Honors Program

The Honors Program offers courses in a wide range of disciplines, emphasizing academic rigor and pedagogical creativity. The Honors Program encourages academic independence in its students by emphasizing inquiry, self-direction, and self-regulation in all academic endeavors. The program celebrates an interdisciplinary approach to learning. Through tutorials and seminars, honors students are challenged to synthesize information across disciplines, developing a broad awareness of knowledge connectedness. Honors students are challenged to apply the knowledge and skills gained in the classroom in ways that provide stewardship and service to the Marymount community, the surrounding DC community, and the environment. The Honors Program, through its academic and extracurricular programs, encourages initiative, responsibility, integrity, and collaboration among its students.

Honors students must fulfill all program requirements, maintain a minimum GPA of 3.5, and participate in Honors Program events and activities to maintain program benefits. Participants must earn at least a B in each honors course.

Primary academic advising for honors students will be delivered by faculty from their respective majors. Additional advising, specific to the honors curriculum, will be provided by the honors director.

Curriculum Overview

Students in the Honors Program are required to earn at least 24 credits of honors coursework. Typically, students are expected to earn all honors credits while enrolled at Marymount. The curriculum is designed so that each incoming first-year student in the Honors Program completes one honors course (three credits) per semester to successfully achieve the 24-credit-hour requirement. Students admitted to the Honors Program after the first year will be expected to take more than one honors course per semester in some instances to successfully complete the 24-credit-hour requirement. Students are permitted to enroll in a maximum of two honors courses per semester.

• HON 101 The Quest: An Introduction to the Honors Program (three credits)
• Advanced Honors Seminars (nine credits)
• Honors Tutorials: one Traditional (HON 200) and one Advanced (HON 300) (six credits)
• HON 399 Research Tutorial: Thesis Proposal (three credits)
• Honors thesis completed within the discipline's senior seminar or HON 400 (three credits)

The Curriculum

HON 101 The Quest: An Introduction to the Honors Program: Marymount honors students are introduced to the principles of the original liberal arts and the structure of the program through a first-year seminar, HON 101 The Quest: An Introduction to the Honors Program. This course will substitute for DSC 101 and EN 101. Students in HON 101 will examine scholarly and creative works from various fields that have greatly shaped and changed society’s ideas, beliefs, and practices. Additionally, students will be introduced to various forms of scholarship and the skills necessary for serious academic inquiry. Heavy emphasis will be placed on writing and research. Students will be introduced to the discussion-based seminar and the tutorial method.

Advanced Honors Seminars: At least three courses (9 credits) must be completed in advanced Honors Seminars. The Honors Seminars, typically with 12 to 15 students, are taught by select faculty who are encouraged to construct innovative and rigorous courses for the benefit of honors students. These credits may be fulfilled in honors-designated sections of the Liberal Arts Core courses, in graduate seminars (with instructor’s permission), and in courses created by Marymount faculty especially for the Honors Program. This approach provides breadth in the honors curriculum while simultaneously allowing students to earn honors credits in specific interest areas and majors.

Liberal Arts Core Honors classes: Students may choose to take Advanced Honors Seminars that satisfy the university’s Liberal Arts Core requirements. Honors sections of these courses, developed and offered by individual professors and departments, will present a greater challenge to those enrolled. On rare occasions, these honors sections will be opened to students outside the program with approval from the honors director and the instructor.

Honors Seminars: Qualified Marymount faculty are specifically recruited by the director to develop new and innovative undergraduate seminars for honors students. These courses demonstrate pedagogical creativity as well as academic rigor. Past examples include EN 220 The Movie or the Book? Narrative Adaptation in Cinema, HU 394 The World of J.R.R. Tolkien, and HU 320 What is Death?

Graduate Courses: Honors students may petition to take a graduate course for honors credit. They will need approval of the instructor, the department chair, and the director. This is normally done during the junior or senior year and is especially encouraged for students who intend to pursue graduate study in a particular field. Please see the university’s Graduate Catalog for available courses.

Course overload: Honors students may petition to take up to 2 credit hours above the standard maximum of 18 credit hours of academic course work in a given semester without incurring an overage charge. Students will need approval of the instructor, the department chair, and the director.

HON 200/HON 300 Traditional and Advanced Tutorials: Honors Tutorials begin in the student’s sophomore year. There are two types: the Traditional Tutorial and the Research Tutorial. The traditional undergraduate tutorial, developed in the Middle Ages at Oxford and Cambridge, is an intimate and intense learning experience. Traditional Tutorials consist of one to three students meeting once a week over an eight-week period with a professor on a specialized topic. The topic need not be in the student’s major. During each one- to two-hour meeting, students are expected to have completed readings from an agreed-upon list and to have produced a short response paper, which they will read and receive feedback.

HON 399 Research Tutorial: Thesis Proposal: The Research Tutorial: Thesis Proposal, normally taken the second semester of the junior year, is conducted one-on-one with the student’s identified faculty mentor and must be focused on the topic of the student’s Senior Honors Thesis. Each student will work with a mentor on a scholarly research project. During this semester, the student may serve as a research assistant, becoming acquainted with the specific literature and techniques in the chosen area of research. At the end of the semester, the student is required to submit a research proposal approved by the faculty mentor to the honors director for review. Once the proposal is approved and, if necessary, revised, the student may then commence the research for the Senior Honors Thesis. At the end of this tutorial and during the senior year, the student will produce and defend an Honors Thesis. As HON 399 is a writing intensive (WI) course, the proposal must be at least 15 pages in length.

HON 400 Research Tutorial: Honors Thesis: Honors students, during their senior year, will work with a faculty mentor on their thesis. With permission from their department chair and the honors director, honors students may conduct their approved thesis in their major’s "capstone" course, which will substitute for HON 400. Successful completion of the thesis is required to graduate with Honors.

Thesis Defense: The Senior Thesis will typically be 30 pages, exclusive of the scholarly apparatus, 15 for creative/design projects. All honors students are required to present and defend their theses before a committee consisting of the thesis advisor, a second reader, and the honors director or the director's designee. This normally occurs during the spring semester of the senior year or during the student’s last semester at the university. Thesis defenses are open to the entire university community and take place each spring. Student theses are archived in the Honors Program Office and on the Library and Learning Services website.

Oxford Summer Study Program

The Honors Program’s mix of seminars, tutorials, and lectures fits the intimate educational environment of Marymount, pays tribute to the liberal arts tradition of Oxford and Cambridge, and prepares Marymount honors students for graduate and professional school. To reinforce these aims and to provide a global perspective for honors students, the program offers 10 tuition scholarships to students every summer for a six-week study tour at the University of Oxford. Students take six (6) academic credits, three (3) of which are with an Oxford faculty member in a Traditional or Advanced Tutorial. They also travel on sponsored trips to London, Stratford, Windsor, and other British sites as well as embark on independent travel throughout Europe. Some Marymount students choose to spend an entire semester abroad studying at Oxford or schools throughout Europe and Asia.

Contact the Honors Program director for further information.