Our curriculum also upholds the traditional value of a liberal arts education, which seeks to broaden the mind by developing and nurturing intellectual curiosity about many subjects. In the Honors College, this emphasis is expressed through our focus on interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Since our college seeks to bring faculty from different disciplines together, team-teaching is welcome.

This interest in an interdisciplinary education complements our emphasis on providing ample opportunities for Honors students in their specialized areas. We seek to enhance Honors students’ professional training by offering courses in their fields as well as opportunities for earning honors credit through research, internships, graduate level courses, and Honors Learning-by-Contract. Many departments on campus have their own Honors programs, which allow students to pursue Honors in their major by enrolling in an Honors capstone course and completing original research in the form of a senior thesis or project; these courses count toward our Honors Certificate as well.

Lastly, Honors courses should create an atmosphere of intellectualism, which we define simply as the love of learning and contemplation. Students should be encouraged to think deeply about the subjects covered in the course and be given ample opportunity to express their thoughts in discussions and writing assignments.

Every Honors instructor is different, so every Honors course is different. In working with faculty to offer our Honors curriculum, we not only want courses to respect the discipline and field, but also the interdisciplinarity and rigor that go along with a broad and deep examination of topics. To that end, our proposal form asks faculty to determine what defines their course as “Honors” in their particular field by selecting at least two of the following criteria:

• Challenging material and/or topics
• Writing (different or more challenging types of assignments/additional opportunities for revision)
• Research
• Public scholarship (opportunities for presentation of research/project)
• Student-faculty engagement (outside of class)
• Pedagogical experimentation
• Active learning/student collaboration/experiential learning

Please note that we do not think of Honors as simply more or faster; rather we think of it as different and intensive, deeper and more dynamic, richer and more engaged. It is not “read more, write more” – it offers additional depth and complexity for the unique needs of Honors students.

The Honors Curriculum Committee, who will be reading and voting on the course proposal, is made up of faculty members from different disciplines; they’ll be reading the course cold, so to speak, so the more information you can provide on what the course is and how it works, the easier and faster the approval process will be.

We encourage faculty to keep a couple of questions in mind as they work through the proposal:

1. How is the course pitched at the Honors level? What makes the class Honors?
2. What differences do you see between this class and a non-Honors version of the same course? If your Honors class is cross-listed with a non-Honors section, this will be particularly important for course approval by the Honors Curriculum Committee. 
3. What assignments will the Honors students be doing?

In addition, we encourage you to consider some of the more specific guidelines below as you develop your Honors course. Please keep in mind that the list below is not a set of prescriptions but of suggestions.

• Every Honors course should take advantage of the small numbers of students to use individualized examination techniques, such as open-ended examination questions, oral exams, and/or portfolios.
• In your upper-level Honors courses, consider your students as potential contributors to the field – and thus show students how knowledge in the discipline is discovered, developed, evaluated, and applied. Primary sources, seminal papers, and discipline-related examples should be introduced and emphasized.
• Cultivate a spirit of adventure and risk-taking. In many Honors courses, a palpable sense exists among the students and the faculty that they’re engaged in an experiment, a “trying out” of new assignments and new approaches.
• Encourage original research or creative projects, especially at the upper level. In some ways, original contributions to a field are more possible now than they ever were before, given the increasingly interdisciplinary and technology-driven age we live in.
• Consider experiential learning opportunities.
• Resist a sense of closure in regard to course content and instead embrace a sense of open-endedness and discovery.
• Think of your Honors courses as springboards for future work with Honors students.

If you have particular questions about proposing an Honors course or if technology is a bit troublesome, please contact Rachel Harper: harperrp@missouri.edu.

When working with a student to transform a general, non-Honors course into an Honors Learning-by-Contract (HLBC) course, there are a few guidelines and requirements to keep in mind.

• The proposal must present a set of assignments, activities or projects that make the entire course into an Honors experience for the student and run for the entire length of the semester. Thus, the proposal design should explain how the Honors elements are threaded throughout the semester and enrich the student experience.
• The assignments are graded as distinctive elements and thus are in addition to existing coursework.
• The following activities are either not sufficient (by themselves) or permitted to serve as an HLBC experience:
  • A research paper can only be a part of an Honors project; additional elements, such as an in-class presentation, a poster presentation, publication of a website, or some other format for dissemination must be included.
  • Tutoring is not acceptable.
• All HLBCs must include a detailed schedule/timeline with specific requirements due at various intervals throughout the semester.
• At least five out-of-class meeting times will be required to meet the instructor-student interaction.

All Honors courses – both standalone and those cross listed with non-Honors sections – should be taught synchronously regardless of whether the instruction mode for the class is listed as traditional or 100% e-learning. The Honors College does not offer wholly asynchronous online Honors options. Courses must have a listed synchronous meeting time in myZou that offers meaningful real-time interaction among instructors and students.