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Honors Program

The Honors Program Requirements
The Honors Program Curriculum
Honors Program Course Listing

Directors: Dr. Ortiz, Dr. Tate

The Honors Program Statement of Purpose
The Honors Program at Campbell University exists to enrich the educational experience of students whose academic successes and demonstrated character indicate that they are likely to benefit from the additional challenges of an enhanced course of study.  The Honors Program builds on the standard curriculum in two related ways.  First, it fosters the intellectual growth of honors students by expecting that they demonstrate both broad knowledge and deep understanding.  Honors students demonstrate breadth of knowledge in a general way by maintaining a high level of success in all of their classes.  In addition, they participate in academically challenging classes designed especially for the Honors Program which emphasize, by means of interdisciplinary presentation, the integral relatedness of all knowledge.  Students finish these classes more fully aware that the abstractions of philosophy may have very practical historical consequences, for example, or that literary works may influence developments in the natural sciences.  Because they develop particular topics in greater detail than similar courses in the standard curriculum do, these classes also require that honors students gain depth of understanding.  To put it another way, they ask students to grapple with the complexity that characterizes much of human experience.

Because wholeness of life involves more than intellect, however, the Honors Program fosters a second area of growth in students, growth towards the maturity of character that serves others.  This area of growth involves, first, an awareness that human beings, in addition to being intellectual beings, are also social and cultural.  The Honors Program enriches the social experience of students by encouraging honors students to recognize themselves as members of a community through making it possible for them to meet socially.  In addition to such informal social events as picnics and study sessions, these social occasions include more formal cultural opportunities, such as together attending a Shakespeare play.  These events are meant to be enjoyed, of course, but also to make students more aware that they are participants in a society, a culture, and a community involving others.

Integrity of living further requires gratitude and service.  The Honors Program expects honors students to recognize and act on an awareness that their natural gifts and their practiced skills have not been developed in isolation, but in community.  When students are able to see that they are part of a community, they are more likely to take seriously the claims of that community on their lives.  Family, friends, faith communities, and teachers have all contributed in their various ways to the successes of most students.  Honors students recognize, in other words, that their intellectual and personal gifts come with responsibilities; they work to fulfill these responsibilities by serving as leaders among their peers and by giving personal time to others (in missions or tutoring or other community service).  Through their participation in service activities, honors students practice their commitment to the good of others and express gratitude for the good they have received.  These service activities round out the learning experience of honors students; through working for others, being exposed to new situations, and interacting with people they might not otherwise meet, students will learn about themselves and their world in ways that build on and balance classroom learning.

While the honors program exists primarily as a means of enhancing the learning and service opportunities of motivated and gifted students, it also benefits the broader University community.  Because the program actively invites faculty to design creative and challenging courses for the honors student, it encourages every faculty member to think about his or her teaching subject in fresh ways.  Professors who teach in the program profit from the chance to develop and teach their ideas to a select group of motivated learners.  In addition, the interdisciplinary emphasis of the program promotes faculty dialogue as professors look beyond their own specialties and beyond their own departments for support in developing the honors courses.

These benefits for faculty will ultimately enrich the learning of the student body at large; ideally, professors who have taught in the honors program will bring to their other classes the fresh insights they have developed as well as new perspectives that may be suggested to them by the honors students.  The honors students also, as they interact with other students, are likely to challenge and encourage them, both academically and with respect to service opportunities, making their own contribution to the general student population.  Ideally, honors students will continue to interact positively with the communities they are part of away from campus and after graduation—in their churches, home towns, graduate programs, and professional lives—making them, in these communities, ambassadors for Campbell University.

The Honors Program Requirements
For Admission into the Program:

• As an incoming freshman:
  • High school GPA=4.0 or higher
  • SAT=1100 or higher
• As a second-semester freshman or transfer student:
  • College GPA=3.25 or higher
  • Letter of recommendation from faculty

For Continuance in the Program:

• Maintain a college GPA=3.25 or higher
• Successful completion of courses in the Honors Curriculum
• Participation in community service:
  • At least one group service activity per semester (or an equivalent acceptable to the committee)
  • Individual service hours on the following per-semester schedule:
  • 2 group activities (8-12 hours) + 12 hours individual service=20-24 hours/semester
    OR 1 group activity (4-6 hours) + 20 hours individual service=24-30 hours/semester
• Participation in social events (one of two scheduled each semester)

The Honors Program Curriculum
Over the course of several years, the Honors Curriculum Committee has worked to establish a curriculum which would accomplish the goals of the program and fulfill the needs and interests of both students and faculty.  The results of this work, as outlined below, define a program that is innovative, integrative, and challenging.  This curriculum very deliberately incorporates the Campbell University Statement of Purpose and, in doing so, provides students in the program with an opportunity unique to Campbell.

Freshman year:    

First Semester—HONOR 101, Honors Orientation Seminar I (1 credit hour)
Second Semester—HONOR 102, Honors Orientation Seminar II (1 credit hour)

Sophomore and Junior years:  Four upper level Honors courses, seminar-style, special topics courses, usually emphasizing interdisciplinarity and integration (two credit hours each; eight hours total)

First Semester—HONOR 250 (2 credit hours) or HONOR 350 (2 credit hours)
Second Semester—HONOR 251 (2 credit hours) or HONOR 351 (2 credit hours)

Although it is recommended that these courses be taken during the Sophomore and Junior years, students may elect to take one of these courses during the freshman year or to postpone one course until the senior year, as circumstances and schedule warrant.

Senior year:          

First Semester—HONOR 401, Honors Program Thesis (1-3 credit hours)
Second Semester—HONOR 402, Honors Program Senior Seminar (1-3 credit hours)

Honors Program Course Listing (HONOR 000)

101 Honors Orientation Seminar I (1)
A discussion-based class introducing students to integrative thinking within a broadly-based Christian worldview.

102 Honors Orientation Seminar II (1)
A continuation of HONOR 101.

250 Honors Intermediate Special Topics (2)
A n intermediate seminar style course on a special topic approved by the Honors Program Committee.

251 Honors Intermediate Special Topics (2)
A n intermediate seminar style course on a special topic approved by the Honors Program Committee.

350 Honors Advanced Special Topics (2)
A n advanced seminar style course on a special topic approved by the Honors Program Committee.

351 Honors Intermediate Special Topics (2)
A n advanced seminar style course on a special topic approved by the Honors Program Committee.

401 Honors Program Thesis (1)
A special project, possibly (though not necessarily) involving a topic in the student’s major, designed by the student and a faculty mentor, in consultation with the Honors Curriculum Committee.

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