Freshman Year
Begin your Honors formation with an Honors freshman seminar, Great Books courses in literature, history, theology, and language study.
Fall Semester
Gaudium in Veritate HonorsRequired
An exclusive Honors freshman seminar introduces students to the Honors College, provides practical tips on how to thrive in college, offers enriching and interdisciplinary talks about common texts from Honors core courses, and hosts social gatherings for Honors students.
Rhetoric and Poetics I Honors
This Great Books course offers an intensive introduction to the nature of the human person through the dramas that play out on the page, on the stage, and in real life. With canonical texts from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages, students will imitate, interpret and critique these works and write their own works across literary and rhetorical genres in both writing and speech. Students will learn to appreciate the interplay of truth and beauty while they attempt to balance wisdom and eloquence within their own work.
Western Civilization I Honors
This course offers smaller class size and more rigorous level of study as it guides Honors students through the development of Western Civilization from the ancient world to the beginning of the early modern world. It encourages students to think historically through exploring the historical roots of contemporary society in the West, including the contributions of the Christian faith, as well as discerning complex and contingent factors that shaped past societies, ideas, and cultures.
Sacred Scripture Honors
This course introduces students to the principles of authentic Catholic biblical exegesis and explores how God has acted through his covenants to draw his people, disordered by the Fall, back to Himself. With seminar-style discussions, the course begins by examining the principles of Catholic exegesis as set forth definitively by Dei Verbum and The Catechism of the Catholic Church. The course then undertakes a careful reading of the Old and New Testaments with an emphasis on the unity of Scripture.
Honors language credit
Latin and Greek count for Honors credit. Suggested options include LATN 101 Elementary Latin and GREK 103 Elementary Greek. Spanish, Italian, and other languages may also fit a student's plan.
Spring Semester
Rhetoric and Poetics II Honors
Through an engagement with canonical authors from the Renaissance into the contemporary period, including Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Keats, Poe, and Orwell, and an intensive imitation of their style, students will further develop their ability to interpret, critique, and produce works across literary and rhetorical genres in both writing and speech. Units in this course will cover the evolution of particular genres for 1-3 weeks, such as drama, poetry, oratory, and essay. As works perpetually come closer to our own era throughout the course, students continually consider what the relationship between wisdom and eloquence means for our current historical moment.
Western Civilization II Honors
This course offers a smaller class size and more rigorous level of study as it guides Honors students through the development of Western Civilization from the early modern period to the contemporary world. It encourages students to think historically through exploring the historical roots of contemporary society in the West, including the contributions of the Christian faith, as well as discerning complex and contingent factors that shaped past societies, ideas, and cultures.
Honors language credit
Latin and Greek count for Honors credit. Suggested options include LATN 101 Elementary Latin and GREK 103 Elementary Greek. Spanish, Italian, and other languages may also fit a student's plan.