Honors Courses

In most cases, honors courses at PNC are existing courses—that count toward major and general education requirements—where an instructor has created a special enhancement for honors students.  This enhancement might be a single special project, or a set of smaller assignments that take the student deeper into the subject material.  Whatever the honors component, it will involve increased collaboration and dialogue with the instructor, and emphasize open exploration, inquiry, and discovery over learning a closed set of facts. Students might explore course questions through primary sources rather than textbooks, might apply course material to the “real world,” synthesize different bodies of knowledge to solve problems, or create individual, in-depth, inquiry-driven projects.

And while students and instructors will often individualize the honors component around a particular student’s interests, the honors component is also something that the instructor has created in consultation with his or her department, and which has been vetted by the Honors Subcommittee, a group of faculty from a variety of disciplines, to ensure consistency in honors coursework around campus.

The only current exception to the honors-component model is the honors section of the First-Year Experience, GS 19100, which is only open to entering honors students.

The following is a list of honors courses and instructors approved since the Honors Program began in the fall of 2011 (list updated December 2012).

• ECON 25200 Macroeconomics - Derek Bjonback
• EDST 27000 Early Childhood Education - Mary Jane Eisenhauer
• ENGL 20100 The Nature of Literary Study - Heather Fielding
• ENGL 25700 Literature of Black America - Jane Rose
• GS 19100 First-Year Experience - Paul Hecht, Jason Curtis, Kenneth Kincaid
• HIST 10400 Introduction to the Modern World - Janusz Duzinkiewicz and Michael Lynn
• HIST 27200 History of Latin America Since 1824 - Kenneth Kincaid
• IDIS 49100 Washington DC: The History, Politics and Culture that Shaped Our Nation - Karen Schmid and Laura Waver
• MA 16700 Plane Analytical Geometry & Calculus I - Jerry DeGroot
• NUR 38900 Family Health Nursing -- Angela Schooley
• PHIL 40800  Philosophy of Friendship and Love - Deepa Majumdar
• PHYS 22100 General Physics II -- Glynn Bricker
• SOC 10000 Introductory Sociology - Steven “Kim” Scipes
• SOC 34000 General Social Psychology - Christabel Rogalin
• SWRK 30100 Social Work Research -- Roy Fowles

Honors courses are currently in planning for nursing, education, social work, and engineering and technology.

If you are a faculty member and wish to propose an honors course, click here.