Honors Program collection

“Honors” at the University of Minnesota has two related but distinct applications. The earliest references to honors in the collection are to the standard designations awarded to students graduating with a specific number of credits combined with high grade point averages. The designations for graduating with honors were -- and continue to be -- “Cum Laude”, “Magna Cum Laude”, and "Summa Cum Laude.” Students in colleges or departments at the University could graduate “with distinction” for maintaining a high grade point average, or with the above mentioned “honors” for maintaining higher level averages and/or submitting to examinations prior to graduation.

The College of Liberal Arts (CLA), and its predecessor, the College of Science, Literature and the Arts (CSLA) maintained an active dialogue concerning granting honors to its graduates from the 1930s onward through the work of its Honors Committee. The committee was charged with providing clear and standardized criteria for students to receive honorifics from the college for academic achievement. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the committee discussed, altered and monitored the system by which honors were granted in the college. By 1956-57, however, the committee’s discussions were taking a new turn. At issue was the quality of the learning experience available to accelerated students. In the interest of recruiting and retaining Minnesota’s top high school graduates, the committee, and some members of the University administration, began to look at changing and invigorating the classroom and campus experience. The outcomes of these discussions formed the basis for the first Honor’s Program.

The Committee on Curricular Flexibility recommended to the CLA faculty in January 1957 that the college should be doing more to improve the campus climate and college offerings for “superior” students. The report recommended a program of special course sections and honors courses, independent study and intensive advising from designated faculty. Policy and policy review would be created and monitored by a council consisting of affilliated faculty (membership expanded in the 1960s to include Honors program student representatives.) In 1961, a program was officially identified in the College of Science, Literature and Arts Bulletin as "...an extensive program of "Honors opportunities" designed to afford outstanding students challenging educational experiences in keeping with superior abilities." William McDonald, a classics professor, was the first program director.

The program contained programatic offerings for both lower division and upper division students. At the lower division, honors sections of large courses were established for higher achieving students, emphasizing advanced reading and additional projects. At the upper division, students enrolled in departmental honors classes and interdisciplinary seminars and wrote an original thesis paper in their major department.

The first review of the program appeared in 1965, and emphasized the need for greater administrative support. D. Burnham Terrell succeded McDonald as Director in 1967. Discussions about the lack of uniform criteria for honors distictions across colleges reimerged during the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as a renewed push to consider a University-wide honors program. In 1975, out of concern over the growing numbers of students graduating with honors across colleges, the Senate Commitee on Educational Policy convened a task force to study honors opportunities and requirements on campus. The task force's recommendations noted the grade point disparities between colleges graduating students with distictions, and recommended that the CLA Honor's Program be used as a campus model for of all college efforts at establishing honors opportunities.

Frank Hirschbach followed Terrell as program director in 1971 and was succeeded by Peter Robinson in 1975. Enrollement in the mid-1970s in CLA Honors fluctuated between 850 and 1,000 students, with about 250 new students entering the program each year. Administrative support for the program was provided by the CLA Honors Division staff, who coordinated department offerings and acted as departmental liaisons. Several departments in the College of Biological Sciences, the Institute of Technology and Intercollege also began offering upper division course sequences with honors designations. Increased honors opportunities, combined with a $1 million dollar scholarship endowment from the McKnight Foundation awarded in 1981, again pushed the discussion about a campus-wide honors program to the forefront. The campus climate, however, was much more fraught around the discussion of offering "elite" classes to small numbers of students while instructional budgets were being cut University-wide. The Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs proposed a campus-wide Merit Awards and Honors Program in 1980 based on the CLA Model, but the proposal did not find traction. Thoughout the 1980s and 1990s, CLA, IT, CBS and University College and the School of Nursing continued to offer honors courses.Steven Blake served as CLA Honors Director from 1980 to 1982, succeed by Glen Holt, 1982-1987, Rew Godow, 1987-1989, Gordon Hirsch, 1989-2000 and Rick McCormick, 2000-2006.

By 2005, the idea of an honors college bolstering undergraduate recruitment efforts was folded into the University's strategic planning process, which aimed to position the University as one of the nation's top three public research institutions. Provost Thomas Sullivan led the task force studying academic issues and administrative efficiencies, which embraced the idea of a single administrative structure for honors offerings. By 2008, honors programming in all colleges, including CLA, were merged into one program. The main components of the new program include an emphasis on student-initiated research, smaller classes, faculty mentoring, study-abroad opportuities and honors housing. Serge Rudaz professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, was named director in 2008.