About Honors at Iowa
Website Summary
This page parallels the structure of our website, and distills its contents for early familiarity at a glance. It intends to encourage your use of the full site, which offers lots of information about who we are, where we work, and what we do. (In what follows, s.h. is the standard abbreviation at Iowa for the “semester hours” of academic credit.)
About: The University of Iowa Honors Program challenges and supports gifted students with learning-by-doing in small seminars and other intellectual communities. Then we celebrate the efforts with distinctive awards and events that culminate in honors transcripts and ceremonies.
Academics: Honors at Iowa is an intellectual community. We turn on learning that cultivates talents for inquiry, art, and action from college onward. We rely far less on requirements than on choices, incentives, and personal interactions. This makes us a community of opportunity.
Classes: Students can start with Honors Primetime Workshops (1 s.h.), Honors Accelerated Rhetoric (4 s.h.), Honors First-Year Seminars (1 s.h.), Honors General-Education Sections (3 s.h.) and Seminars (3 s.h.). Honors Courses in Common let Honors Students enroll together in two first-year courses. There is no grading on curves, and GPAs prosper. Honors Classes boost intellectual challenges, but don’t magnify amounts of work. The one exception is using an extra project to convert any course into an Honors Class through Honors Designation, good also for linking students to faculty mentors. Later we offer Honors Advanced Seminars, Major Seminars, Internships, Practicums, Study Abroad, Graduate Seminars, as well as Honors Theses and Projects.
Commendations: To graduate as members of the Honors Program, students earn overall UI GPAs of 3.33 (B+) or above and at least one Honors Commendation. Each commends 12 s.h. of Honors Classes or Experiences, and we advise starting with 12 s.h. of Honors Classes and Designations for an Honors Commendation for Interdisciplinary Studies in initial semesters. All Commendations appear on student transcripts. By meeting standards set by their fields, students who graduate as UIHP members also may graduate with honors in their majors.
Constellations: To help students learn by making intellectual connections across fields, we are developing Honors Constellations of related courses and experiences. The first began in the spring, and others will be appearing soon. Each one earns an Honors Commendation.
Experiences: We feature learning-by-doing in three settings. Many Honors Classes include hands-on exercises. Our tradition of volunteer participation in Honors Activities is known nationally for the 10,000 Hours Show invented at Iowa, and our Learning in Service to Iowa does just that. And our Honors Experiences credit interning, service learning, study abroad, peer education, and doing research. We take special pride in supporting student initiatives.
Recognitions: Our devices for celebrating attainments help students develop exceptionally competitive credentials. To provide Honors Commendations and put them on transcripts is an Iowa innovation. We do much the same with Honors Ceremonies, Dinners, Graduations, and Scholarships. We make Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and mount forums for sharing the results. We showcase student art in the Honors Gallery. We sponsor travel for Honors Students to research, perform, or relate their work in professional settings.
Activities: We offer a wonderful menu of formal programs and informal events for friendship and fun with Honors Students. These include free tickets to performances, special dinners and tours, discussions with great writers and world leaders, and more. Honors Students at Iowa created the Dance Marathon, and Honors supports other modes of community service as well. First-in-the-nation caucuses make Iowa a continual focus of presidential and other politics that keep students important participants. We exhibit student art, organize spirited debates on big issues of the day, explore diverse cultures, and screen wonderful films. We sponsor arguably the best Mock Trial Team in the country. We host speakers and support student societies. Etc.!
Admissions: Entering students qualify automatically with a high-school GPA of 3.8 or higher and an ACT or equivalent score of 27 or greater. The same holds for a high-school GPA of 3.7 or higher and an ACT or equivalent score of 30 or greater. Once at Iowa, students qualify with an overall UI GPA of 3.33 or above. Transfer students qualify with a 3.5 GPA or higher on 24 or more s.h.
Advising: To orient entering Honors Students, we provide Summer Guides. Then we follow these with Honors Peer Advisors and Honors Professional Advisors. Iowa students also work with advisors in the Academic Advising Center and eventually in their major departments. The Iowa Honors Faculty provides additional advising and mentoring on special fields and projects.
People: Honors at Iowa stands apart with a professional staff of scholars and creative artists, plus the largest student staff in the Big Ten for planning a vast array of co-curricular activities.
Places: Our home is the Blank Honors Center, the world’s only facility exclusively for talented-and-gifted education from pre-kindergarten through college. Its first two floors have seminar and meeting rooms, the Honors Student Center is on the third, the Honors Activity Center is on the fourth, and the Belin-Blank Center is on the fifth and sixth. We offer three living-learning communities: the Honors House fills Daum Hall, with a skywalk to the BHC; the Honors Nexus does projects in Mayflower Hall; and the Iowa Writers Community lives in Stanley Hall. Iowa offers a dozen additional living-learning communities, too, each a terrific introduction to Iowa education.
Research: In Honors, the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates matches students with money and mentors to do research. We pay Honors Editing Fellows to assist learned journals, scholarly collections, and online publications. Our Iowa Policy Research Organization enables Honors Students write policy papers for the Iowa Legislature. So we support original art and inquiry from start (in Honors Research Connections) to finish (in Honors Theses and Projects).
Scholarships: Our students excel in national and international scholarship competitions. Our Aces Program for Analysis, Advocacy, and Action is a unique constellation of seminars to prep students for public affairs and scholarship applications. We also award scholarships for strong students in Iowa’s five undergraduate colleges. Iowa’s merit scholarships for entering students come from Admissions and Financial Aid, and feature Presidential and Old Gold Scholarships.
Teaching: The Iowa Honors Faculty begins in Fall 2008 with some fifty members who advise, mentor, and teach Honors Students — who themselves can teach undergraduates as Honors Writing Fellows, Teaching Assistants, and Supplemental Instructors. (To learn it best, teach it!)