Teaching in Honors
The UHP is committed to providing students with a distinctive honors curriculum designed to provide a more intimate learning environment within a larger university community.
Honors Faculty are:
- Enthusiastic and ready to engage motivated undergraduates
- Comfortable in small classroom settings
- Skilled in the facilitation of discussion
- Effective and innovative pedagogy
- Skilled at writing
- Interested in global connections
Why Teach in Honors?
- Do you enjoy interactive environments where students are prepared and eager to participate?
- Would you welcome a small class of only 15 students?
- All FTE credit goes to the home department of the faculty member.
Creating the Honors Environment
- Generally speaking, UHON courses afford greater depth and intensity.
- When appropriate, courses may be writing intensive.
- Students are expected to fully participate in class, and should be given the opportunity to do so.
- Collaborative and cooperative instructional style and delivery is encouraged.
Characteristics of an Honors Course
- Small enough for close attention to individual student learning. University Honors Program seminars (UHON 351) that satisfy University Core Curriculum requirements are capped at 15.
- Taught by the best faculty. Chosen by a panel of their peers, all UHON seminars are taught by faculty with substantial experience in their fields, sharing what they care passionately about in ways well suited to capable students.
- Innovative in teaching and learning. Each UHON seminar is a memorable experience for both students and faculty in an engaged community of learning. Like graduate seminars, UHON courses offer sustained discussion, group projects, multi-media classrooms, Service learning, Problem-based Learning and/or independent research and creative activities.
- Comprised of truly exceptional students. Eager to learn, well prepared, and broadly curious, UHON students generally motivate each other to assume much of the responsibility for the course themselves.
- Original in content and focus. Rather than survey courses pure and simple, UHON courses develop major themes appropriate to larger learning objectives. For example, Professors John Jackson and Mike Lawrence of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute are offered a course on Barack Obama and Presidential Politics in the Fall of 07. It satisfied requirements in social science, interdisciplinary studies, and multiculturalism in the University Core Curriculum, but it could have also just as easily been considered an appropriate course for a UHP student whose major is in Political Science, Journalism, and/or Black American Studies.
- Flexible. There is no one formula to success in a UHON course. The special qualities that individual faculty members bring to students in and out of the classroom matter far more than any one characteristic. We simply want to ensure that our very best students have the opportunity for a value-added learning experience, whether it be in a graduate seminar, a research laboratory, a study abroad trip, a musical or theatrical performance, an artistic exhibit, or a professional internship, whatever makes the best learning happen.
Honors Student Profile
- Entering honors freshman have scored in the 90th percentile on the ACT.
Students must maintain the minimum GPA of 3.5 to remain in the program.
- Honors students expect active student/instructor interaction and respond well to in-class discussion.
- Honors students are not afraid to take on challenging projects, as long as they do not appear to be busywork. They get enough of that in high school honors courses.