Honors
Overview
The Elizabethtown College Honors Program, established in 1999 and sponsored by The Hershey Company, reflects the College’s commitment to providing hand-crafted learning opportunities for its students. In the case of the Honors Program, the focus of this handcrafting is on students with excellent academic records, superior academic abilities, intellectual promise, and demonstrated initiative. Consistent with the mission of the College, the Honors Program seeks to promote high standards of scholarship, leadership, and service among those students selected for the program. Class size deliberately is kept small; no more than 15 students are enrolled in each course.
The opportunity to work closely with faculty mentors from the first year to the senior year is an explicit goal of everyone associated with the program. In order to foster even greater involvement between faculty scholars and Honors students, co-curricular activities are an integral part of the program. International travel is both encouraged and facilitated.
To facilitate such experiences, the Elizabethtown College Honors Program allows each qualified student to apply for an Academic Research Grant that can be used in support of these trips, to support senior thesis research, or graduate and professional exams such as the GRE, LSAT, or MCAT. In order to help foster a deeper sense of community, study rooms, a reserved lounge, and a computer lab are located in the Honors Center for Honors student use.
Honors Program students in good standing will have priority registration for each semester for which they are members of the Honors Program. Priority registration indicates that Honors Program students will have the opportunity to register before other students with the same class standing.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/honors.
Admissions Process
Admission to the Elizabethtown College Honors Program is competitive. The minimum standard for admission is a combined score of at least 1200 on the critical reading and math portions of the SAT (with no score below 550) or equivalent on another standardized test (TOEFL or ACT), a rank within the top 10 percent of the student’s high school graduating class, and review by the Honors Director acting on the recommendation of the Office of Admissions.
The preferred application deadline for the Honors Program is January 15, and the final application deadline is March 15. Notification is guaranteed by May 1. Students interested in the Honors Program are required to have an on-campus interview with an Admissions officer.
A limited number of students are accepted to the Honors Program during their sophomore year. These students must demonstrate excellence in their first-year courses, provide recommendations from at least two Elizabethtown professors, and have the concurrence of the Honors Director. Rising sophomores must apply by March 15 for consideration.
Participation Requirements
Students entering the Elizabethtown College Honors Program in their first academic year take an Honors First-Year Seminar, and usually an Honors Interdisciplinary Seminar focusing primarily on critical thinking and foundational skills. In the sophomore/junior years, Honors students take two additional Honors elective courses from the College’s Core Program or in majors, minors, or electives. The final capstone Honors experience is the completion of a Senior Honors Thesis. A total of 24 credits must be acquired in Honors courses in order to fulfill the requirements and graduate as a recognized Elizabethtown College Honors Scholar. In order to remain in good standing within the program, students must maintain a grade point average of 3.50 overall.
A list of Honors courses is available through the course descriptions tab of this Catalog. Define the search criterion as an “H” in the “Code” field or select a specific Honors “Type” shown in the drop-down menu. All Honors courses are noted on course schedules with an “H” at the beginning of the course code and “HNR” at the beginning of the title.
The following non-disciplinary Honors courses are offered:
HON 205 HNR Leadership Theory
The following disciplinary and interdisciplinary Honors courses are offered. Other Honors courses may be offered from time to time. See individual departments for course descriptions.
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* Fulfills Honors interdisciplinary course requirement.
For more information, contact the Honors Director, Dr. Kyle Kopko.
Momentum
The OFfice of Academic Achievement and Engagement is home to the Momentum Program. In 2010, Elizabethtown College was awarded a grant from the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) through the Walmart Foundation’s Walmart College Success Awards program, to enhance the success of first-generation college students. With the grant, the College established the Momentum program with an interdisciplinary approach to introducing students to the liberal arts and sciences, helping them prepare for the academic expectations of college.
The program was called Momentum because the purpose is to help students build momentum toward their experience with fall orientation and college life. The program establishes a momentum which students maintain throughout their time at the college. Momentum is designed to prepare students for college, assisting them in their effort to get the most from their education and become an integral part of the college community. The Momentum program is a stimulus for students to become energized about Elizabethtown College and to help them maintain this energy, motion, and activity throughout their college experience. The program has an emphasis on students meeting academic expectations and developing mentoring relationships with faculty, especially their faculty academic advisor. Momentum students are also supported by upper class student academic peer advisors known as the Kinesis—the energy behind a momentum.
Academic advisors in the Academic Advising Office are the academic advisors of record for deferred, transfer, and international degree-seeking students until the student formally declares and/or is admitted into a major/academic program.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/programs/momentum.
Prestigious Scholarships
Through enrichment opportunities and mentoring from faculty and staff throughout the entire application process, the Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships program encourages high-achieving students to pursue nationally competitive scholarships that best reflect their values, goals, past experience, and future sense of calling and purposeful life work. These nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships fund undergraduate study, study abroad, graduate study, and independent research. Our program is guided by the professional fellowship advising values identified by the National Association of Fellowship Advisors, including integrity, collaboration, respect, and fairness, and by the mission of Elizabethtown College. Currently, students in the program include active campus leaders, varsity athletes, performers and visual artists, students who have studied abroad, and students who have done research with faculty. In the past, Elizabethtown College students have won Rhodes, Fulbright, Davies-Jackson, and Goldwater Scholarships.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/programs/fellowships.
