Finding Your Path in Honors 

A Guide to Honors Courses for New Students

By Mia Edison & Daniel Fuentes

It’s common to feel a mix of excitement and anxiety when the time comes to say goodbye to where you’ve grown up, and hello to a new life on campus. There might be concerns about making friends or struggling to find classes. If this sounds like you, we recommend checking out Honors Primetime— a pre-semester experience exclusive to honors students that provides an opportunity to meet friends within the program, as well as learn something new. 

It’s a great way to get your feet wet before the semester even begins, as well as giving a head start on meeting program requirements by rewarding you with your first experiential learning credit.

Second-year honors student Nora McCloy participated in Primetime’s Choose Your Own Adventure workshop when she was a first year, which introduced her to rock climbing. Though she had never worked out much beforehand, the experience prompted McCloy to begin rock climbing weekly. 

If rock climbing isn’t for you, there is always a diverse range of workshops. Among the fifteen-plus topics offered for Fall 2026, students can choose to learn about mindful leadership, inequality in health care, the ghost stories and spooky legends of Iowa City, or even learn to play the steel drum.

After Primetime ends, you won't be navigating your first semester alone. To start your year off right, you’ll be enrolled in a course called Intro to Honors. This course serves as a guide and introduction to the structure and expectations of the Honors Program. Students learn how to navigate program requirements while also learning about the academic and experiential opportunities available through Honors. The course also introduces helpful strategies for academic planning, goal-setting, and utilising campus resources effectively during your first year. 

Asynchronous and online so that it fits into every student’s schedule, the course nevertheless has a community-building effect.

“As a new student, the assignments in Intro to Honors were helpful, but I’d say that the most impactful part of it was that it connected me to other students in the program,” reflected Honors Peer Mentor Carter Fitzgerald, who majors in finance, risk management, and accounting.

“Having a shared course and shared events to go to made it easier to stay connected with a lot of my friends in Honors,” Fitzgerald explained.

In addition to Intro to Honors, first-year honors students are expected to enroll in at least one honors course during their first semester. Students often make the assumption that “honors” automatically means a more challenging and heavier workload; however, this is not the case. Instead, honors coursework at the college level is designed to enable students to engage more deeply with learning, providing opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have experienced, while surrounding them with peers who enjoy learning as much as you do. 

“If there’s an honors section available and it fits your schedule, take it,” advised Alex Poppen, an honors peer mentor who majors in management and accounting. 

While there are select courses taught by honors program staff, many other departments at Iowa offer honors sections of their most popular courses. Sometimes the entire class is composed of only honors students or, in the case of a lecture-style class, honors students will be in a discussion section with honors peers. 

Choosing courses with an honors section is a great way to fulfill general education and honors requirements at the same time, while also providing the opportunity to interact more closely with professors and classmates. 

“From my experience, honors classes have helped me form a community with other honors students, build better relationships with professors, and work closely with motivated classmates. This made group work more enjoyable and successful,” Poppen explained.

First-year students also have the option of choosing an honors first-year seminar, a one-credit course in a small classroom setting with an active learning focus, together with other new honors students. As this article from our 2025 Orientation Guide conveys, these small seminars can have big effects.

In contrast with a classroom filled with honors students, a different type of honors coursework experience is the honors contract. Honors contracts allow a student to earn honors credit in a core or advanced course, making it a flexible option for an upper-level or transfer student who may not be able to fit an honors course or section into their schedule. At the start of the semester, the student initiates an agreement with their professor to do an extra project. At the end of the semester, they submit their completed project for honors credit, often presenting their findings to the larger class. 

The honors contract became a great option for McCloy, who is juggling a major in English and creative writing on the publishing track while double minoring in Spanish and translation for global literacy. She chose to create a contract for her Sexual Communication and Personal Relationships class, fulfilling the requirement by creating zines, or booklets, on the topics of sexual health, pleasure, and consent. 

According to McCloy, the project prompted her to participate more actively in class since she knew she had to “retain that knowledge for the project,”  adding that it “made me a better student, hands down.” 

By offering different types of honors courses and ways for students to earn credit, the UI’s  Honors Program fosters a college experience that works with students' own goals and interests to achieve an honors education, building a strong foundation for the future they envision for themselves.