Hi Scott,

I know this isn't relevant to this post, but I have a question for you. I saw in the little education blurb you have that you were a member of the Honors program. I'm going to be a member of the program in the fall, and I was wondering how your experience was with it. Thanks!

Hi Miranda,

Thanks for posting. I had a great experience with the Liberal Arts Honors (LAH) Program while I was an undergraduate student at PC. For my readers who aren't familiar with the Honors Program, it offers a more in-depth and rigorous version of PC's core curriculum to about 120 top students in each class. Students in the Honors Program will take their four semesters of the College's Development of Western Civilization (DWC) program in Honors-level classes, and then have the opportunity to take other core curriculum courses through the program. Most students in the LAH Program will take 7-10 Honors courses over their four years, finishing with a 4-credit capstone course during their senior year.

I have always enjoyed the disciplines of English and History, so for me, Honors DWC was one of my favorite classes as a freshman and sophomore. My freshman DWC class was about 40 students and most of us stayed together for two years - so it was a very close-knit group! I especially enjoyed the 2-hour seminar that Honors DWC classes hold each week - the class of 40 students is broken up into very small discussion groups of 10-15 with one of the professors who team-teach the course, and these seminars provide excellent opportunities for some very in-depth discussions.

Students in the Honors Program must take six Honors courses over their four years to receive the Honors certificate at graduation, but most will take at least 2 or 3 more. (I guess I was a bit of an overachiever because I took 11 Honors courses over my four years)... Other than DWC, I would say my other favorites were two Honors colloquium courses that I took junior and senior years. The first was titled, "Novels Into Films," and, as the title suggests, we studied about a dozen books that had been made into films over the course of the semester (can you tell I was an English major?). The other colloquium course I took explored American Romantic Comedies of the 1930s and was taught by one of my favorite English department professors. Obviously as an English major, those courses were very attractive to me, but there are a number of different colloquium courses offered each year on a variety of interdisciplinary topics.

The Honors Program also provides a number of outside of the classroom enrichment experiences. I remember attending a number of different lectures from guest speakers that the Program brought to campus, and also visiting some museums/historical sites throughout New England on trips sponsored by the Honors Program. For the past five years, the Program has offered students the opportunity to travel abroad during spring break - unfortunately, this was not an opportunity I had the chance to take part in, but all of the students I know who have taken the trip have raved about their experiences. This year's Honors Program spring break trip just returned from a week in Paris and London. Other destinations have included Italy, Ireland, and Spain over the past four years.

There is the very long answer to your question - I had a great experience with the Liberal Arts Honors Program, and I still keep in touch with classmates/professors in the program today. If you would like to know more about any specific area of LAH, please let me know!

*Scott

To add to my above post, here are some other recent LAH colloquia:

*Ancient and Medieval Theories of Happiness
*Beauty and Christianity
*Weil and Murdoch
*Transcendence in 20th Century Art
*Science and Religion
*Age in American Fiction and Film
*Harlem Renaissance
*The Victorians
*The 1960s
*Dostoevsky and Nietzsche