The Honors Program enrolls approximately 180 new students each year in a rigorous, intensive course of study designed to provide intellectual challenge in a small group learning atmosphere. Believing in the classical Greek notion that the goal of education is to prepare citizens for intelligent action in the world, the University Honors Program exists to meet the educational needs of the ablest and most highly motivated undergraduates at the University. This Program affords students an opportunity to explore intellectual issues critically and intensively in small classes that provide close contact with specially selected faculty members and with other Honors students. We emphasize not just harder work or more information, but a more questioning approach. It is not just a matter of learning the facts, but of understanding the intellectual discourse that produces and presents the facts.
Expository writing is emphasized throughout the curriculum.
Honors students live in every manner of housing, including home, University residence halls, fraternity and sorority houses, and student-rented apartments. They take courses both inside and outside the Honors Program, and participate in all manner of student activities from student government to intramural and intercollegiate sports to a large variety of clubs and associations. Honors is thus not a separate University experience, but rather an enriched one, one that provides some of the personal attention and intensive interaction of a liberal-arts college along with the breadth of opportunities available only at a large university. This can be achieved through the College of Arts and Sciences or the College of Engineering. The path to pursue College Honors varies slightly according to the college from which a student graduates.