Honors Program
The Honors Program at Stetson University is the center from where limitless intellectual exploration happens. With a curriculum specifically designed to create your own major and access to professors, entrepreneurs and innovators whose cutting-edge research will stimulate your imagination, Honors is committed to empower your potential to make a difference in the world.
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Why Honors Program at Stetson University?
Honors is an experience where the most curious, creative and ambitious minds at Stetson meet.
- Do you want to specialize in a field that does not exist? Honors will help you create it with a Self-Defined Major path.
- Do you want to spend the summer exploring the effects of climate change in Alaska? Our Discovery Stipend will fund it.
- Do you seek an internship at the U.N. or a grant to publish a paper? The Enhanced Advising sessions will craft plan to make that happen.
As an Honors student, you take Honors-dedicated courses that develop your critical thinking skills at the highest level. Small class sizes and experiential learning pedagogies offer you countless hands-on opportunities to make a meaningful difference in the community. Throughout your college years, you have access to countless Honors special events with professors, entrepreneurs and innovators that help you build a powerful network and relationships for life.
"If we could summarize Stetson Honors Program in one sentence, it would say that Honors has one goal: to remove all barriers to your imagination and ambitions. Truly, the sky is the limit. It compares to the resources of an Ivy League school."
Dr. Yohann C. Ripert, Director of the Honors Program
"The Honors Program has taught me that it is okay to agree and disagree with people's thoughts, even if they're from some of the most respected philosophers of all time…the Honors Program has taught me to think about the media I consume, particularly about the source of information, fallacies, methods of reasoning, and implications of reasoning."
Alyssa Pavek, senior in the Honors Program
Career Outcomes
The Honors Program doesn't determine your career outcome – YOU do. The Honors Program offers tools and opportunities that directly enhance your school experience and future employability.
SELF-DEFINED MAJOR
One of the unique opportunities offered by Honors Program is to create your own major. Stetson has more than eighty majors and minors to satiate your intellectual curiosity, but can you imagine what you could do by combining two or three of them? That’s what the Self-Defined Major is: a unique combination of disciplines specially tailored to your intellectual trajectory and professional goals.
DISCOVERY STIPEND
We know that learning happens inside and beyond the classroom. For this reason, Stetson University provides Honors students with funds to apply to any project that will advance their academic goals while empowering them to think bigger and beyond campus. In most recent years, students have used the stipend to organize a spiritual journey from Perpignan Castle in Southern France to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Northwestern Spain, purchase scientific equipment to design a study about effects of cancerous cells on young mice, and travel to the archives in the University of Dublin in Ireland to investigate the birth of Anglo-Saxon philosophy.
CAREER READINESS
The Honors Program is unique in that its commitment to academic excellence is supported by initiatives that offer students a unique access to the professional world: an internship course, career development seminars, lunches with entrepreneurs, dinners with alumni, and an enhanced advising that prepares them for jobs and graduate schools throughout the country.
- Yohann Ripert, PhD, Director of the Honors Program, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies
- Randall Croom, PhD, Associate Professor of Management
- Daniil Zavlunov, PhD, Associate Professor of Music
- Kevin Winchell, Director of Community Engagement
- John Tichenor, PhD, Chair of Management
- Elizabeth Boggs, PhD
The Honors Program has two signature courses:
One is the First Year Seminar (FSEM) that investigate enduring questions. Currently, our question is, "What does a just world look like?"
Two is our Junior Seminar (JSEM) that questions, "What does it mean to live and lead a life that matters?"
In between, Honors students take a series of 0-credit and 2-credit courses designed to develop a sweet spot between academic learning and professional preparation:
- a Praxis course that gives them an opportunity to develop a community-engaged project
- a Workshop course that trains them to write a proposal for an external grant
- a Tutorial course where students create their own course
- a Internship course that supports their first professional experience
- a Best Book Club course where we read together four books chosen by the students.
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