The Honors Curriculum

Coursework

Core Course, “Studies”

Because we feel that it is important for honors students to have a core education tailored to their particular areas of study, we have designed two tracks through the core course: the liberal arts track and the technical/professional track.

In the first year, students from what will become the differentiated tracks work together, examining a series of historical periods important in the development of our contemporary world-view. We begin by looking—in the Fall—at the emergence of what has been called “the culture of measurement,” or the beginning of the natural sciences—the growth and development in the 17th century of a new, experimental way of looking at the world. We consider both what elements of the older world-view this new way of looking replaced, and which ones it re-used, but significantly reshaped. Then, in the Winter quarter, we consider the ways in which that new perspective on the natural world is transferred in the 18th century to critical questions about the social world. In the Spring, we turn to look at the 19th and early 20th centuries.

At the same time that we are moving, in that first year, through the study and careful analysis of key primary and secondary texts, we will be working with you on a series of increasingly challenging writing assignments that will help build tools needed in the much later production of the undergraduate thesis.

In the second year of “Studies,” students will move into either the liberal arts or the technical/professional track. The technical/professional track comprises students from majors with high credit hour demands placed upon them; thus the engineering and computer sciences majors, the art and architecture majors, music majors, and prospective business students are included. And, while pre-medical students will typically have the generally lower in-major requirements of work in one of the majors of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (for instance chemistry or biology), they are also included in the technical/professional track, since the honors college faculty are well aware of the absolute necessity for pre-medical students to have substantial extracurricular volunteer experience in order to make successful application to medical school. The liberal arts track includes all other majors.

In this second year, technical/professional students will study the emergence and stabilization of the current ideal of the professions. Liberal arts track students will return to the “deep history” of the classical tradition they had looked at in the first quarter of the freshman year, in other words, the classically oriented culture to which the emerging project of experimental science had represented such a challenge. Both tracks will carry out an extended research-focused writing project—throughout the entirety of the second year—which is meant as the formal rehearsal of skills and techniques needed for the baccalaureate thesis.

Upper-Division Coursework

During the junior and senior years honors college students will participate in their required upper-division seminars, the colloquia (visit the Courses page to find information on typical seminar offerings.) These seminars will further develop one or another aspect of intellectual matter examined in the core course; they will also allow students to further polish their tools of analysis, argument and contextualization, in preparation for the thesis in the senior year.

The last part of a student’s work in the honors college is the baccalaureate thesis; it bears emphasizing that this is a serious project, and one which represents the valuable opportunity for the student to work closely with senior faculty; it should not be undertaken frivolously. The process has two parts: a thesis seminar (offered each quarter except summer) during which you will compose a prospectus, and the credit for the thesis proper (almost invariably taken the following quarter after the thesis seminar.) The prospectus must be an indication that the student is already aware of the main contours of the thesis project, and it is not to be written as pure speculation. Instead, it should reflect substantial consideration and reflection already undertaken by the student; it will of course demonstrate attention to the expository and analytical tools accumulated in the honors college’s core curriculum. Further detail is available here, on the Thesis page.

Co-Curricular Experience: The Washington, D.C., Internships

Participation in the honors college’s prestigious Washington Internship Project is a privilege, not a right. While it is certainly our intention, as faculty in this program, to try to make the opportunity available to as many students as possible, not all students can participate. Among other factors determining selection for this project the faculty will consider quality of work done in the honors core (and here thoughtful and enthusiastic participation will be key), quality of work done in the major, and the benefit to the University as a whole of the student being chosen as a representative of our community. Many students will participate in the Internship Project; this is regularly done in the student’s junior year (although in some rare cases students may be invited to take part earlier), so that there is ample opportunity for students returning from Washington to serve—as invariably they have—as valuable sources of information for their colleagues. For further information about the internship project, click here.