Panoramic shot of T Anne Cleary
Since its inception in 1958, the Honors Program at Iowa has made it a mission to help high-achieving students discover and realize their full potential. Thank you for your generosity in making the resources available to challenge these students in the unique ways they need to develop personally and professionally.
One Day for Iowa, the University of Iowa's annual giving day, was Wednesday, March 27th, 2024.
Your Donation Makes a Difference
Supporting honors students is available in several unique ways. You can choose to support a student by:
- Funding an honors student to attend and present at a professional national conference.
- Funding a mentored research opportunity for one or more honors students to work with world-renowned University of Iowa faculty on cutting edge research.
- Contributing to an existing Honors at Iowa scholarship (Honors Program Scholarships).
- See below for more ways you can help support honors students, including gifts of time and expertise.
Your generosity truly makes a difference. To enrich the lives of Honors Program students you may donate online, call 1-800-648-6973, or mail a check payable to the University of Iowa Center for Advancement with "Honors Program" or write one of the funds below in the memo line to:
University of Iowa Center for Advancement
P.O. Box 4550
Iowa City, Iowa 52244-4550
Enrich
1) Honors Program Excellence Fund
The Honors Program Excellence Fund provides support for honors instruction, collaborative faculty and student interactions, and any services that support honors students and the program.
2) Honors Program Student Enrichment Fund
The Honors Program Student Enrichment Fund supports honors students' participation in out-of-classroom learning experiences to enrich their education while at Iowa. See "Helping Students Outside the Traditional Classroom" below for specific opportunities this fund allows students to pursue.
3) Rhodes Dunlap Fund
Established by our program's founder, Samuel Rhodes Dunlap, the Rhodes Dunlap Fund has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships, travel awards, and support for student programs since its establishment in 1993.
4) Presidential Scholars Program Fund
The Presidential Scholars Program Fund provides support for Presidential Scholars Program community-building activities.
Volunteer
1. Mentor current honors students
We can connect you with current honors students through our Mentoring Program. Mentoring can be as simple as having a phone conversation or meeting for coffee. Some students may be in need of making professional connections or navigating the job market. Maybe you can be that helpful link?
2. Give a talk or offer a workshop for students
When you’re in town, you could speak to a class, help with mock-interviews, or read scholarship applications. No matter where you are in life, there are students who can benefit from your experience and counsel.
3. Spread the Word through Social Media
By following our social media accounts and sharing our posts, you’ll help us reach new audiences and support our students. Facebook, Instagram, and our Note to Self Blog are some of our favorite resources.
4. Serve on the Honors Program Advisory Board
The Honors Program Advisory Board Members provide advice and financial support to the Honors Program.
5. Let us know of other ways that you could use your expertise or time
You know best your experience and expertise, and we are open to suggestions on how you can use that experience and expertise to benefit our students.
If you would like to support any of the initiatives listed below, direct your gift to the Honors Student Enrichment Fund with instructions that it go for the particular purpose.
Support
1. Honors Study Abroad/Away Experiences: Experiential learning comprises half the Honors Program curriculum, and living and taking classes in other countries can be a life-changing experience.
- Fund an honors student to be part of a study abroad class: Typically, over a third of honors students take advantage of the University's extensive study abroad offerings. Students learn within a country's diverse cultural, socioeconomic, and geographical mosaics. It can be a life-changing experience. Study abroad is prohibitively expensive for some students. Although in many cases the tuition students pay to Iowa transfers to the university they attend abroad, students and their families are responsible for travel costs and certain living costs. Your gift would allow more students to have this highly enriching experience.
- Summer Study Abroad: Honors students are not able to use their normal academic year scholarships for summer session study abroad classes, and there are the mandatory university fees and travel costs. The most common reason our students do not study abroad is because of the cost. Your gift allows students who would never think they could go abroad to have the experience.
- Alternative Spring Break Class/Trip: Honors students have an opportunity to spend their spring break experiencing and investigating first-hand a cultural or environmental theme at selected sites (e.g., the interconnection of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to immigrant communities in Chicago).Your gift would allow us to offer this experience to more of our students.
2. Honors Writing Fellows Program: Each year about twenty-five honors students are funded to tutor as Honors Writing Fellows. Honors Writing Fellows assist professors in a variety of fields by working with students in their classes on written assignments. Besides helping students to improve their writing, it also benefits the Honors Writing Fellows themselves by improving their own writing skills. The University draws many students interested in writing as a profession, and hence this program is popular. We regularly have to turn away qualified applicants because of limited funding. Your gift would allow us to support more students.
3. Iowa City Foreign Relations Council: Honors at Iowa has for many years partnered with the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) to support honors students interested in learning more about international topics. Almost weekly, the ICFRC hosts expert luncheon presentations on global issues by statesmen, scholars, scientists, and others. We provide free participation for honors students interested in international affairs. The program is popular with students in all majors who have an interest in international affairs, and we would like to offer the opportunity to more of our students.
4. Public Service: The Honors Program has a history of enabling its students to serve the community – for example, through the Iowa Policy Research Organization (IPRO), where honors students recently provided the Iowa Legislature with timely, high quality research and information on important policy issues that it discussed in the 2018 Legislative Session. We are looking to expand our students’ reach in this area through the options listed below:
- Fund an honors student’s internship with a governmental or non-government organization (NGO) that would otherwise go unpaid – i.e., students are responsible for their travel costs, and food and lodging while onsite. Costs are substantial and often prohibitive without donor support.
- Fund an internship or academic semester with a nonprofit organization. For example, The Washington Center (TWC) markets itself as “the bridge between higher education and professional careers—leveraging all of what Washington, D.C. has to offer to provide dynamic, experiential learning opportunities to empower and motivate young people to become engaged global citizens.” For a summer or semester internship, costs for TWC’s program fee and housing are around $15,000, which puts this out of the reach of most students unless they get outside support.
- Fund honors students applying for prestigious national and international fellowships that specifically involve public service and/or international relations (e.g., the Truman Scholarship). Students applying for fellowships can incur costs for travel to finalist interviews.