Giving to the UW Honors Program

The Honors Program provides opportunities most often found at highly selective universities. Honors students work closely with faculty and with students from other disciplines. They study great works and ask probing questions. They receive special support for study abroad, special program advising, and help in preparing for national and international scholarships. Members of a close-knit community, they also strike out on their own with independent research or creative activity. Honors significantly enhances our students' education.

And our students know it, too.

Mike, a freshman Physics major and Latin minor, writes, "The Honors Program offers many chances to bridge different academic disciplines. The freshmen honors colloquium brings in many outside professors to speak to us about their fields within the context of our class topics and readings. These added perspectives make the class scope much broader."

And Stacey, a junior majoring in History, adds, "Joining the honors program is the best decision I made in coming to college. Not only has it greatly expanded my intellectual and analytical capabilities through challenging courses, but it has allowed me to develop deep, lasting relationships with professors and other students. I have met some of my best friends on honors retreats! Honors professors have become not just authority figures who give lectures and grades, but mentors and friends."

Incoming students also know a good thing when they see it. So many students are eager for honors opportunities that the Program has nearly tripled in size over the last ten years.

And the program continues to grow.

With that growth comes increased demand. We need to expand what we offer and create new opportunities.

Internships. We partner with the UW Writing Center to provide hands-on experience to honors students who improve their own writing while helping others.

Research Support. Together with EPSCoR, we support students who want to spend the summer hard at work pursuing independent research under the guidance of a UW faculty member.

Travel to Conferences. Much of the research that students do deserves wider dissemination. We help fund student travel to present papers and participate in scholarly exchanges.
Field Trips and Classroom Support. It is a rare Honors class that doesn't move out into the field or invite outside authorities into the classroom. Students in our classes visit a Buddhist temple the Colorado Rockies or the ghost town of Carbon in order to learn by seeing, doing, touching, and hearing.

Special Courses Abroad. Honors sponsors courses in Japan and in England and Italy. It is one thing to read Shakespeare; and it is quite another to see his plays performed by the greatest acting companies in the world. It is one thing to read about the shoguns or the destruction of Hiroshima; it is quite another to walk the grounds of an ancient castle or to talk to survivors of the atomic bomb. Soon another course will take students to India where they can work in the missions of Mother Theresa or visit the home of Mahatma Gandhi.

Scholarships. Scholarships not only help individual students realize their dreams of the best education, not only motivate and acknowledge academic excellence, but they also help us to bring students from Iraq and Indiana and Saipan and Sheridan into our classrooms where a rich mixture of ideas and experiences excites inquiry and challenges conventional wisdom.

Your gifts may be specifically directed toward any one of these activities, or you may ask that your donation be directed toward the area of greatest need. We are excited at the prospect of providing these opportunities to even more students.

While your gifts to the Honors Program make a profound difference in the lives of individual students, it is not only students who benefit: your gifts also shape the future of the University of Wyoming.

The achievement of its students is a primary measure of a university's success. A successful Honors Program helps the University of Wyoming compete with highly selective colleges and universities for talented, motivated students. Our reputation helps; the Princeton Review's guide to The Best 345 Colleges noted that "The Honors Program here is excellent," and we have been recognized as one of the top 55 programs in America.

Ultimately, though, it takes your support to attract and challenge students who have the character and ability that we want at our university. Strong faculty, modern facilities, and motivating scholarships are all of great importance in attracting top students across the disciplines. Your gift to the Honors Program will give the University of Wyoming the ability to recruit - and develop - the finest students in the world.

Thanks to the generosity of the Wyoming Legislature, gifts greater than $50,000 a one-time contribution or pledged over as many as five years can be matched dollar for dollar, doubling the impact of your donation and establishing a lasting endowment that will enhance the work of students far into the future. If you would like to discuss a possible gift to the Honors Program, please call Duncan Harris, the Honors Program Director, at (307) 766-4110. It is also possible to give online through the University of Wyoming Foundation.

Last Updated on 10/3/2008 9:38:52 AM