Each month, "Dean's Corner" will share insights from the University of Houston's academic leadership. In this month's column, Honors College Dean Heidi Appel shares her thoughts on the value of honors to students and the University.
When people hear the term “honors college,” they sometimes have only a vague notion of what it means, even if they are part of our campus community.
I’m delighted to have an opportunity to offer a high-level overview of our college — the Honors College at the University of Houston — what it is, who it serves (spoiler alert: everybody!), and the advantages it provides to UH and all of its students.
UH’s Honors College provides our talented 2,400 students a challenging curriculum that complements their academic majors and fosters a close-knit community of scholars. Honors students come from each of UH’s college with a majority being undergraduates from the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, the Cullen College of Engineering, and the C. T. Bauer College of Business. The last three colleges also host honors programs closely integrated with the Honors College.
UH’s Honors College shares the campus’ mission to provide a liberal arts education, as described by CLASS Dean Dan O’Connor last month. We share a responsibility to help students of all backgrounds reach their potential — benefiting their personal and professional success and enriching society.
We do this in many ways, especially by nurturing their skills in critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Small, discussion-based classes are effective in helping students discover their voices and broaden their academic identities. These courses include our gateway class, Human Situation.
The universal skills gained in these courses are neither abstract nor arbitrary; instead, they are necessary for a fulfilled life, engaged citizenship, career success, and ethical leadership.
Honors education has two iconic features: the honors seminar model and a focus on thinking across and beyond academic disciplines. We embrace both.
The honors seminar is similar in structure to discussion-based graduate seminars but is interdisciplinary. It brings perspectives from multiple academic fields to address a specific topic or question. These seminars are the basis of the Human Situation course and our six interdisciplinary minors - Phronesis (focused on politics and ethics), Medicine & Society, Energy & Sustainability, Data & Society, Creative Work, and Leadership Studies.
Transdisciplinary thinking, which values both academic and non-academic expertise and perspectives, is embedded within our community-engaged learning opportunities. Thinking across and beyond academic boundaries is key to building the skills necessary to address the complex challenges our future leaders will face.
Features such as the honors seminar or transdisciplinary thinking are not exclusive to students within our college. Students from throughout the University can experience an honors education in different ways. Our minors, for example, are available to all University students.
Likewise, we have several programs open to all students that promote transdisciplinary thinking while providing opportunities for community engagement. These include two student groups and the Community Health Workers Initiative, which helps prepare Houstonians to support their neighborhoods as community health workers. We just opened an Office of Community Engagement that will further connect our campus with partnerships and opportunities throughout the city.
The Honors College also hosts the Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards serving all UH students as they seek scholarships, academic awards or research opportunities. The office is an essential resource for students applying for competitive academic awards. Some of its past success stories include biology student Cole Woody (recently featured on Provost Profiles), who earned the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and the Phi Beta Kappa Key into Public Service. This office also plays a central role in UH’s Undergraduate Research Day, an annual showcase of students’ research across disciplines. This event brings hundreds of undergraduate researchers together in MD Anderson Library to discuss their work with engaged audiences.
Like other UH colleges, we host a number of student groups that enhance Cougars’ academic experiences. These include Honors Debate, Honors Models, Honors in Community Health, Community Advocacy & Responsive Engagement, and Club Theatre.
I believe the biggest misnomer of an honors education is that it is elitist. To the contrary, UH’s Honors College has an admissions strategy that recruits students from a range of economic and educational backgrounds. These students also reflect the cultural map of Houston, and one-quarter of our students are first-generation.
This is important because a major benefit to students and UH is the “Honors Advantage,” a double-digit increase in graduation rates for our college’s students compared to their UH peers with similar high school rankings.
Although honors colleges across the nation are no longer reliably ranked, UH’s Honors College boasts some distinctions from peer colleges at other universities. Our college has its own faculty, a unique, innovative curriculum, long-running community engaged learning, and an openness to all UH students.
Those of us working in higher education are often accused of being hopeless optimists. I am guilty as charged! So, too, was the original Board of Regents when they approved UH’s formal Charter in 1934 with this mission statement:
“We believe that continuance of democracy depends upon an organized public educational program which must become a continuous, lifelong educational process... Such an educational program is needed to provide a background for intelligent citizenship... The education of our citizens to meet the issues of life must develop the qualities of open-mindedness, adaptability, and a willingness to work together for the common welfare.”
I read the news in the morning and worry about the state of the world. Then I come to work and quickly realize that we are shaping that future for the better with every UH student we graduate.
We are on the second floor of MD Anderson Library. If you haven’t visited us yet, please do!