Academically exceptional students who have already been accepted to Wilkes University are invited to apply to the Honors Program.
Honors components enable students to pursue breadth, depth, complexity, and/or interdisciplinarity within their undergraduate education.
This means that the Honors Program as a whole cultivates opportunities for:
- independent work, including research or creative performance;
- experiential learning, including study abroad or internships; and
- engagement with the unfamiliar, including people, places or ideas new to the student.
Specific opportunities include:
- honors coursework that rewards ambition for more expansive academic challenges;
- grant funding to support study abroad, research, internship, conference and similar co-curricular experiences outside of class;
- Honors housing for first-year residential honors students to build connections among those of different backgrounds and interests;
- preferential course selection to support honors students’ ambitions when registering for classes;
- no additional cost for course overload related to honors work to ease students’ pursuit of their academic ambitions;
- social events such as field trips, dinners and access to notable speakers to connect students with each other and with new experiences and potential mentors beyond campus; and
- special notation on transcript and recognition at Commencement.
Through these opportunities, students develop the following skills:
- critical thinking (ability to make evidence-based arguments and judgments);
- meta-awareness (thinking not only about what is happening, but also about how and why it is happening, in order to act purposefully);
- comfort with ambiguity, uncertainty and the unfamiliar;
- problem solving;
- project management;
- clear and persuasive writing; and
- clear and persuasive oral presentation.
Such skills advance:
- intellectual, personal and professional development;
- contributions to the campus community; and
- post-graduate success, whether through employment or continued education.