The Honors Program welcomes applications for new Honors-designated courses in all colleges and disciplines, as well as for the first-year seminar. Information about making an application for Honors designation of a class is at the bottom of this page. A robust offering of interdisciplinary classes is essential to the success of our program and to the development of some of our highest-achieving students.
The UMW Honors Program adheres to a belief in differentiated learning opportunities that challenge students to grow intellectually rather than the practice of simply adding extra work to a course. Quality rather than quantity is the goal of an honors course. Instructors are encouraged to identify activities or projects that involve group work or foster collaboration and to consider ways that learning may be self-directed or differentiated. The National Collegiate Honors Council offers some guidelines for Honors course design.
Honors courses feature small class sizes (limited to 20-25 students, except Honors First-year Seminar which is limited to 15 students) with highly motivated, dedicated students. Faculty are asked to develop courses, or sections of courses, that are geared to meet the objectives of the Honors Program, nurturing the intellectual potential of your students through activities that:
- develop communication skills
- incorporate an interdisciplinary focus
- include innovative pedagogy
- enhance research skills
- apply critical reading, writing, speaking, problem-solving, and thinking skills that incorporate information literacy, and an appreciation of audience
- include greater breadth than non-honors course sections
- incorporate enrichment opportunities for students and faculty
- utilize flexible approaches that accommodate different learning preferences
- prompt analysis of their own and others’ assumptions
Each honors-designated course must clearly articulate learning outcomes for the course and should show how the student(s) can independently meet some or all of the following objectives:
- formulate an academic argument with appropriate research documentation
- articulate the value of the goals of the Honors Program as it relates to the liberal arts as a multidisciplinary, systematic approach to knowledge
- apply specific academic solutions to broader, interdisciplinary fields of study
- integrate multiple viewpoints involving different cultures and/or perspectives
All courses offered with Honors designation (HN) must be approved by the Honors Program committee. Proposals should be submitted through CIM. (See below for proposal preview.)
Deadlines for AY 23-24
| For courses to be offered in |
the proposal deadline is |
|---|---|
| SPRING 2024 | September 5, 2023 |
| SUMMER 2024 | November 3, 2023 |
| FALL 2024 | January 26, 2024 |
Propose a New Honors Course
Applications for Honors designation are made through the University’s CIM system. General guidelines for changing the designation of a course in CIM may be useful, and the Honors Program offers this pdf preview of its specific application: Honors Designation in CIM.