Curriculum
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:
- Western Traditions: Antiquity to the Middle Ages
- Western Traditions: Renaissance to Modernity
- The United States Experience
- Area Studies (two of the following courses):
Encountering Africa
Encountering Asia
Encountering Contemporary Europe
Encountering Latin America and the Caribbean
Encountering the Middle East - Science and Society
- Honors Capstone: Moral Responsibility
- Loyola Literacy Center (1-3 credit hours) or Any Service Learning Course
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