What is Honors?
The Honors Program serves motivated, accomplished students by nurturing creativity, critical thinking and scholarship beyond the usual academic frameworks.
Through classes, co-curricular activities, service projects and advisement, the Honors Program creates a learning community that emphasizes intellectual exploration.
Mission Statement
Gathering engaged faculty and students from across campus, the UND Honors Program creates a holistic, multidisciplinary, student-centered educational experience that prepares the next generation of citizen-scholars from today's exceptional students.
Vision Statement
The Honors Program will cultivate the next generation of justice-oriented, critical, curious, and creative thinkers and leaders with the knowledge, skills, abilities and commitment to have a positive impact on the world around them.
Diversity, Inclusivity, and Equity Statement
The UND Honors Program intentionally infuses the values of diversity, inclusion, and social equity into its curriculum, programming, and faculty/staff training. We promote mutual respect and attentiveness to our common human dignity while also highlighting the educative importance of recognizing differences in identities, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and ways of learning and knowing.
Dual Track Honors Program
The dual track Honors Program is a new feature that allows students to get a slightly different emphasis within their Honors curriculum. Both tracks require the same number of credits to graduate with Honors — 24 credits. Most of those credits will count towards required Essential Studies credits.
Research Scholars Track
The Research Scholars track emphasizes deep theoretical inquiries and/or creative activity, and interdisciplinary liberal arts coursework to give you both broad perspectives on issues as well as the ability to attend to nuanced aspects of bigger questions in a deep way. The final Senior Research Project will be an independent study type of experience between you and a professor in which you engage in deep, focused look at a question/problem in a discipline, directed by the expert faculty mentor, or work on a creative project if you are in a creative field (like fine arts, music, theater, etc.). Students who wish to develop deep critical intellectual/creative capabilities and who may be interested in postgraduate work would likely select the Research track.
Leaders in Action Track
The Leaders in Action track curriculum emphasizes more skills-building and thoughtful and collaborative leadership, broad communication with diverse audiences, and public service. In their freshman year, students will be assigned a leader-mentor who serves in university or community administrative capacity (examples include deans, provosts, the mayor). More credits can be earned in this track for things like internships, and the Senior Leadership Project will enable students to connect their ideas in a meaningful way to problems in the community through an active partnership with community leaders and mentors and a portfolio built upon that experience. While either track will work with any major, students who are especially interested in management, leadership, civic engagement, or just simply improving their ability to work and connect with teams of people would likely select the Leaders track.
Students in both tracks will have the benefit of priority registration, as well as opportunities to study abroad, become an Honors Student Ambassador and live in a Living & Learning Community with other Honors students.
What are Honors students like?
Honors students have personalities and interests as diverse as the rest of the student body. Some major in professional fields such as engineering, aviation, computer science and pre-law, while others major in fields such as psychology, languages, philosophy, music, arts, history, political science, management, and more.
As the common denominator, members of the Honors Program tend to be genuinely and deeply interested in ideas. They read widely, like to communicate ideas, are curious and excited about a wide range of subjects, and are committed to intellectual exploration. Students often form lasting friendships with other Honors students across disciplines and interests.
The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.bell hooks