Honors Program: The Scholar in the World

The Honors Program is designed to provide enhanced and alternative modes of education for excellent and highly motivated students throughout the University.  It encourages the growth of intellectual independence and initiative, offers special opportunities for independent study and research under faculty mentors, and supports the pursuit of scholarly interests in a broad range of disciplines.  It aims to bring together enthusiastic students and faculty so as to further the Dominican ideal of intellectual excellence. The program is directed toward students who seek to be co-responsible for determining the pace, organization, development of their academic experience by electing to take special honors seminars, and/or various forms of independent honors work.  To help students set and achieve their own educational goals, they receive academic advisement not only from their major advisor, but also from the Honors Director. The Honors program provides students with the opportunity to enroll in Honors seminars or graduate courses and do an Honors course conversion, course expansion, or an Honors independent study.

Honors Board

The Honors Program is administered by an Honors Board consisting of the Director, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, faculty members, and an Honors student. The Board is responsible for the selection and advisement of Honors students, the assessment of Honors contracts and credits, the maintenance of academic standards for Honors work, and for governance, policy setting, and curriculum development for the Honors  Program.

Admission

Students are invited into the Honors Program on the basis of a high level of past academic performance (minimum 3.5 cumulative GPA including transfer coursework) and, in the case of incoming freshmen, correlative entrance exam scores and AP and Honors courses. Students may be accepted into the Honors Program at any point in their academic careers. Any student who feels he/she can succeed at and benefit from Honors work is welcome to speak to the Honors Director about participating.

Requirements

Honors students must maintain a minimum 3.5 cumulative GPA including transfer coursework in order to remain active in the program. To graduate from the Honors Program, a student must have maintained a 3.5 cumulative GPA including transfer coursework while completing Honors Seminars and/or Honors contracts and an Honors Thesis in the student’s discipline. Transfer students will be expected to complete a portion of this requirement depending on particular circumstances. The minimum requirement for graduation from the Honors Program by a transfer student is four Honors Seminars or contracts and an Honors Thesis in the student’s discipline while maintaining the 3.5 GPA including transfer coursework.

Honors Seminars

Taught by faculty across the University, Honors Seminars are small, interdisciplinary, discussion-oriented courses. The seminars’ rigor and depth are designed to stimulate, conceptually challenge, and intellectually stretch highly capable students, encouraging them to perform at the highest level of excellence.  The course offerings for Honors Seminars partially meet the General Education requirements and vary from semester to semester and are listed in the academic schedule of class.

The following are some of the seminars that have been, or will be offered, in the program:

The Scholar: Biography and Portraiture (3 units)

What does it mean to be a scholar? How do we assess the achievements and contributions of individual figures from the past and in the modern world? This seminar will investigate the different scholarly approaches to understanding the lives of “great” people from the past and the present, including artists, writers, scientists, politicians and religious figures. Both men and women from a carefully selected and wide variety of cultures and periods will be discussed. The seminar will focus specifically on the modes of written biography and visual portraiture, leading students in a critical analysis of textual and visual sources as historical documents.

The World: Issues and Interdependence (3 units)

This seminar is designed to introduce students to the complex and diverse issues confronting humanity in different regions of the world. It will help increase students understanding of global issues which influence different world regions and how these regions interact with each other. Since each region is characterized by distinct cultural traits, emphasis will be on historical contextualization of the region, identifying relevant issues pertaining to the region, and how they impact at national, regional, and international scale. Throughout the course emphasis will be placed on world regions such as North America, Middle and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East and thus help students to be globally informed.

The Varieties of World Religious Experience: Worldviews and Practices of the Great Religions (3 units)

A World’s Religions course with a twist:  all the work required in the regular course but only half the semester’s hours in class. The other half will be spent visiting religious sites in order to participate in their practices – a Native American sweat lodge, Hindu ritual and yoga, Buddhist meditation exercises, Jewish Sabbath worship, Christian contemplative prayer, Islamic daily prayer, Sufi invocation (and more). As these adventures will require extra and unusual hours of availability, subscribers must be highly flexible and strongly committed.

Self, Community, and Service: Ethical Theory and Practice (3 units)

A rigorous examination of contemporary movement in ethical theory, focusing on the essential need for moral meaning and its modern implications. Themes include questions of identity, responsibility, perception of and relation to the “other.” Critical analysis of texts and key issues will be performed and understanding of key issues will be deepened through a service component that allows for active cultivation and expression of core values in the local community.

Natural Disasters: Societal and Individual Reactions to Risk (3 units)

This course is an in-depth, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to the study of natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods and hurricanes and the impact that such events have on human populations around the world. Topics include the geological and climate-related forces that cause various disasters and the areas of the world that are most at risk from certain hazards. We will also consider how humankind has attempted to prevent or mitigate the effects of natural disasters, both at the individual and the societal level, and how these efforts are affected by psychological, social, cultural, and economic factors.

Community Leadership: A Global Perspective (3 units) 

Transformational change is advanced by individuals who join together in community to make a positive difference in the world. This interdisciplinary course will examine the evolution of leadership through examples of historical and contemporary leaders whose commitment to social justice improved the standard of living for millions. More than 50% of the world’s population lives on less than US$2 per day. Social transformation in pursuit of social justice must, therefore, address this critical issue of global poverty. How can we, as individuals, partner with business, government and community organizations to effect significant improvements to contemporary social problems in our own communities and around the world? Models of community leadership will be explored and practiced.

Global Health Issues (3 units)

This course will explore a variety of health issues affecting populations around the world. We will focus on examining the after-effects of natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, conditions associated with poverty, the potential threat of widespread epidemics and correlations between health and environmental pollutants.  

City as Text (1-3 units)

This course is coordinated by the Honors Director and team-taught by Dominican faculty. Each year’s offering focuses on a different geographical area (e.g. China, India, Paris, London, Italy) and combines travel with an in-depth exploration of the arts, history, culture, and contemporary social issues related to the city under study.

Honors Contracts

Honors contracts are independent projects guided by faculty mentors. They require approval by the Honors Board and are available in four forms:

1. Independent Study;
2. Course Expansion – taking a course offered in the regular curriculum but working with the instructor to develop a project that would expand the scope and the unit total of the course;
3. Course Conversion – taking a course offered in the regular curriculum, electing to expand units, but working with the instructor to transform the course requirements into a project that further supports the student’s initiative and creativity; or
4. Taking a graduate course.

Honors work may not be taken on a pass/fail basis.

Guidelines for Faculty Mentors

Contracting for Honors credit is an option students may use to convert or extend a non-honors course to receive Honors credit. It entails an agreement between the student and the course instructor and is monitored by the Honors Program. When the course is successfully completed and the terms of the contract are fulfilled to the satisfaction of the mentoring professor, the student receives Honors credit.

The success of the contract approach to Honors work is directly related to the quality of the relationship between mentoring professor and Honors student. Therefore, regular and frequent meetings, which produce substantial discussion of the proposed Honors work as well as related concepts and material, are highly desirable.

Honors contracts should:

• Promote academic excellence.
• Demonstrate initiative beyond syllabus expectations.
• Encourage and challenge students to strive toward fulfilling their potentials and abilities.
• Extend and enrich the cultural awareness of students.
• Culminate with some kind of product that demonstrates the quality and content of the Honors project. This project need not be a paper, but can be a scrapbook, videotape, portfolio, or other expression of the student’s accomplishment.
• Clearly demonstrate how the Honors component complements the existing course syllabus, yet takes the Honors student beyond established requirements without simply adding work for the sake of work. Tasks involving critical thinking and application of skills and knowledge are expected.

The Honors contract may include the presentation of the student’s work to the class or other interest groups.

A service to the college or community at large is sometimes included in Honors contract projects. The Honors Program encourages such a component when it is appropriate to the project.

An Honors contract should not be a mini-thesis. It should be a reasonable length, considering all the work for the regular course, plus three other courses, probably an outside job, etc. The idea is not added quantity but depth in a subject the student is already engaged in.

Courses in which a contract is done may not be taken P/F if the contract is to count for Honors Program completion. Contracts should not carry over into the following semester. Contracts are to be completed by the end of the semester.

Faculty Responsibilities as Mentor for Honors Students

At the beginning of the semester:

• Help the student focus and design proposal.
• Discuss resources available.
• Set up a realistic time-line for conferences with faculty mentor and for timely completion of contract.
• Help the student to plan the project accordingly.
• After the faculty member has discussed and approved the final draft of the student’s contract, the student should give a copy to the faculty member and send a copy along with the contract to the Honors Program Director by the due date for submission to the Honors Board.

At the end of the semester (and before finals begin):

• Fill out the evaluation form
• Share the evaluation with the student and provide a copy
• Send a copy of the evaluation form (retaining a copy for yourself) to Program Director

Special Advantages

Students obtain a number of immediate and potential long-term benefits from active participation in the Honors program.  Active Honors students (i.e., those who have taken an Honors seminar or worked on an Honors contract during the current academic year) may register during the first day of priority registration along with senior year students and receive housing priority.  When an Honors student is registered for an Honors seminar, registration is without additional fee if the student registers for over-hours (maximum 3 units).  This over-hours privilege can be taken twice during the four years at Dominican.  Small classes or team-taught classes allow greater interaction between the students and professors.  Professors often invite Honors classes to their homes or to special extracurricular events.  The normal ceiling on the amount of independent study allowed at the University is waived for the members of the Honors Program.  The Program provides opportunities for Honors students to get better acquainted with one another, to be involved in Honors activities, and to work together for the good of all. The Honors Center provides a place for the students to meet to work on projects, to study and to have social activities (Library 209). The Honors community provides occasions for the integration of the academic, social, and co-curricular spheres of University life.  Students can participate and assume leadership role in Honors student association, L.I.F.E. (Leaders Initiating Fascinating Explorations).   Honors students may serve as student representatives to the Honors Board or assist the Director in his/her activities.  Many students have attended and presented their research at national meetings such as National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR).

National Collegiate Honors Council

The Honors Program has institutional membership in the National Collegiate Honors Council and the Western Regional Honors Council.

Honors students may participate in NCHC Honors Semesters. In past years, students in programs similar to Dominican’s have attended the Washington Bicentennial Semester; the United Nations Semester: From Urban to Global Community; the Appalachia Culture Semester; and the Iowa Honors Semester: Who Goes Hungry; and Globalization and Communication Semester: Dynamic Transformations.