The
Campus Honors Program (CHP) offers special challenges and opportunities to
a small number of academically talented and highly motivated undergraduate
students. It fosters collaborative relationships between students and distinguished faculty
through small intensive classes, a faculty mentor system for introducing
students to the intellectual standards and methodologies of academic disciplines,
and informal contacts encouraged by cocurricular offerings. CHP sponsors four
series of noncredit cocurricular events: a “Scholar Adventurers” lecture series
on faculty research; a “Study Abroad at Home” series of
seminar-workshops centering on other cultures; a series of dress-rehearsal visits
at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; and an “International
Tasting Club” lunch series. The aim is to encourage breadth
and excellence from the outset of the student's college career,
and to facilitate interaction with scholars at the cutting edge
of their disciplines. Only approximately 125 new students can be
admitted to the CHP each year as first-year students. A
few additional students, however, may join the program on an
off-cycle basis at the beginning of the sophomore year. Designated
as “Chancellor's Scholars,” CHP students may be enrolled in any
undergraduate curriculum. Those who meet retention requirements continue as Chancellor's
Scholars throughout their undergraduate career. Required CHP coursework is concentrated
in the freshman and sophomore years, when students take intensive
and specialized versions of general education courses. At the junior
and senior level, when students are necessarily involved in their
majors, they are required to take one advanced CHP seminar.
In short, our emphasis is on fundamental principles and interdisciplinary
connections, because the CHP is directed at students who desire
an undergraduate education that is broad and general as well
as professionally specialized.
It is as important to understand what
CHP is not, as to understand what it is. CHP
courses represent additional opportunities for academically gifted and adventurous students;
they are not an alternative curriculum. Basically, they provide an
honors-quality way of satisfying general education requirements for graduation and
of helping students to discover the interrelations between their own
discipline and other disciplines. Nor does CHP supplant or conflict
with departmental honors programs. In consultation with their departmental academic
advisors, Chancellor's Scholars develop their own combination of regular and
CHP courses. Accordingly, most of the courses our students take
are regular University offerings.
Most important, CHP is a challenge.
A Chancellor's Scholar must make a special commitment to intellectual
life, and to the dialogue and community in the Honors
House.
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