Creating exciting and innovative ways that go beyond the classroom

The Honors Program creates a community of scholars characterized by strong student and faculty interaction, creativity, and enhanced learning opportunities. This community fosters an approach to education that incorporates the qualities of self-directed learning, a positive response to demanding work, and an appreciation of knowledge for its own sake.

Admission to Honors Program

  • All students may apply here
  • Honors students are invited to become members by a pre-selection process that requires one or more of the following:          →Incoming Freshmen: SAT score of 1150 or Composite ACT of 26, or 3.5 high school G.P.A.
  • Transfer Students: SAT score of 1150 or Composite ACT of 26
  • Returning LSSU students: Previous semester Dean’s List Award (3.5 GPA)

Exceptional Students

Honors students are superior students from all disciplines who desire to participate more actively in their education and related activities. They bring together a diversity of talents, aspirations, and experiences. They seek out challenges and benefit greatly from sharing such experiences with students of comparable abilities.

Why join the Honors Program?

  • Priority scheduling
  • Supplemental advising
  • Leadership development
  • Interaction with faculty
  • Conference participation
  • Honors Student Organization
  • Appeal to future employers
  • Preparation for graduate/professional school admissions
  • Mark of distinction on transcript
  • Enriched education opportunities

Honors Housing

Lake State’s honors students have been given the privilege and rights to the use of Ontario Hall. Ontario Hall offers students:

  • Large Double Rooms
  • Kitchen and Laundry Facilities
  • A Central Campus Location

Check out what Engineering Alumni Trace Hill has to say about his experience living in the Honors House below.

Recognitions

  • Honors designation on diploma and course transcript
  • Honors stole at academic award ceremony
  • Honors thesis presentation on campus

Curriculum

Honors classes are conducted in the seminar fashion and limited to fifteen students. An interdisciplinary focus is promoted by the inclusion of students and faculty from all majors as well as by the design of the honors core curriculum. Beginning in the Fall of 2020, students will be asking questions and seeking answers to questions relating to self-knowledge, responsibility, societal challenges, and the demands of citizenship. Specially designed courses in these areas will count as honors courses and as general education courses. This means that you will be fulfilling university requirements as you pursue the examined life through the honors curriculum. For more on our exciting and transformative honors curriculum changes, click here.

Sample Seminar Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Land Ethics: National Parks
  • Biodiversity
  • An Audience Guide to Opera
  • Gender and Communication at Home and Work
  • The Science in Science Fiction
  • Reasoning and the Supreme Court
  • Human Rights and World Politics
  • The Franco-Phone world
  • Principles of Flight
  • Nature and the Literature of the Wilderness
  • The Pursuit of Happiness
  • The Art of Mathematics
  • The Science of Wine Making
  • The Varieties of Immortality
  • Causation Theories of War and Human Conflict
  • The Chemistry of Mind-Altering Substances
  • Biomedical Ethics

Requirements

Each student admitted to the Honors Program is required to complete twenty-one Honors Credits, including ten credits of Honors Seminar/Thesis. The remaining credits may be acquired by enrolling in honors sections of general education courses, or by taking advantage of the Honors Option Contract. Students must maintain a cumulative 3.5 G.P.A. in order to graduate with an honors degree and to remain eligible for active program participation.

Our Faculty

Excellence in teaching is emphasized as is the commitment to work with students in and out of the classroom.

Faculty who teach in the Honors Program are selected on the basis of their desire and ability to challenge and encourage high achieving students. Faculty are encouraged to be innovative in both the topic choice and the teaching pedagogy.

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