Our Goals and Emphasis
The goal of our University Honors Program is to promote intellectual curiosity and personal engagement with learning. We accomplish this by cultivating a community of scholarly research among cohorts of high-achieving students. Our program introduces intellectual frameworks for exploring and connecting ideas and methods across disciplines.
We emphasize growth in critical awareness and encourage resourceful learning through discussion-based inquiry, mentored research, and appreciation for different methods of discovery. Students complete a capstone research project under the supervision of a faculty mentor. In the process, they learn to gather and analyze information, understand implications of what they discover, and define and address complex problems using methods and knowledge from a variety of disciplines. Co-curricular experiences and field trips enhance the community-building focus of the program and expand the scope of learning beyond the classroom.
Above all, the Honors Program encourages students to raise thoughtful questions, and to share knowledge, judgment and perspective derived from careful inquiry, exploration and analysis. Our graduating seniors publish articles developing the focus of their capstone projects in our annual Journal of Exploratory Research and present their findings and celebrate their accomplishments at our annual Capstone Research Conference in May. Journals and conference programs are archived on our website, together with more detailed descriptions of our curricular objectives.
Updated: August 15, 2023