Honors Program

The class of 2021 will be the last group of students to graduate from the Honors Program.

The Structure of the Honors Program

Senior Year

In their final year, students may choose either of two ways to finish the Honors curriculum. They may either write a senior thesis—normally a 6-credit enterprise, spread over two semesters—or take two advanced seminars.

A thesis may be an extended research or analytical paper written either in the student’s major discipline or in the Honors Program; it may also be a creative project involving performance in an artistic medium. Honors students have written on topics as diverse as personalism in the summas of St. Thomas, grace and freedom in Dostoevsky, the role of Buddhism in the works of Jack Kerouac, the political organization of the European Community, the influence of alcoholic fathers on their sons, superconductivity, and original cancer research; they have produced novels, dramas, operas, and electronic performance pieces.

In the integrative, advanced seminars students re-consider texts they may have studied years earlier such as Dante’s The Divine Comedy or the novels of Dostoevsky with the aim rising above the specialization of their particular majors to critically comprehend the relationship between contemporary ways of thinking and the cultural values of the tradition.

Honors Program Completion

Students will receive Honors Program designation in the commencement program and on their academic records if they complete the freshman, sophomore, and junior courses, a senior thesis and/or two of the advanced seminars, and have maintained a minimum 3.4 GPA.

Information for Study Abroad

The Honors Program encourages students to study abroad. Depending on the student's situation, the Honors Program will defer part or all of the junior year Twentieth Century and Tradition sequence to senior year. In certain cases (a full year abroad and a senior thesis in the offing) the Honors Program will drop the requirement altogether.