University of Michigan - Flint

Since its founding in 1979, the University of Michigan-Flint Honors Scholar Program has offered qualified students the opportunity to enhance their education in the challenging and rewarding atmosphere of small, enriched core classes with close faculty guidance and one-on-one learning and research partnerships with specialists.

Students:
Each year, twenty-five entering freshmen are selected to begin the program. They are chosen according to a number of criteria, including a writing sample and an interview. In their first two years, they take a sequence of four interdisciplinary honors courses along with regularly elected courses in the disciplines. At the end of the sophomore year, each student declares an honors major. In the senior year, the student designs an off-campus study project, and , with up to $3000 in support, completes it and writes a thesis which is presented to a faculty committee or presented at a conference. To graduate a student must also complete five honors elections, each amounting about 15 hours of extra work in a class. They must also complete three semesters of a foreign language, and have an overall grade point average of 3.5 or higher.

Student Success
• Students who complete the program have an extraordinarily high rate of acceptance into the highest quality graduate and professional schools.
• Student retention from freshman year to graduation is about 30%. This compares well with other honors program, where the rate of graduation is as low as .5 % even though the programs have a lower gpa requirement, and do not require an off campus study or thesis.
• Students across the disciplines present numerous papers at conferences each year including the Meeting of the Minds, the Michigan Academy of Science Arts and Letters, the Purdue University Undergraduate Conference, the CAES Early Studies Conference, as well as numerous Honors Colloquia.

Administrative Structure
The Honors Program is organized administratively with a Director, who reports to the Associate Provost, and an Assistant Director, as well as a nine-person faculty Honors Council.

National Collegiate Honors Council Requirements for Excellence
The program meets fifteen of the sixteen Requirements for Excellence set forth by the National Collegiate Honors Council.

Assessment
The Honors Program has an effective, on-going assessment plan which has resulted in improvements in the program over the past five years.

Since its founding in 1979, the University of Michigan-Flint Honors Scholar Program has offered qualified students the opportunity to enhance their education in the challenging and rewarding atmosphere of small, enriched core classes with close faculty guidance and one-on-one learning and research partnerships with specialists.

I. The Honors Program is dedicated to the following goals:

• to promote education across the disciplines in an environment that emphasizes a high degree of literacy, critical thinking and humanistic and scientific inquiry
• to encourage a high level of academic achievement and scholarly research among our students
• to foster a sensitive understanding of and respect for social, cultural and ethnic diversity
• to help create informed, well-educated citizens and leaders who are positively and actively engaged in their immediate and wider social community
• to promote recruitment and retention of students with a record af academic achievement

II. The Honors Program shares the objectives expressed in the Mission Statements of the University and the College of Arts and Sciences:

Teaching

• to foster excellence in teaching and learning through its core courses and its work with participating departments, schools and programs
• to promote learning partnerships with faculty as an integral part of the program

Research

• to encourage faculty and students in undertaking applied and theoretical research and creative endeavors in their area of concentration

Service

• to encourage service by students to the university and to society

III. The Honors Program is designed to foster cross-disciplinary perspectives and cooperation among various schools and programs throughout the university community. Together with participating members in the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Management, the School of Education and Human Services, and the School of Health Professions and Studies, the Honors Program will:

• promote the objectives expressed in the mission statements of individual schools and departments with recognition and respect for the diversity and complexity of the university community
• encourage the building of bridges across the disciplines by integrating and implementing the objectives and procedures of schools, departments and programs participating in the program
• provide opportunities for students and faculty to facilitate and strengthen cross-disciplinary objectives