The Honors Program is available to self-motivated, conscientious Regis College students who wish to complete an alternate pathway through the core curriculum and be distinguished as an honors graduate.
Honors students form a vibrant community of young scholars who are committed to making the most out of their time at college. They’re natural leaders across the campus community. They tend to thrive on challenges and they enjoy working together to realize their full intellectual potential. What’s more, honors students are eager to integrate their intellectual lives into their personal, community and world experiences.
The Honors Program is competitive and normally limited to 34 students per year. To be distinguished as an honors graduate, a student must maintain a 3.5 cumulative grade point average, complete at least 27 hours of dedicated honors courses and produce a senior thesis or portfolio project.
Honors Program students enjoy an integrated sequence of seminars designed especially for them by faculty from across Regis College. This team-taught curriculum stresses interdisciplinary study, small-group interaction and individual student initiative. We also offer a variety of "honors-only" sections of standard core courses which invite students to explore material in greater breadth or depth, probing connections within and among disciplines. By taking an alternative pathway through the standard core, the Honors Program provides an exciting way to integrate the broader education of a liberal arts college.
A limited number of $5000 Honors Scholarships will be awarded to select incoming honors students with exceptional high school records on a competitive basis. Scholarships are renewable and stackable, up to full tuition, and span over four academic years pending maintenance of good standing in the honors program.
In the honors curriculum, there is a five-course sequence that replaces the first-year writing course and the Integrative Core requirements. Each seminar is organized under a broad theme that invites interdisciplinary conversation from at least three perspectives, and thus is taught by faculty members from different disciplines. Each seminar takes its charter from the University Mission Statement and the Core Philosophy Statement, drawing course objectives and a potential reading list from the synergy between these grounding documents. Each of these courses is thematically oriented and historically recursive.
Course requirements for the honors program may change, please contact the Office of Academic Records and Registration for the most updated list.
Core Replacements
All departments have an opportunity to teach an honors section of their core courses. In a typical semester, students have a handful of potential courses to choose between, thereby allowing honors students to enroll in courses of particular interest them that are compatible with their schedule. Each of these honors offerings meets certain protocols — such as expectations for greater depth or student involvement — and is approved by the Honors Advisory Committee. These sections are open primarily to honors students, however instructors have the option to grant permission to students from their major to join the seminar. Honors students must enroll in at least four dedicated honors courses in addition to the five Core seminars, although many students opt for more.
RCC 200H: Honors Writing Seminar - The Idea of a University: Balancing Heart and Mind
Examines the balance between heart and mind, the timeless struggle between reason and emotion, situating the conversation within an ongoing dialog on the nature of education and a university's role in fostering it.
RCC 400H: Honors Seminar - Tradition and Innovation: The Human Story
Taken during the spring of your first year, this course draws upon the intellectual tradition commonly called the humanities - an interdisciplinary blend of literature, art/music history, philosophy, history, film, and so on - as it investigates the play between tradition and innovation in the human story.
HO 493A-B: Honors Thesis Research Seminars
These courses focus on the application of research methodology appropriate to the student’s thesis topic.
HO 499: Honors Thesis
Students prepare the honors thesis produced in HO 493A and B for presentation in a defense or symposium.
RCC 410H: Honors Seminar - Chaos and Order: The Sciences of Understanding
Taken during the spring of your sophomore year, this course invites students to consider the human person in relation to both society and the natural world. Uses a historically recursive approach to investigate the scientific method and induction as modes of understanding our world.
RCC 420H: Honors Seminar - Justice for All: Reflections on the Common Good
Taken during the fall of your junior year, this course examines the implications of "justice for all" in a global context. The course examines historical and contemporary notions of peace and justice as it addresses these vital issues.
RCC 430H: Honors Seminar - Magis and the Search for Meaning
Taken during the fall of your senior year, this course returns to the central question of the Regis mission "How ought we to live?" Building upon the interdisciplinary efforts of all previous honors seminars, this capstone seminar promotes communal and critical reflection on the ways in which a Jesuit, liberal arts and honors education informs individual responses to this vital question.
