Honors Program in Liberal Arts and Sciences
Dr. James Marshall, Director
The Honors in Liberal Arts & Sciences Program (HLAS) is a sequence of interdisciplinary courses designed to provide a challenging opportunity for intellectual growth to academically accomplished and highly motivated students seeking a rigorous educational experience in the liberal arts and sciences. Students will explore how knowledge from different areas can be integrated across the academic disciplines. The program challenges students to understand the interdependence of all branches of intellectual inquiry. Students will also learn how to conduct serious inquiries within particular disciplines.
Most HLAS courses are seminars in format with small class sizes to provide opportunities for intensive class discussion between students from diverse majors and faculty from various disciplines. They are at times team-taught and may include regular guest discussions from faculty and experts in their fields. The emphasis in HLAS courses is upon active student learning and engagement with demanding material. Students will be challenged to think independently, read critically, engage ideas from a range of academic disciplines, and write effectively. Other courses will challenge students to develop their own investigations within and across disciplines, both in the academic setting of the university, and in the world outside of the university. Students should finish the program with a deep appreciation of the values and practices of liberal arts scholarship, as well as a sense of how that scholarship will be applicable to their careers after graduation.
Any Rockford University student who meets the HLAS entrance requirements (listed below) may register for HLAS 101. Students who complete the entire program and meet all of its requirements will be recognized at commencement and their HLAS standing noted on their transcripts. Such standing can give students a competitive advantage when applying for graduate and professional schools or employment after college.
Entrance Requirements
For first-year and continuing students: 27 ACT or SAT equivalent and a cumulative high school or college GPA of 3.50 or higher (on a 4.0 scale).
For new transfer students: a cumulative college GPA of 3.50 or higher (on a 4.0 scale).
Students who do not quite meet the above requirements and feel they deserve special consideration to enter the program are strongly encouraged to contact the director of HLAS and their academic advisors.
Completion Requirements
The program requires core courses, continued and mentored study, and a capstone sequence. The core courses introduce students to the basics of interdisciplinary scholarship. Students then engage in small-group and one-on-one studies with faculty. Honors seminars are one-hour additions to existing classes where HLAS students enrolled in the class spend an extra hour a week with the course instructor. Content of the seminars is meant to enrich the ordinary classroom experience for HLAS students. In mentored studies, students work with a faculty member on an in-depth investigation of a topic that the student wants to learn about that is not necessarily covered in regular course offerings. The student chooses the direction of that study with guidance from the faculty mentor. Finally, students engage in an experiential learning opportunity. These experiences should introduce students to how their academic interests intersect with the world outside of the University. The final capstone is where HLAS students summarize for the campus community what they have learned in the HLAS program.
In order to complete the HLAS program successfully, students must finish all of HLAS core courses with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 with no grade below a “B” in any single HLAS course. Students must also earn a cumulative GPA of 3.0 in all Rockford University course work.
Transfer credits, when appropriate, may be used to fulfill any of the core courses below the 400-level, for a maximum of 6 credit hours.