Cameron University's Honors Program (CUHP) supports and rewards academically advanced students by providing them with exceptional opportunities for learning both inside and outside the traditional classroom setting. CUHP students dramatically enrich their undergraduate experience by enrolling in team-taught courses, participating in frequent field trips, exploring subjects from interdisciplinary perspectives, conducting independent research for presentation at conferences and/or publication, benefitting the community through service-learning projects, and discovering how to work collaboratively to define and resolve specific problems appropriate to their interests and areas of expertise. The CUHP also provides a central focus for the pursuit of academic excellence on the Cameron campus.
The CUHP offers honors sections of selected courses that meet general education requirements; the program also works with faculty and interested students to set up honors options for many traditional courses. Additionally, all CUHP students must complete one interdisciplinary upper division honors seminar as well as two core colloquia (Great Works I and Great Works II) that are taught by multiple faculty from different departments.
These courses and honors options are open to students with high levels of talent, preparation, and/or motivation. All students who have scored 25 or higher on the ACT are automatically eligible for admission into the CUHP and are encouraged to apply. Students whose test scores do not make them automatically eligible but who nevertheless want to make the most of their academic experience at Cameron are invited to apply to the program director for provisional admission. Typically, honors courses are small, discussion-based classes, and they are often augmented by field trips, museum visits, guest lectures, and technological enhancements. Full listings of honors course offerings are published regularly by the CUHP office. Honors course offerings are structured to encourage students to complete a significant portion of their general education requirements in honors courses and to encourage students to reconsider the interrelationship between disciplines and careers. The CUHP also encourages the development of high quality undergraduate research, honors capstone projects, and the development of honors degree tracks in the major disciplines. Successful completion of individual honors courses and/or comprehensive honors program tracks will be acknowledged on the Cameron transcript.
The program also coordinates the activities of the Cameron honor societies and works to increase their visibility and to maximize their roles as hubs of academic leadership in the Cameron campus community. Membership in Cameron’s honor societies is acknowledged each year during Convocation.
The aim of the CUHP is to produce graduates who have gone farther, learned more, and become more capable of leadership both in the community and in a chosen field of study.