Students in the Meredith Honors program take 25-28 hours of Honors courses (about 1/4 of their total course load) while maintaining an overall GPA of 3.25. To remain in good standing, students complete 2-3 Honors-related courses each academic year. Any course may be taken for Honors credit with permission from the course’s instructor.

Following the established policy, the Honors program

• Rejects grades below B for Honors credit in contracted courses, including the Honors thesis; and
• Rejects grades lower than C for Honors credit in non-contracted Honors courses, including colloquia, writing, labs, and Honors sections of elective courses, e.g. HN MAT-245, HN PSY-100.

Honors students receive academic credit for any course they pass.

General Education (4-7 hours)

Two of the College’s general education requirements—in writing and lab science—must be completed as Honors courses. Several sections of the required English composition course are offered in the freshman year just for Honors students. Students who place out of English Composition take Creative or Professional Writing instead. To satisfy the lab science requirement, Honors students enroll in Honors lab sections of biology, chemistry or earth science, or arrange to do Honors work in physics.

Electives (6 hours)

Each semester, several Honors courses are offered in popular fields of study, just for Honors students. Recent opportunities have included calculus, economics, psychology, Spanish and religious ethics. These electives typically count toward the College’s general education requirements. Alternatively, students can take any course for Honors credit by making arrangements with the course instructor. 

Colloquia (6 hours)

At least three colloquia are offered each year for Honors students. Often team-taught and usually interdisciplinary, these Honors colloquia offer excellent opportunities for broadening students’ interests. Recent colloquium topics include

• Holocaust experiences
• US food culture (aka Omnivore’s dilemma)
• Introduction to astronomy (with evening observations)
• Contemporary issues in religion and science
• The making of a genius: Mozart
• The science behind CSI
• Mythozoology
• Don Juan-ologues
• Memory and memoir

Honors students take two colloquia.

The Major (6 hours)

At Meredith, an Honors student may choose any major in the College catalog. Two Honors courses will be in the major area. While working with the professors in their major departments, students devise and carry out assignments that add depth to their knowledge in that field. Typically students revise class assignments to focus on their interests and abilities—extending a writing assignment, offering a class presentation, making a video or attending and reviewing a performance. The collaborative nature of Honors assignments makes these experiences enriching for both students and the faculty members.

Thesis (3 hours)

As a culminating project at the end of their college career, Honors students engage in an Honors research or creative project on a topic of their choice, usually in their major. Working one-on-one with a professor, students may engage in library research or field work, conduct a laboratory experiment, prepare a recital or show — whatever best demonstrates their mastery of a body of knowledge. Students present their thesis projects in a public forum.