Program.
“I know Cherstin put so much of her heart and her soul into the Honors College that it’s a lot to ask of her to try to revamp and revise a completely different program of study, so we’re going to open it up to other faculty and see if there is somebody on our campus who might be interested in leading that work,” Shillam said.
Lyon to oversee Honors College through June 2026
Shillam said that the program is scheduled for a pause after June 2026, but that some activities for honors students would continue.
“In essence, what will happen is, students will continue to have a cohort so they’ll still have that cohort experience of … first year students coming in and they will all be designated first year Honors Scholars,” Shillam said. “They will continue to have seminars, where they are all together in their individual cohorts and they will continue to have large scale interactions.”
Honors Scholars currently are enrolled in their own general education courses, which have different requirements than general education courses.
“That is where we’re seeing a lot of that problem with sustainability — that’s where those costs are incurred so what happens is that our other classes that are general education courses aren’t filled because our Honors students are taking their specific Honors courses or general education courses,” Shillam said.
“Students who want to pursue an Honors experience are still going to get an Honors experience,” she added. “I think that when we roll out what the new program looks like, it’s still going to be exciting — It is still going to be something that differentiates students who are high-achieving, and it’s still going to be something that is meeting needs for students.”
Shillam praised Lyon for her direction of the program, including how she will navigate the coming months.
“Cherstin’s done a really incredible job planning out how to ensure that both the junior and senior classes this year are able to complete all of the requirements for the current Honors (College) as it has been developed,” Shillam said.
“Having an Honors College has been an absolutely remarkable experience for students at SOU and there’s no question that it is a phenomenal program,” she added. “The problem really that we were facing is that it comes at a very, very high price tag … so when you think about all of the support that goes into what we offer in our Honors College, it was just simply not sustainable for us.”
All current juniors and seniors will be able to complete the Honors College curriculum as promised, according to Shillam.
Current freshmen and sophomores will complete the curriculum as an Honors Scholar of a new Honors Program when they graduate.
The new Honors Program will be more dispersed into the majors, according to Shillam, making it more sustainable for the university long-term.
“The (new) coordinator of the Honors Program will be responsible for once-a-week seminars for each of those cohorts and then different, larger events throughout the term, with all of the students together,” Shillam said.
“It’ll be significantly lower cost and it will be sustainable as a program that can be contained in the majors,” Shillam added. “We’re very committed to continuing the work of supporting students who want to be Honors Scholars.
“While we’re not able to offer the breadth of what we have in the past … we are going to continue to meet the needs of the students who we serve. It might look a little bit different, but we’re still going to prepare them with an excellent education and all of the experiences that we can.”
‘It cuts a very important program’
Lyon celebrated learning of the assurances of continuing scholarships for students pursuing an honors education at SOU.
Despite the silver lining, Lyon also shared her sadness associated with the loss of a top caliber Honors College she helped shape and mold.
“It cuts a very important program that helped with retention and recruiting and all of that,” Lyon said. “I’m concerned about the ramifications of that, of making it harder for us to recruit students.”
Lyon said she tried to discuss a variety of options in lieu of the cuts, but was left with the feeling that the decision was “quite final.”
“I was shocked,” she said, of its elimination.
Of the students who enter the Honors College, 75% of them finish in Honors College, but 87.5% who enter into the Honors College stay at SOU.
“That’s really high,” Lyon said. “Our retention rates are nothing close to that for the general (SOU) population.”
Lyon said 100% of Honors College students graduate in six years and nearly 100% graduate in three or four years, describing the percentages as “unheard of” at higher education institutions nationwide.
“I was looking forward to (being) able to be a part of the solution to improving and increasing our enrollments and our retention and our graduation rates by expanding the Honors College even more,” Lyon said, “so that it could be a larger player in helping the university increase revenue streams.”
Having a full-time director for the program has provided holistic advising and mentorship for students, something the new Honors Program will not have, according to Lyon.
“We’re just in that structural situation where we just can’t do everything we’d like to do,” she said.
Lyon said she wasn’t in the room when the final decisions were made, and that she offered up alternative proposals.
“But that’s what they decided to do,” she said. “I think they have high hopes that some sort of replacement program will somehow fill the void a little bit, but I do not agree.”
Lyon noted that a program alone will likely lack supplemental wraparound support provided under the current Honors College and noted it will not be attractive for students as an Honors College.
“The reason why this program is stronger at retaining people than any other program is because you have two dedicated staff members who are here to do that,” Lyon said.
“Losing the Honors College, we lose all of those co-curriculars, all of that really intentional, in-depth, community development,” she added. “That goes away because there’s no way that you can have a smaller program with less administrative support and do all of those things.”
After looking at the decision to close the college more closely, Lyon also said she can see why it makes sense to cut the Honors College.
“I’m very supportive of the university’s efforts to continue to serve our region by staying open,” she said.
“We just have budgetary restrictions, they’re real,” she added later in the interview.
Boosting diversity, Honors College numbers
During Lyon’s time as director, she said she improved the college’s diversity, overall size and the Honors College has grown exponentially under her care.
“When I arrived, the Honors College was about 94% white, mostly female, and mostly well-resourced,” Lyon said.
There were approximately 90 Honors Scholars enrolled at the time.
“One of the reasons that Honors Colleges tend to have very limited demographics is because some people get the opportunity to hear about an Honors College well in advance and to prepare for it and others either are not socialized to think that’s something that’s for them … or they’ve never heard of it,” she added.
During her time at the college, Lyon dropped the SAT requirement, in order to make it more inclusive, yet still adhere to high standards.
“I’m not going to accept people just because they have a 4.0,” Lyon said.
She lowered the GPA requirement of a 3.7 to a 3.5 GPA, “to capture a larger population and then focused really heavily on recruiting and admitting those students who have curiosity and intrinsic motivation.”
“The best thing that you can figure out from a SAT score is what zip code you live in,” Lyon said. “It’s strongly correlated to wealth and class standing; it’s not representative of a student’s academic potential.”
She also shared about the Honors College with high schools and has coached SOU ambassadors and campus tour leaders on how to explain the college to potential students.
Within the last two years, Lyon said, the population of the Honors College began to resemble the broader university.
“Having students in the class who have very different experiences and opinions than themselves has prepared them to be able to have these difficult conversations and has been a part of their educational experience beyond what the professors can provide,” Lyon said.
Lyon didn’t stop at boosting diversity, but set to updating the college’s curriculum to reflect it.
She worked with Warren Hedges, a contracted instructor, on making the curriculum intentional about helping students develop community while they discussed diverse ideas coming from wide-ranging backgrounds.
“When you increase the size of the overall population, then it’s more likely that more students will share a similar experience with at least one other person in class,” Lyon said.
There are two defining attributes that Lyon looks for from entrance submissions each year since she arrived to lead the program in 2019: Curiosity and intrinsic motivation.
“You can do so much with people if they already have that in them,” Lyon said.
And she has.
For the new Honors Program, which is a concept until a new, half-time coordinator is found to develop it, Lyon said she hopes it will be an individual with fresh vision and energy for the role.
“I think it’s really going to be helpful for there to be a fresh start,” Lyon said, “to imagine what that might look like.”
Email Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].
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