The Honors Core Curriculum

"I don't know how good a teacher I am, but I do know that I am a

better teacher than I would have been if I hadn't been inspired by so

many terrific Honors students (and Honors colleagues)

through the decades."

- Dr. Wayne Dickson

The Honors curriculum calls on students and faculty to conceive of themselves as members of an interdisciplinary community committed to integrated ways of thinking and learning. The courses emphasize teaching and learning that draws upon the full richness of human knowledge in the humanities, the creative arts, and the natural and social sciences.

The curriculum offers a distinctive and challenging learning environment in which the student is asked to take an active role in the educational process. In particular, these seminars are designed to be interdisciplinary, team-taught, discussion-intensive and to have restricted enrollments, so that students might actively confront primary works. During these discussions, students are asked to analyze, critique, and react to the primary authors’ viewpoint, as well as to fellow students and the discussion leaders interpretations. Each course builds upon the experience students acquire in previous honors course work, focusing on a series of questions that every well-educated person is obliged to consider: How have we come to understand who we are, as individuals and as a society? What are our moral responsibilities in our local communities and in the world? How might an understanding of human knowledge across the disciplines help us think more clearly and incisively about the most challenging and contested issues of our time?

During their junior or senior year, students participate in the Honors Seminar, which explores responses to the question: What does it mean to lead a life that matters? In addition to philosophizing on living significant lives, students begin pragmatic work--supported by Honors instructors, on-campus services, and visitors--on graduate school applications, resumes, interviewing skills, and life plans for after graduation.

During the final weeks of their college career, every student submits to an Honors Oral exam with an examination board made up of Honors instructors and advisers. Students also compose a Credo of values and ideas by which they pledge to live.

The Honors curriculum is structured so that each group of entering students in the program stays together throughout the sequence of courses. This fosters a continuous dialogue over the whole of the college experience.

Honors 1 Foundations of Knowledge and Understanding (1 unit)

The first of a two-semester sequence designed to set the historical foundations of human knowledge and understanding. The seminar will undertake a critical comparative study of knowledge “now and then.” Approaches to knowledge and understanding beginning with the ancients and continuing until the 17th Century will be contrasted, compared, and evaluated in the light of contemporary models of knowledge. Texts from across disciplines (the natural sciences, the humanities, the fine arts, and the social sciences) will be used to present ideas that have had significant impact on the development of knowledge. The course includes a laboratory component in which issues in earth, life and physical science, along with issues in psychology, sociology and commerce will be integrated into discussions of philosophy, religion, politics, literature and art. The course is team-taught by three professors, representing three different academic disciplines.

Honors 2 Foundations of Knowledge and Understanding (1 unit)

The second of a two-semester sequence designed to set the historical foundations of human knowledge and understanding. The course description is the same as Honors 1 except that this course begins with the 17th Century and the rise of modern science and continues to the present and beyond, taking into consideration future prospects for knowledge and understanding. The focus of the course is on the development of knowledge and understanding in science, technology, art, economics and politics.  As in the first semester, this course features a natural and social science laboratory component and is team taught by three professors, representing three different academic disciplines. Pre-requisite: Honors 1.

Honors 3 Self and Society (1 unit)

A seminar examining dominant images of self and society.  Students and faculty consider the impact of institutions, practices, and traditions on the formation of collective and individual identity and examine the impact of cultural heritage, ideology, and social categories on experience, perspective, and values. The course is team taught by either two or three professors, each from a different academic discipline. Pre-requisite: Honors 2.

Honors 4 Justice and Ethics in Global Perspective (1 unit)

A seminar considering cross-cultural perspectives on justice and ethics and focusing on how different historical, political, and cultural traditions give rise to divergent ideas about freedom, rights, responsibilities, individualism, and community. The course is team taught by either two or three professors, each from a different academic discipline. Honors 2. 

Honors 5 Honors Capstone Colloquium (1 unit)

In the junior or senior year, students will participate in a senior colloquium coordinated with the major lecture series on campus (e.g., Values Council Lecture Series, Howard Thurman Lecture Series, Lawson Lecture Series, Woodrow Wilson Fellows Lectures). In addition to attending these lectures, students will read pertinent texts, meet to discuss these texts before the public lecture, and gather after the lecture for further discussion and analysis. As often as possible, the lecturer will also attend the post-lecture colloquium to offer a “lecture on the lecture” and to entertain further questions. Students will attend six to eight lectures per semester and the concomitant pre- and post-lecture colloquia.