Mission & Vision
Honors Mission and Vision
As a national leader in both curricular and experiential education, the Honors College fosters a community of agile, innovative thinkers, engaged citizens, and lifelong learners—offering a rigorous and transformative undergraduate experience that shapes students for life.
Honors Strategies
- The Honors College combines the advantages of a small community of motivated learners with the opportunities of a diverse and cosmopolitan major research university.
- The Honors College’s intellectually challenging courses, minors and programs emphasize speaking and writing, encourage critical inquiry in disciplined conversation and promote active learning and principled leadership.
- The Honors College enables students to participate in co-curricular activities such as global engagement, service learning and mentored research; prepares competitive candidates for major awards; and generates a local, national and international reputation for educational excellence.
Honors Values
The faculty, staff, administration, students, alumni and friends of the Honors College:
- Seek answers to enduring questions through critical analysis across disciplinary boundaries
- Pursue and practice inclusion, collaboration, equity and excellence in thought and action
- Foster effective communication
- Embrace both professional and arts and sciences education
- Cultivate friendships
About Honors
The Honors College provides the advantages of a small community amid the rich and diverse settings of a large, urban university. Our students are part of an elite group of university intellectuals whose enthusiasm for materials covered within our coursework can be felt throughout The Honors College’s hallways and Commons.
The Human Situation course plays a central role in an Honors education during a student’s freshman year. Honors faculty team-teach from a menu of the world’s greatest texts, encouraging each participant to seek the edge of his or her understanding . . . and then push beyond.
In addition to exclusive amenities and special privileges, our students benefit from a dynamic learning environment and one-on-one mentoring from world-renowned faculty. Through a challenging and well-balanced curriculum, our students learn both the skills they will need for professional success and how and when to apply them.