Last year, UW was home to an honors program. Now, there is the Honors College in its stead, offering high-achieving students opportunities to “grow as scholars and researchers; engaged citizens and leaders,” Honors College Dean Donal Skinner said in an email.
Originally founded in the 1950s after students asked administration for greater opportunities to enhance their experience as UW undergraduates, the Honors Program grew in number until it had enough students to become the Honors College.
The Honors College has small seminars led by award winning faculty members, allowing students to interact on a personal basis with instructors and mentors. With these small groups, Honors faculty are capable of taking classes on study abroad experiences.
Skinner only recently returned from a study abroad in Europe, where he led students in a study of the History of Medicine. Those who accompanied Skinner were able to see the first cloned mammal, “Dolly,” as well as the research facility wherein it was created.
These learning opportunities are available to students within the College through the funding and leadership provided. Having the talented and passionate staff to head these endeavors has attracted the attention of other departments on campus.
The vision held by the administration is that there will be an increase in interdisciplinary that will involved subjects headed by other departments on campus, including the STEM fields.
According to Skinner, nearly 75 percent of students within the Honors College come from STEM field major programs on campus, which is another reason why the College is looking to branch out into other departments.
“There will be a lot of individual departmental choice about what the trajectories look like in the [respective] curriculums,” Associate Professor Peter Parolin of the English Department said. “[Focused on] creating the conditions where our students in Honors can have world class opportunities for their own intellectual excitement and where they want to go in life.”
The main purpose of the College is to allow students to get the most out of their college career through academic excellence and service.
“In the purest and most exciting sense, the Honors College is supposed to be a site for academic excellence on the UW campus for the students that want to go that extra mile in their studies, in their community service [and] in their university service.”
With this development in how the Honors College wishes to advance in the coming years, there will likely be many new courses added to curriculums offered through different departments at UW.
“If any teacher is qualified, they can come to the honors college and build a class,” Lecturer Kenneth Thompson said. “It can be part of their department – it’ll be in any department if an instructor can get clearance from their department on their class load. [The Honors College staff] are envisioning that it [will be] part of every facet of the University in some capacity.”
