Kansas University’s students might be getting smarter. Just ask Barbara Schowen.

When she started as director of Kansas University’s Honors Program in 1996, the program offered 54 honors courses to 1,079 students. Last fall, 1,523 students enrolled in 83 honors courses.

Schowen, who retires Friday from KU, says the Honors Program is going strong.

“It’s been a wonderful time,” she said. “I feel good about the program. It’s in good shape, and it’s going to go on to be even better.”

Schowen credits larger freshman classes and more National Merit scholars — in addition to Honors Program recruiting — for the increase in numbers.

In addition to offering honors courses — which allow students to have an “honors” designation on their diploma and transcript — the Honors Program offers undergraduate research awards and administers national scholarship programs at KU, among other duties.

Schowen, 64, started teaching in KU’s chemistry department in 1977 after teaching 13 years at Baker University in Baldwin. She later started the half-time Honors Program position.

She will be replaced temporarily by John Gronbeck-Tedesco, who will be interim director until a national search is completed for a full-time director. Gronbeck-Tedesco also is associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Sandra Wick, the program’s associate director, credited Schowen with establishing a framework for students to compete for national scholarships. During Schowen’s tenure, students received 20 Goldwater scholarships, three Marshall scholarships, one Rhodes scholarship, nine Udall scholarships and four Truman scholarships.

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“She took to developing a lot of scholarships,” Wick said. “It’s not just the outcome, necessarily, like how many Rhodes scholars we had, but paying attention to the other scholarships on a national level. Barbara was good at seeing that was beneficial to students.”

Schowen said the key to securing national scholarships was increasing students’ experiences overseas, in service and in research.

“To be successful in these, you need to have done things outside the classroom,” she said. “We have to let students know early about these opportunities.”

Honors courses typically are smaller and taught by top faculty at KU. Schowen said she’d like the Honors Program to provide a new type of interdisciplinary curriculum at KU.

“Instead of taking a political science that’s a smaller version of a big political science class, we could have a class that integrates politics and history, or something like that,” she said.

Meredith Hauck, a junior from Wichita, has another vision for the Honors Program. Hauck, who is involved in the newly created Honoread Council of honors students, said she’d like honors students to be more socially active.

She’s helping spearhead an effort to remodel Nunemaker Hall, the Daisy Hill building where the program’s office is located, to make it more modern and student-friendly. She said Schowen was supportive of the effort.

“Nunemaker’s not in the middle of campus,” Hauck said. “You have to make an effort to get over there. Once you get there, you see what a great place the building is and the resources that are available if you’re applying for graduate school. We want students to think they’re involved in a complete honors program and not just taking honors classes.”