Honors Foundations Courses, taught by our Honors Faculty Fellows, are special topics courses approved for General Education Foundations credit. These courses are special topics "big ideas" classes with deeply engaged teaching and learning practices that bring faculty expertise to Honors students at the introductory level. These exciting and innovative courses rotate topics annually.
These special topics courses are listed under course
number “shells” that are keyed to specific GEF requirements.
- HONR 202: Honors Science and Technology F2A
- HONR 203: Honors Mathematics and Quantitative Skills F3
- HONR 204: Honors Society and Connections F4
- HONR 205: Honors Human Inquiry and the Past F5
- HONR 206: Honors Arts and Creativity F6
- HONR 207: Honors Global Studies and Diversity F7
Each course will serve as the shell for course topics that are proposed under the auspices of the Honors Faculty Fellows program. Sections will typically be capped at 25 students. Each accepted Honors Foundations Course will then be offered once in each semester in an academic year and will rotate to an innovative new subject in the next academic year.
Honors Foundations Course Outcomes
HONR 202: Honors Science and Technology
Students in these courses will:
- Make connections between scientific developments, technological advancement, scientific methods of inquiry and analysis, and today’s world.
- Employ intellectual and practical skills of systematic methods of analysis to the natural and physical world, understand scientific knowledge as empirical, and refer to data as a basis for conclusions in a way that is relevant to modern life.
- Exercise both personal or social responsibility through the careful and rigorous application of methods of scientific inquiry and technological advancement, and by applying the results of that inquiry to personal, local, national, and/or international situations and problems.
- Integrate and synthesize knowledge gleaned from scientific and technological inquiry across disciplines including, but not limited to, the natural and applied sciences.
- Critical LEAP Goal 1: knowledge of physical and natural world
HONR 203: Honors Mathematics and Quantitative skill
Students in these courses will:- Make connections between mathematics and quantitative skills and today’s world.
- Employ intellectual and practical skills of quantitative techniques and practical application of numerical, symbolic, or spatial concepts in a way that is relevant to modern life.
- Exercise both personal or social responsibility through the careful and rigorous application of quantitative literacy to numerical aspects of daily life, and by applying critical reasoning to data for use in education, the workplace, and nearly every field of human endeavor.
- Integrate and synthesize knowledge gleaned from quantitative literacy across disciplines including, but not limited to, the natural and applied sciences and social sciences.
- Make connections between mathematics and quantitative skills and today’s world.
- Critical LEAP Goal 2: quantitative literacy
HONR 204 – Honors Society and Connections
Students in these courses will:
- Make connections between the human behavior, social and political organization, communication, and today’s world.
- Employ intellectual and practical skills of employing social, political, and economic systems in a way that is relevant to modern life.
- Exercise personal or social responsibility through the application of civic knowledge and practice of civic engagement, and by discussing individual, societal, and global situations and problems.
- Integrate and synthesize knowledge of human behavior and society across disciplines
including, but not limited to, the social sciences.
- Critical LEAP Goal 3: civic knowledge and engagement
HONR 205—Honors Human Inquiry & the Past
Students in these courses will:
- Make connections between the humanistic practices of philosophical, spiritual, and historical inquiry and today’s world.
- Employ intellectual and practical skills of researching and analyzing ideas, texts, practices, and artifacts of the recent and distant past in a way that is relevant to modern life.
- Exercise both personal or social responsibility through inquiry into the ideas, texts, practices, and artifacts of the recent and distant past, and by applying the results of that inquiry to personal, local, national, and/or international situations and problems.
- Integrate and synthesize knowledge gleaned from philosophical, spiritual, and historical inquiry across disciplines including, but not limited to, the traditional humanities.
- Critical LEAP Goal 2: inquiry and analysis
HONR 206—Honors Arts and Creativity
Students in these courses will:
- Make connections between the arts—through analysis and/or practice—and today’s world.
- Employ intellectual and practical skills of analyzing and/or producing artwork in a way that is relevant to modern life.
- Exercise both personal or social responsibility through the analysis and practice of art, and by discussing personal, local, national, and/or international situations and problems.
- Integrate and synthesize knowledge of artistic expression across disciplines including,
but not limited to, the arts and humanities.
- Critical LEAP Goal 2: critical and creative thinking
HONR 207—Honors Global Studies and Diversity
Students in these courses will:
- Make connections between diverse cultures, groups of people, and experiences and the ways that diversity affects today’s world.
- Employ intellectual and practical skills of analyzing global culture and other modes of diversity in a way that is relevant to modern life.
- Exercise both personal and social responsibility by engaging other ways of life, experiences, means of expression, histories, and modes of being and by putting those into conversation with personal, local, national, and/or international situations and problems.
- Integrate and synthesize knowledge of global cultures and diverse experiences across disciplines including the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
- Critical LEAP Goal 3: intercultural knowledge and competence