The Interdisciplinary Honors Program curriculum is designed to provide a coherent and distinctive general education. Since all honors students take the same courses, they develop a strong intellectual community. Most courses are interdisciplinary and team-taught. This structure reflects the growing awareness that creativity and research thrive in interdisciplinary settings. Students and faculty work together to construct meaningful connections among facts, ideas, values and actions. Teaching collaboratively, professors make their assumptions, methods and standards of evidence explicit and continually assess what students need to know.

Team-taught courses meet as a large group for lectures and break into sections of 25 for seminar discussions. Lectures introduce students to the historical and cultural context of representative societies or texts and provide theoretical models. Seminars allow students to analyze texts, debate alternative interpretations and develop their ability to implement the methodologies demonstrated in lectures. In addition to class meetings, students and faculty take advantage of the city's cultural offerings to enrich each course.

Sequence

Honors courses differ in structure and content from non-honors courses, and these courses are offered in a sequence. Honors students must complete the following courses:

1. Western Traditions: Antiquity to the Middle Ages (First year, fall semester)
2. Western Traditions: Renaissance to Modernity (First year, spring semester)
3. The United States Experience (Anytime after first year)
4. Area Studies (Two of the following courses anytime after first year):
      Encountering Africa
      Encountering Asia
      Encountering Contemporary Europe
      Encountering Latin America and the Caribbean
      Encountering the Middle East
   Satisfying Requirements by Studying Abroad
5. Science and Society (Anytime after first year)
6. Honors Capstone: Moral Responsibility (75 credit hours earned or Senior year)
7. Any Level Engaged Learning Course (Anytime)

Outcomes

In addition to fulfilling the skills, values and knowledge area outcomes that non-honors students meet, honors students will also acquire a common body of knowledge and will be able to:

• Describe the salient ideas of selected Western writers
• Describe controversies about the significance of selected domestic and foreign policies and events, past and present, of the United States
• Give examples of the interaction among selected elements of civilizations, such as religious and philosophical beliefs, political institutions, economic policies, literature, technology, history and art
• Distinguish the social and scientific issues in contemporary debates about selected issues in public policy
• Apply their knowledge of social science and ethics to particular scientific questions
• Articulate a personal philosophy in relation to ethical principles
• Articulate the values of diversity, justice and spirituality in specific cultural contexts
• Write essays that present logical arguments based on critical analysis of evidence