UW Honors Program - Curriculum

The Honors Program Curriculum

Honors students take five courses, two in the freshman year and one each year thereafter. All courses fulfill at least one all-university requirement, and some meet requirements in specific colleges and majors. Participating in the Honors Program does not require additional course work. It does require curiosity, a sense of adventure, and a strong desire to increase your knowledge and improve your thinking and writing skills.

The Freshman Colloquium is a two-semester sequence. Students read significant works in the history of western cultures, beginning with Homer and the Bible in the fall and ending in the spring with Marx, Darwin, and Freud. The course places special emphasis on analytical reading, writing, and class discussion.

"Non-Western Perspectives" is the thread common to the sophomore courses. Like the junior and senior classes, the specific courses in a given year depend on the choices made by a student-faculty committee. Recent topics include "Japanese Film and Literature," "Indian Epic," "The Art and Culture of Islam," and "China Today."

Junior courses focus on "Modes of Understanding." How do we know what is true or beautiful or good or valid within an area of human experience? Examples of recent classes in this category are "The Art and Culture of Hip-Hop," "Consciousness of Nature," and "Silicon Artists."

In the senior year, you explore a contemporary problem in "The Future of Nanotechnology". What is the impact of the Union Pacific Railroad? How have we been changed by Brown vs. The Board of Education? What are the scientific and social challenges presented by HIV/AIDS? Questions like these are at the center of the senior seminar.