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Teaching in Honors

Teaching in Honors is an opportunity to design meaningful, engaging courses that challenge students to think deeply, connect ideas across disciplines, and engage with the world around them.

At its core, the Honors Program is built on curiosity, collaboration, and intellectual exploration. Honors courses are not defined by a specific subject or format, but by how they help students connect, inquire, and grow.

What Defines an Honors Course

All Honors courses are rooted in three core outcome areas:

While these outcomes are shared across all courses, faculty have flexibility in how they design their classes, allowing for creativity in subject matter, structure, and teaching approach.

Please review our full list of learning outcomes to plan what you will incorporate in your course.

View Full Honors Learning Outcomes

The Honors Classroom Experience

Honors courses are designed to spark curiosity, deepen intellectual engagement, and foster a genuine love of learning. They are not defined by more work, but by more meaningful work—learning experiences that invite students and faculty to explore complex ideas together in creative and engaging ways. Honors classrooms should feel distinct from traditional lecture-based courses: more interactive, more exploratory, and more alive with intellectual energy.

In an Honors classroom, you can expect:

• Discussion-centered learning — students actively engage with ideas, question assumptions, and learn with and from one another
• Interdisciplinary exploration — courses connect concepts across fields, perspectives, and ways of knowing
• Student-centered inquiry — assignments emphasize creativity, critical thinking, discovery, and intellectual risk-taking
• Experiential learning — projects, community engagement, and applied experiences bring ideas into practice
• Collaborative learning environments — faculty and students work together as co-creators of knowledge

Honors students come from a wide range of disciplines and bring diverse perspectives into the classroom, creating rich opportunities for dialogue and discovery. This diversity helps transform each course into a dynamic learning community.

At its best, the Honors Classroom is a space where faculty can teach in ways that feel energizing and imaginative, and where students are invited to explore ideas deeply, make connections, and grow intellectually. We encourage instructors to design courses that bring learning to life. Courses that make students excited not just to complete the work, but to show up and participate.

Course Options

General Education Courses (1000-level)

Honors offers Breadth General Education courses through a “Perspectives in…” model, allowing faculty to explore Gen Ed categories through specific themes or questions.

Example: HNRS 1500: Living Amidst the Cosmos (Physical Science Gen-Ed)

Study and experiment with light through art, astronomy, archaeology, philosophy, physics, and psychology. We’ll learn under the sun and stars by visiting local sites of interest, like the North Fork Dark Sky Preserve and the Ott Planetarium. Our observations and experiments will inspire you to create light-based artworks of your own. You’ll leave this hands-on course with a greater understanding of the role of light in your life and in the physical world around you

Upper-Division Courses (3000/4000-level)

Honors seminars open to students across majors. No prerequisites, no Gen Ed designation, and non-sequential structure.

Example: HNRS 4920: Hiking for Mind, Body & Soul

Commune with nature, explore local trails, study philosophy, taste wild berries, find greater peace & relaxation, learn about how hiking & nature affect the brain, and experience their effects on your whole self through this immersive class that combines academic learning with local hiking & meditation.

One-Credit Courses (2000-level)

1-credit courses are concentrated bursts of intellectual exploration. They give faculty the opportunity to teach something they love—an idea, question, or experience—in a focused and creative format, and give students the chance to immerse themselves in a topic in a meaningful but short timeframe. These courses are meant to be engaging, exploratory, and fun. Small in credit, but rich in learning.

Example: HNRS 2830: Big Ships, Bigger Ideas: Exploring Humanity and Society through Science Fiction

Science fiction, at its best, gives us new ways of thinking about some of life's biggest questions. What is it that makes us human? What kind of society are we willing to accept in exchange for comfort? What threats might lurk in new technology, and what benefits can it bring? In this course we will consider works of sci-fi writing, film, television, and video games to analyze how the chosen media shapes how we ask these questions - and we'll discuss how we might answer these questions for ourselves.

Team Teaching in Honors

We love team teaching in Honors! If you know faculty in other disciplines, consider collaborating to design an interdisciplinary course together. Team-taught classes:

• Bring multiple disciplinary perspectives into a single learning experience
• Model interdisciplinary thinking for students
• Share course design and teaching responsibilities
• Create richer, more dynamic classroom environments

These courses often lead to some of the most meaningful and memorable learning experiences for students. If you have questions about team teaching, please contact us!

How to Get Involved

Faculty interested in teaching in Honors are encouraged to explore course development and proposal opportunities.

Visit Course Proposal Page