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University Honors Program

The University Honors Program sustains a community of scholars who are intellectually engaged with each other and with faculty mentors. They are inspired by academic challenge, complex questions and the desire to make a difference in the world. The University Honors Program offers a compelling intellectual experience, including  immersion in the great traditions of learning. The program helps students hone their analytical and expressive powers, deepen their understanding and broaden their perspectives. It also sparks their passions, curiosity and personal aspirations. Built upon an interdisciplinary and comprehensive four-year honors experience, the program is fully integrated into, synergistic with and reinforcing of the highest academic aspirations of the schools and departments.

The Honors Program does not replace the entire academic experience at GW. Students follow an honors course sequence in their first and second years; this accounts for 8 or 12 credits each semester in the first year and 8 credits each semester in the second. In the third and fourth years, students engage in special or departmental honors in their majors. To graduate as a University honors program scholar, all honors program students must qualify for departmental honors.

Applicants must submit their intent for this program by submitting the Honors, Accelerated, and Special Programs application (for those submitting the GW Application for Admission) or on the Common Application Supplement (for those submitting the Common Application).

Program Highlights

  • Available to students in all undergraduate schools of the University, the Honors Program inspires thoughtful, responsible citizens in academic scholarship.

  • Small, seminar-style classes, capped at 20 students, provide the challenge to probe a variety of evolving issues. In recognition of their expanded scope and interdisciplinary nature, as well as greater academic expectations both in and outside of class, honors courses carry four credits rather than the typical three credits.

  • All honors students must participate in an Honors Global Issues practicum, a senior year capstone experience. The practicum provides students with the opportunity to apply and reflect upon what they have learned during their undergraduate experience.

  • The honors community is strengthened and sustained by a shared academic experience and enhanced by its small size (approximately 5 percent of the undergraduate student body, or fewer than 500 students). The program offers first-year honors students the option of living in one of the honors residential communities.

  • The honors experience is enriched by distinctive co-curricular programming, which includes "Professors on the Town" (small groups of interested honors students and faculty who attend theater productions), the University Honors Symposia and Professors in the Pub debates.

 

Related Content

A UHP Faculty Perspective

"I think the honors program offers highly motivated students an opportunity to thrive intellectually in small classroom settings. What is also unique about the program are the opportunities it offers for students to form mentoring relationships with professors, while the small class sizes also help develop peer relationships among students that are at once social and intellectual. If I have learned anything from my teaching in this program, it is this: students embrace intellectual challenges."

-- Robert Shepard, Assistant Professor, Honors, Anthropology & International Affairs

A UHP Student Perspective

"The Honors Program gave me an academic home in the University. The classes are all discussion based, and the professors take great care to focus on the student. Topics covered by the courses vary widely and can be incredibly fulfilling. Additionally, the individual support of the Honors Academic advisors is invaluable when making sure you've dotted your i's and crossed your t's."

 

--Geoffrey Louden, ESIA '11, University Honors Program 

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