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 in order to allow for more individualized attention to students.
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. Study abroad and international travel are strongly encouraged.
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 international travel, 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, though RBI courses are occasionally exceptions in this regard.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/honors.
Admissions Process
Admission to the Elizabethtown College Honors Program is competitive. For current admission requirements, please contact the Office of Admissions.
The preferred application deadline for the Honors Program is January 15, and the final deadline is March 15. Starting in November, selected students who have applied and submitted the Honors Essay are invited to complete an Honors Interview. Decisions are released on a rolling basis.
A limited number of students are accepted to the Honors Program after the first semester. These students must demonstrate excellence in their coursework, provide a recommendation from at least one Elizabethtown professor, and have the concurrence of the Honors Director. After the first semester, such applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Participation Requirements
Students entering the Elizabethtown College Honors Program in their first academic year take an Honors First-Year Seminar, and usually an Honors English course. In the sophomore/junior years, Honors students ordinarily take three additional Honors 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 “HON” 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 Honors Program offers the following non-disciplinary courses:
HON 201 - HNR Elizabethtown History: Campus and Community (PHS 201)
HON 205 - HNR Leadership Theory and Personal Narrative
HON 301 - HNR Thesis Preparation
The following Core and disciplinary Honors courses are offered. Other Honors courses may be offered from time to time. See individual Schools for course descriptions.
HEN 105 - HNR HUM Introduction to Literature: Utopian and Dystopian Literature
HIC 206 - HNR NCH/SSC Middle East Politics
HMA 251 - HNR MA Probability and Statistics
HMA 275 - HNR CE Mathematics in Music
HPC 105 - HNR SSC Introduction to Psychology
HPC 125 - HNR NPS Introduction to Neuroscience
HPS 300 - HNR Gender and the Law (HWG 300)
HRE 285 - HNR WCH Amish, Brethren, and Mennonites in the U.S. Since 1875
HRE 289 - HNR Communal and Utopian Societies
HSO 224 - HNR SSC The Amish in Modern Society
HWG 300 - HNR Gender and the Law (HPS 300)
For more information, contact the Director of the Honors Program, Dr. Oya Dursun-Ozkanca.
Momentum
The Office of the Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs 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 curriculum and 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 and ideally, exceeding 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. First generation students who have earned at least 30 credit/semester hours and have a cumulative GPA of 3.20 can be inducted into the Elizabethtown college Pi Chapter of Tri-Alpha, a national honors society.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/programs/momentum.
Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships
The Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships program encourages high-achieving students to pursue nationally competitive scholarships best reflecting their academic interests and post-graduate aspirations. Competitive scholarships and fellowships awards are often substantial, and recipients and finalists are held in a high esteem by educational institutions and employers. Scholarships and fellowships can range from short-term summer courses to multi-year graduate programs throughout the world. The application process offers certain benefits in improved critical thinking, analytical writing, and oral presentation skills- all of which can be usefully applied in nearly any future pursuit. The Office of Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships, located in the Honors Center, aims to demystify these opportunities and help students discern the most appropriate awards for which to apply. We introduce students to opportunities, resources, and plenty of practical advice to helping them put together a competitive application. Whatever questions they have about prestigious scholarships and fellowships, we are eager to help students explore the possibilities they represent and encourage them in the application process. From the initial inquiry, to the nomination and selection stage of a national or international competition, we work with students and alumni to prepare competitive applications.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/programs/fellowships.
|
