Programs of Special Interest

Honors Program

The Honors Program is designed to provide special educational opportunities for highly motivated students. It is open to well-prepared first-year students, as well as to sophomores and upper-division students in all schools and colleges. The Honors Program offers thoughtful advising, close contact with faculty and with other honors students and an opportunity to write an honors thesis. Honors offers over 70 courses per year in a wide variety of areas. In any academic year about one-fourth of all Honors courses are offered under the HONR designation; the remainder are offered as seminars under departmental designations (CHEM, ENGL, HIST, IPHY and so on). Course offerings for each semester are listed, with detailed descriptions, on the Honors Program web page at www.colorado.edu/honors/courses. Honors courses are limited to an enrollment of approximately 15 students.

Faculty members teaching honors seminars are carefully selected for special interests and enthusiasm, for teaching excellence in small discussion classes and for insistence on high academic standards. Honors seminars are designed for the student who welcomes challenge, knows that the mind expands only with effort and actively seeks academic and intellectual challenges. Honors courses encourage students to think creatively. Many honors courses are interdisciplinary; all encourage students to read widely and critically.

The Honors Council, consisting of faculty from all participating academic departments, is responsible for deciding which students merit the award of the bachelor’s degree with the Latin honors designations: cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude. These awards are made on the basis of special honors work and not simply on the basis of grades earned in courses.

Students may graduate with departmental honors, general honors or both. Departmental honors may require a junior or senior honors seminar, an independent research project and/or directed readings. Each department has information pertaining to its own particular program. General honors, supervised and administered directly by the Honors Program and its core faculty, permits students to pursue interests and ultimately to write theses that cross disciplinary and departmental boundaries. To graduate with general honors, students must have a cumulative GPA of 3.50 or higher, have completed 12 credit hours of required honors courses and have written a thesis on an interdisciplinary topic.

The Honors Residential Academic Program (Honors RAP) is the optional residential component of the program. Honors RAP, open to a limited number of qualified first-year and continuing students, consists of small classes offered in Smith Hall as well as opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities. (There is an additional charge for the Honors Residential Academic Program.)

First-year students are invited to join the Honors Program based on their high school GPA and test scores. Transfer students must have a 3.30 GPA from their previous school. Students currently enrolled are accepted on the basis of academic achievement at CU-Boulder. Honors students are expected to have a GPA of at least 3.30. This is a program of excellence and commitment in which the best teaching faculty is committed to serve the most highly motivated students for the benefit of those students, the university and the larger society.