Location: Honors House
Telephone: 859-572-5400
Fax: 859-572-6091
Web Address: http://honors.nku.edu
Email Address honors@nku.edu
Interim Director: Belle Zembrodt
Other Key Personnel:
Coordinator of Advising: David Kime
Admissions and Student Services Coordinator: Vacant
Administrative Specialist Brittany Smith
Full-Time Faculty: April Callis, Ali Godel, Kristin Hornsby, Rachel Zlatkin
The University Honors Program offers students from all majors a unique opportunity to explore what it means to be an educated citizen through exchanging information from various disciplines, applying that knowledge to contemporary issues, and creating new ideas. In seminars limited to 16 students, the Honors Program provides courses that emphasize crossing boundaries of disciplines and cultures to think, to discuss, and to learn about ourselves and our relation to the larger world.
The honors program develops community-engaged scholars prepared for future career and academic life. Honors seminar-style classes and the capstone project prepare students for the rigors of graduate school. Alumni of the honors programs are equipped with the critical, creative, and cross-disciplinary thinking and project management skills that are highly sought after in the 21st Century work environment. Honors is more than a traditional minor and graduating students are awarded the University Honors Scholar distinction on their diplomas and transcripts.
To complete the honors program, students must complete 21 credit hours of honors coursework: HNR 101, four HNR seminars, and two HNR 400-level capstone project courses. All first-year honors students must take HNR 101: Honors First-Year Seminar. Although topics vary, this course develops skills essential to student participation in seminars and success in college. Students are introduced to the four domains of honors learning: cross-disciplinary reasoning, exchange of ideas, transdisciplinary application, and project creation and management.
Students then complete four Honors 300-level seminars. These seminars are interdisciplinary in content and develop the skills necessary to synthesize information, propose a question, and develop the appropriate methodology to complete a meaningful project.
Categories of topics include*:
*Students may take only two courses with the same number.
Ultimately the students work one-on-one with a professor to complete a capstone project in two HNR 400-level courses. This project reflects the culmination of the undergraduate academic experience. Students select a topic of their interest, develop the literature review, propose the methodology, and manage the timeline to present their findings at the Conference of Honors.
