Current Honors Students

The Honors Program has undergone some significant changes for fall 2013. We are very excited about the redesign and new courses. For many of you there will not be any substantial changes but all current Honors students should read through the following.

Current Student Crosswalk to the New Program

Fall 2013 Honors Course Schedule 

 

Course Descriptions For New Fall 2013 Honors Seminars

New Lower Division Honors Seminars

HNRS 201 BEAUTY

Course Description:

In this course we will investigate and discuss the concept of beauty. What does it mean to say that something is beautiful, or to say that one finds something beautiful? Are judgments of beauty merely subjective, and if so, why are they so important to us? Should we be suspicious of other people’s claims about beauty, or of our own? Is beauty a sign of moral goodness, or of any sort of goodness? Is beauty worth pursuing? Is ‘beautiful’ still a useful term in the discourse of art criticism, or should it be jettisoned, as some writers have argued? How, if at all, does the human capacity to create or appreciate beauty relate to other character traits that have been classified as virtues?

We will be investigating the concept of beauty, and related concepts, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Philosophy, art history, biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other academic fields all have important things to say about what beauty is, what it has been taken to be, and the roles that beauty plays and has played in human life.

HNRS 202 NATURE

Course description:

This seminar will be a multidisciplinary exploration of Nature. The story of Nature is one that presumably has a beginning, a middle period, and an end. Using perspectives from the physics, chemistry, biology, geology, anthropology, philosophy, history, literature, music, and art we will focus on several basic and fundamental questions, such as:

How did the Universe come into existence?

How do we explain order and design in Nature?

Is it possible to comprehend the dimensional scales of Nature?

What is revealed by an investigation into the Laws of Nature?

How do engage in a systematic study of Nature?

What are the kinds of relationships humans have with Nature?

How do religious beliefs influence our views of Nature?

How do we determine what is natural or unnatural with respect to human values?

 

New Upper Division Honors Seminar

HNRS 310 Agents of Change

Course description:

In Agents of Change we consider the nature of global citizenship and how to create a civically engaged life defined by personal and collective acts in service to the public good. Understanding how to increase the impact and quality of these acts using disciplinary expertise, interdisciplinary scholarship and collaboration is also emphasized. Readings covered in the course encourage students’ personal discernment of values, ethics, and commitments towards contributing to the public good in meaningful ways. We will learn how to affect small and large scale social change and how a connected life is grounded in communities of civic practice. Students will develop their personal theory of change informed by their discipline and study best practices in civic engagement, social movement and organizational change efforts.  We will also learn how to overcome common obstacles to affecting change (personal, political, economic, social) and work with community leaders, departments and disciplinary advisory boards to create a civic engagement infrastructure for the campus.