Honors Program

Our Honors Program offers intensified study for selected students. Emphasis is on the acquisition of knowledge and the comprehension of ideas. Honors study includes courses in general education and in specialized departmental areas. Work in general education consists of courses in English composition, literature, and natural and social sciences during the freshman year with seminars during the sophomore and junior years. In the student’s area of specialization, honors study allows for flexibility with opportunities for independent study through supervised reading in the sophomore and junior years and directed research in the senior year.

The goal of our program to provide a dynamic, challenging, and exciting experience for scholars who arrive at Howard highly motivated and well-prepared for a rigorous academic journey.

In this way, our Honors program aims to reinforce our College’s mission to enhance the students’ communicative, analytical reasoning, critical thinking, and quantitative skills while imparting the knowledge enabling them to be responsible citizens and future leaders in the global community.

Mission

Since its establishment in 1957, the Honors Program in the College of Arts and Sciences has offered to students of high academic potential a unique opportunity to extend the intellectual horizons that a liberal arts education affords.

Our mission includes:

• providing scholars with an intellectually challenging and rewarding course of study;
• preparing scholars for graduate and professional school through their experiences with independent research;
• involving scholars in extra-curricular and extra-university activities in the arts and sciences which contribute to a fuller intellectual and social life.

Within the context of these activities, our program encourages academically advanced scholars to adopt fully the University’s core values: truth, service, excellence, and leadership.