Benefits of the Honors Program
Community
The Honors Program at Meredith offers you a learning community from the moment you arrive—students who share your goals and interests. Honors students take classes together as they learn and grow in this tight-knit intellectual community. The Honors faculty is among Meredith's most dedicated and student-centered. Students often enjoy close and enduring relationships with Honors faculty. Special Honors courses, research collaboration, and Honors travel are just a few of the experiences that bond this very special group.
Academics
The professors who teach Honors courses are energized about their fields of study. Together with their students, they weave a powerful atmosphere that encourages higher learning and makes classes both challenging and fun. In addition to a student's academic advisor, the Honors Director advises each Honors student every semester about how to make the most of the Honors experience at Meredith and beyond.
Advice about undergraduate course work and graduate school is also available, plus guidance about undergraduate and graduate fellowships. Prestigious awards—like the Fulbright, Goldwater and Rhodes—require early planning and preparation, and the Honors program can help with this process.
Honors students participate in self-directed research like Honors class work, a senior thesis and the Undergraduate Research Program, where students can engage in specialized research guided by a faculty sponsor on topics of particular interest. Students in Honors are often invited to travel to state and national Honors conferences to present papers or make presentations.
Cultural Events
Each academic year, Meredith College hosts a variety of guest speakers from fields including the arts, academics, politics and more. Honors students are often invited to attend special events with visiting dignitaries, such as a private Q&A session or a dinner at the President's Residence. Recent guest speakers include historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, filmmaker Rory Kennedy, Doctors Without Borders' Nicholas de Torrenté and sustainable design leader William McDonough. The Honors Program has also invited speakers including coastal ecologist Oren Pilkey, journalist Chuck Stone and Deborah Pope, poet in residence at Duke University.
Travel
Each year Honors students take an exciting weekend trip that opens a deeper level of understanding. Recent trips and topics include ecology at the beach; colonial history and roller coaster physics at Williamsburg, Va.; the old and new South at Hilton Head, S.C.; and "Mountain Vistas" from Biltmore to Black Mountain, N.C. In support of the broad educational benefits from studying abroad, the Honors Program grants three hours of Honors elective credit to students who earn a full semester of credit in study abroad (either during the summer or the academic year). Meredith's Study Abroad program helps students to study almost anywhere in the world for a summer, a semester, or a full year, often for little more than the cost of attending college in the United States.
Recognition
As an Honors student you'll be recognized at graduation for completing your academic career with distinction, Honors courses will be noted on your academic transcript and your bound Honors Thesis will be added to the Carlyle Campbell Library collection. Graduating as an Honors scholar will give you an edge in applying for graduate or professional school.
