Honors Program

Honors Program Mission Statement – The College of St. Scholastica Honors Program is based on the Benedictine tradition of academic excellence in the development of the educated person who is consciously committed to gaining a rigorous understanding of the world.

The Honors Program provides high achieving students with an enriched academic environment that is shaped through recognition of their unique intellectual and social needs.  In order to create this environment, the Honors Program offers challenging courses in the liberal arts and sciences that demand intellectual and moral exploration.  The Honors Program is committed to developing lifelong learners through discussion and activity‑oriented classes.

Honors Program courses fulfill Benedictine Liberal Arts Education requirements.  Some Honors courses are interdisciplinary (IDS) and will fulfill any appropriate Benedictine Liberal Arts Education area.

Debra Schroeder, Ph.D., Director

 
Policies

Application and Admission – Students must request a formal interview with the Honors Director for admission to the program.  Students should meet 2 of 3 criteria:  be in the top 15 percent of their class, hold a GPA of 3.5 or higher, and have a minimum score of 26 on the ACT or 1100 on the SAT.  Students who do not meet two of these criteria may still request an Honors interview, and if successful in the interview will be admitted to the program.

 
Retention – Students who have not enrolled in an Honors course for two years will be removed from the program.

Graduating from the Honors Program:

Students must complete 20 credits in Honors with a minimum grade of B in each class.  Eight credits must be upper division.  At the time of graduation, a student must hold a 3.5 GPA.

Transfer students may speak to the Honors Director about a four to eight credit exemption, although they still must take eight credits of  upper division Honors courses to graduate. 

 
Honors Program Outcomes:

1.    Lifelong Learning – Students will enjoy learning and create and participate in effective intellectual learning communities.
2.    Effective Intellectual Communication – Students will be able to engage in informed intellectual discourse on a variety of topics
       including disciplinary issues and values.
3.    Interdisciplinary Understanding - Students will be able to make interdisciplinary connections.

Course Descriptions

HON 1101 Honors Colloquium:  The Literature of Social Change……………4 cr. (I, IDS)
The Honors Colloquium will introduce students to a variety of perspectives and attitudes toward social change.  Students will read classic and contemporary works and hear from local activists, people who devote a significant amount of their time working for change.  Students will read several genres – fiction, autobiography, political philosophy and propaganda.  They will be encouraged to adopt a critical and skeptical attitude toward what they read and hear.

HON 1111  The Responsible Self………….. ……….2 cr.
Honors section of Dignitas, Fall Semester, taught at the level and using the active learning techniques of the Honors Program.  Prerequisite:  Acceptance into the Honors Program by interview with Honors Director.

HON 1112  And Dignity for All……. ………..…….2 cr.
Honors section of Dignitas, Spring Semester, taught at the level and using the active learning techniques of the Honors Program.

Prerequisite:  Acceptance into the Honors Program by interview with Honors Director.

HON 1914 World War I   ............. 4 cr.  (IDS)
World War I was called “The Great War” and “The War to End All Wars” by contemporaries.  In reality, it was neither, and in fact is considered the major cause of World War II.  This class examines the following questions.  How did a war happen when no one really wanted it?  What is meant by military historians when they claim that WWI changed the nature of warfare by introducing the technology of mass destruction?  How did WWI cause WWII?  If this war really did change the entire psychology of Europe, the center of our civilization, how is that reflected in the arts and sciences of the between-war period?  Approximately one‑third of the class will center on the facts of the war; one‑third on the Treaty of Versailles and one‑third on the cultural impact.

HON 2100  Great Ideas of Science…………………4 cr. (VI)
Popular science texts covering The Big Bang Theory, relativity, quantum mechanics, particle physics, evolution, genetics, and Chaos Theory will be read and discussed.  Discussions will focus on investigating the scientific method; distinguishing between fact, theory, speculation, and belief; critiquing and judging the accuracy of different explanations for the same events/observations; and considering the implications of scientific theory on philosophical thought, e.g., What does science have to say about determinism vs. free will? 

HON 2125 Global Sociology……………..4 cr. (I, II)
This course addresses a wide range of sociological issues as questions to be answered, using the solutions already provided by sociologists and students’ own hands-on lab and real-world observational experiences.  Examples and exercises use U.S. and world data throughout, highlighting the way humans structure their lives around differences of culture and ethnicity, gender, race, social class, age, sexual orientation and other significant groupings.  Using art, literature, music and film, as well as traditional ethnographic and quantitative sociological data, students will encounter the diverse ways in which people structure their social lives to meet common human needs, gaining experience and mastery of some basic tools of quantitative and qualitative analysis.

HON 2280 Russian Literature in Translation………          4 cr. (I, IV)
Study of literature written in Russian and translated into English. Selected works of prose and poetry from a particular period with emphasis on careful reading and reader response as well as on the cultural, historical, political, religious and economic developments that provide content.

HON 2405  The World……………………..2 cr.  (IDS)
This course aims to give students, largely from the Upper Midwest, exposure to and an opportunity to analyze current issues from around the globe.  Since the text is a British publication, it will give the students exposure to foreign perceptions of the United States.  Students will gain the research skills needed to quickly get additional information on events around the world.

HON 2850 Irish and Italian Film ... 4 cr. (IDS)
Italian film since WWII has depicted Italy’s complete wartime devastation, its economic recovery in the 1960s, and the ways in which men and women see one another.  The Irish film industry, slower in developing, has depicted Ireland’s turbulent past, its political troubles, its joyful sense of being human, and the ways in which men and women see one another.  Students in this course will watch films produced in both countries to gain a full sense of how filmmakers have transformed national culture into artistic vision.

HON 3010  Be The Change: Seminar……….0-2 cr.
The student-led seminar seeks to connect civically minded students interested in reflecting on issues of community activism and social changes in a small group format.  The seminar is a survey course on a variety of social justice issues including  women’s rights, HIV/AIDS, service-learning effectiveness/ineffectiveness, optimism/pessimism, globalization, social and economic inequities and spirituality.  Theoretical essays and articles will challenge commonly accepted notions in these areas and will represent a multitude of viewpoints, ethnicities, and social circumstances. Students will take a collaborative role in the success of the class.  This will include trusting themselves and each other to learn skills of facilitation through leading a class session in the format of the seminar and developing relationships so that they can learn from each others’ experiences.
 
HON 3020 Be the Change:  Practicum……..0-2 cr.
Students, having participated in the Fall Be the Change: Seminar, will have built a strong community with which to challenge personal biases and prejudices in the Spring Practicum.  Course content includes the study of Catholic social teaching and builds upon established theories of social justice and community service.  In-depth focus on individual components of the Social Change Wheel will allow students to analyze and critique particular ways of creating social change.  The corresponding Be the Change service-learning project requires analyzing and addressing social problems on the micro-campus level through a specific method of change-making.  The project encompasses service planning, project implementation, and evaluation of the effort.  Students also will study methodologies of current non-profit and governmental organizations committed to social change work in order to facilitate their professional development.

Prerequisite:  HON 3010 or consent of instructor.

 
HON 3348  The Black Death and Other Plagues ………………..4 cr.  (IDS)
The Black Death arrived in Europe in 1348 and stayed for over 200 years.  Society’s response to the repeated onslaught of a mysterious killer disease heavily shaped Western Civilization.  This course looks at how the Black Death and other plagues shape our life.  A theme throughout the course will be how today’s society would react to a plague similar to the Black Death.

HON 3350  Psychology of Human Sexuality  …………….2 cr.  (II)
This course will involve reading and discussing psychology literature on selected, often controversial, topics in human sexuality.  Subjects include evolutionary psychology and mate selection, love styles and classifications, unlovely feelings such as jealousy, correlates of sexual orientation, the church and sexuality, contraceptives, resolving unplanned pregnancies, impact of pornography on sexual aggression, atypical sexual behavior, realities and politics of child sexual abuse and sex therapy.  The course will emphasize interactions between psychological factors and other influences—biological, social, cultural, religious—on sexual attitudes and behavior, and the study of sexuality as a scientific discipline.

HON 3390 Irish Literature………………….   4 cr. (IV)
The incredibly rich fiction, drama and poetry of a tiny island have produced four Nobel Prize winners in literature.  While we will read some texts written before the 20^th century, the emphasis will be on modern and contemporary literature, in part because it was written in English rather than in Irish, but more importantly because Irish writers are among the giants of modern literature and some of the most brilliant writers working today.  Students will read, discuss and write about important literary texts, with a few forays into Irish myth, music, art, and history.

 HON 3666  Psychology of Religion & Belief…………………….4 cr. (IDS)
The classical and modern psychological theories of belief, focusing on religious belief and on the evolutionary/cognitive basis of belief.  Exploration of issues such as:  how we believe, why people believe in god(s), the psychological needs that faith satisfies, the reasons why people differ in the ways they express and satisfy those needs, and what it is about the certainty of belief that leads to proselytizing, persecution or feeling threatened by the beliefs of others.  Seminar format and application of empirically‑supported theory and concepts thorough projects.  Prerequisites:  (a) General Psychology; or (b) Lifespan Developmental Psychology; or (c) junior/senior status having completed one other upper division Honors course, or Benedictine Liberal Arts Education Area II, or two TRS/PHL courses.

HON 4500 Gods and Monsters:  Religion, the Supernatural, and Youth Culture…………………4 cr. (IDS)
This course explores the turn to religion, the supernatural, and youth concerns in American popular culture since the early 1990s.  Whether one examines the hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel or enormously popular films such as The Matrix trilogy and Dogma, there has been a virtual explosion of angels, monsters, vampires, and aliens in American film, TV, and literature.  Beginning with a critical and historical look at some of the precursors to the recent aesthetic and cultural articulations of religion and the supernatural – from Mary Shelley's 19th century "gothic" novel Frankenstein to the horror films of James Whales in the 1930s and 1940s -- we will raise questions about the contemporary fascination with the supernatural alongside path-breaking work in the history of religions, media studies, and cultural studies.

HON 4600 Global Issues After 9/11………4 cr. (IDS)
This course offers students the opportunity to engage in historical reflection on 9/11 and its aftermath.  Toward this end, we will trace recent debates in the history of religions, cultural anthropology and political philosophy on the nature of religious and cultural differences, the scope and impact of American imperialism, war, and transnational peace and justice movements.  As the tragedy of 9/11 and the “war against terror” should make crystal clear, the challenge of living humanely and justly in the world today demands a different kind of political ethic—one that persistently values the place of difference and otherness in understanding (and perhaps transforming) the utter violence of the modern and postmodern worlds.  The course’s objective is to come to a clearer understanding of the radical implication of modern Western forms of power, knowledge and history-making in this very violence.

HON 4640 The Pre‑Raphaelites..... 4 cr. (IDS)
In 1848, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, students at London’s Royal Academy of Art, agreed that art had taken a wrong turn three centuries earlier.  Calling themselves the PRB – Pre‑Raphaelite Brotherhood – they set to work reclaiming the spirit of the early Italian master painters, using biblical, mythological and medieval subject matter to create passionate, visionary art. Although the original three members stayed together as the PRB for only five years, they attracted a wide range of disciples – poets, painters, and social reformers – who expanded their influence well into the 20^th century.  This class will examine the literature and visual art of the PRB and allied writers and painters.  We will attempt to understand the Pre‑Raphaelites’ works in a variety of inter‑related ways:  as art and literature, as spiritual expression, as cultural product, as personal/biographical expression and as agent of social reform. 

HON 4777 Topics    .......................... 2 - 4 cr.
The upper-level topics courses are similar to those of the lower division, except that the latter are intended for junior- and senior-level students.  Modern War on Film and The Person and Work of Jesus are examples of  previous upper‑level topics courses offered in the Honors Program.

HON 4885 The Holocaust............. 4 cr. (IDS)
An examination of the Holocaust and its meaning for subsequent generations through an analysis of key source materials, memoirs and interpretations.  Critical for an understanding of the Holocaust is the experience of victims, perpetrators and bystanders.

HON 4888 Thesis.............................. 0 - 4 cr.
Individual research projects will result in a thesis.  Students will work under the supervision of a faculty member.  Approval of a faculty member and the Honors Program Director required.

HON 4999 Independent Study................ 4 cr.
Students complete an independent study on a specific topic with the approval of a faculty member and the Honors Program Director.  These independent study courses are individual offerings based on a student’s particular area of interest.