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.
Often, academics and non-academics alike hear terms such as “honors college” and only have a vague notion of what one actually is. Even on our own campus, many community members may still have questions about the University of Houston’s very own Honors College.
I am delighted to have an opportunity to offer a high-level overview of our college—what it is, who it serves, and the advantages it provides to UH and its students.
UH’s Honors College provides high-ability students with a challenging curriculum that complements their academic majors and fosters a close-knit community of scholars. Our 2,400 students come to the Honors College from each of UH’s colleges. The majority of our students, however, come from undergraduate programs within 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. These colleges also host academic programming closely integrated with the Honors College.
UH’s Honors College shares the University’s mission to provide a liberal arts education, as described by Dean O’Connor last month. We share a responsibility to help students of all backgrounds reach their potential—benefiting their personal and professional success while enriching society.
As part of this campus mission, the Honors College focuses on motivated, academically talented students. Their skills in critical thinking, communication, and resilience are nurtured through analysis and conversation in small, discussion-based classes. These universal skills are neither abstract nor arbitrary; rather, they are essential for an examined life, engaged citizenship, career success, and ethical leadership.
Honors education at UH has two defining features: the honors seminar model and a focus on thinking across and beyond academic disciplines.
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. At the Honors College, we offer six interdisciplinary minors: Phronesis; Medicine & Society; Energy & Sustainability; Data & Society; Creative Work; and Leadership Studies.
Transdisciplinary thinking values both academic and non-academic expertise and perspectives. This approach is embedded within our community-engaged learning opportunities. Thinking across and beyond academic boundaries is key to developing the skills necessary to address the complex challenges our future leaders will face.
An honors education is sometimes misunderstood as elitist or at odds with supporting students who may have had fewer advantages in their pre-college education. The Honors College uniquely counters these misconceptions with a comprehensive admission process that creates a more level playing field. As a result, UH Honors College students represent a wide variety of economic and educational backgrounds and reflect the cultural map of Houston; one-quarter of our students are first-generation.
The true benefit to our students is the “Honors Advantage”—a double-digit increase in graduation rates for our college’s students compared to peers with similar high school rankings. We believe in sharing these benefits, and our six interdisciplinary minors are open to non-honors students as well.
We are also home to the Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards, which serves all students on campus. This office offers numerous opportunities for undergraduate students to engage in research and plays a central role in organizing UH’s Undergraduate Research Day, which allows students to present mentored research projects to peers, professionals, and hundreds of patrons in the MD Anderson Library. It also supports students and recent alumni as they apply for prestigious scholarships and awards.
Like other UH colleges, we host several student groups that enhance Cougars’ academic experiences. These include Honors Debate, Honors Models, Honors in Community Health, and Club Theatre.
Although similar colleges across the nation are no longer reliably ranked, UH’s Honors College is considered among the best in the country, with its unique curriculum, talented faculty, student services team, and partnerships across campus and the community. These partnerships include programs and classes based in other colleges, as well as faculty mentoring undergraduate research projects. It takes a campus to raise an honors student, and we celebrate our many campus partners who contribute to the success of each one.
If you haven’t visited us, please do! We are on the second floor of MD Anderson Library. Walk our halls to see the honors seminars in action—the earnest discussion of complex topics from multiple perspectives. Those of us working in higher education are often accused of being hopeless optimists. I am guilty as charged! So, too, were 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.