Honors Program
The Huntington University Honors Program is a community of scholars from various academic backgrounds who love to learn and are skilled in engaging in the liberal arts inside and outside of the classroom.
HU’s program fosters a culture of intellectual challenge, community, and support. The program is open to all disciplines and provides an enhanced foundation for deeper exploration of issues from any major discipline or pre-professional program. Special curricular and extracurricular opportunities serve to build community and provide a point of departure for a lifetime of meaningful “face-to-face” encounters with God and God’s image-bearers.
The program is designed for students of all disciplines to work together through deep, well-informed conversation to understand and solve problems in the world around them. The program features small class sizes, increasing opportunities for meaningful faculty-student and student-student interactions.
The Honors Program requires the completion of the following for a total of 16 credit hours:
- Students admitted to the Honors Program enroll in designated Honors sections of Huntington University's Core Four curriculum: HU 210 Created to Belong, HU 220 Created to Create, HU 230 Created to Discover, and HU 240 Created to Flourish. Honors sections of these courses are specifically designed to foster critical thinking and deep, well-informed discussion.
- Two one-hour seminars on selected topics chosen from HN 310 Honors Colloquium courses. Course themes are determined on a year-to-year basis and are coordinated with assigned readings, the Forester Lecture Series, and co-curricular opportunities to develop multidisciplinary understanding of issues in the contemporary world.
- A two-hour senior capstone experience comprised of two one-hour courses
- Fall Semester - HN 401 a one-hour independent study which will lay the groundwork for the scholarly work completed the following semester. The research will be supervised by a faculty mentor in the student's field.
- Spring Semester - HN 402 a one-hour course during which the result of the scholarly work in the previous semester is prepared in tangible form (e.g., sculpture, film, manuscript, etc.) which will be archived in the HU's RichLyn Library and presented to the public (e.g., at the annual HU Academic Research Forum).
- Fall Semester - HN 401 a one-hour independent study which will lay the groundwork for the scholarly work completed the following semester. The research will be supervised by a faculty mentor in the student's field.
Additionally, Honors students are encouraged to participate in Honors Program sponsored service activities, field trips, and campus lectures.
Incoming first year and second year students with a 3.6 GPA are eligible to interview for a place in the Honors Program. These interviews typically take place during one of the regularly scheduled Scholars Days; however, if you are unable to attend one of these or have any other questions, please send inquiries to honors@huntington.edu.
Courses in Honors Program
This course will focus on a topic of contemporary concern with special attention to development of thought around the topic in classic and contemporary texts.
(The course may be repeated. Students in the Honors Program enroll in HN 310 at least twice.)
Prerequisite: Admittance into the Honors Program
Students in the Honors Program typically complete the groundwork for their independent project during their seventh semester of study. Students will work closely with a faculty mentor, meeting several times during the semester, to develop and prepare for the final Honors project. This would include any preliminary work such as research, design, development, and any other work that needs to be done prior to completing the project.
A form describing the project is completed and submitted before a student can be registered.
Prerequisites: Admittance into the Honors Program and completion of two HN 310 Honors Colloquium courses.
Students in the Honors Program typically complete this independent project during their eighth semester of study. Students will meet with their faculty mentor a few times during the semester to discuss the progression and completion of the project with the expectation that the project will be publicly disseminated, either by submission to a journal, juried exhibition, competition or other relevant venue. If such an opportunity is not available, then students can present their project at the Academic Research Forum at the end of the semester. It is the student's responsibility to have the project completed in a timely manner with this goal in mind.
The final assessment of the quality of work will be determined by the Directors of the Honors Program under the advisement of the faculty mentor.
Prerequisite: Admittance into the Honors Program and satisfactory completion of HN401
A study of various aspects of the liberal arts, the subject area of which will be determined by the instructor according to student interest.
Prerequisite: Consent