Tier 1 Honors Experiences

Tier 1 Honors Experiences are designed for students in their first and second year of college. They encourage active learning approaches and foundational scholarly and professional skills and knowledge.

Although all students vary in terms of their qualities and development, students in these years often exhibit these traits:

• View knowledge as certain or absolute
• Rely on authorities or experts for answers or knowledge
• Tend to adopt the beliefs and values of others
• Act in relationships to acquire approval.

To assist students in gaining a more complex understanding of knowledge, themselves and their belief system, educators proposing Tier 1 Honors Experiences should foster opportunities for students to meet the following learning outcomes:

1. Communicate their own ideas and practice disciplinary genres of writing and speaking;
2. Explore important questions about society, the environment or one’s field of study;
3. Identify and analyze multiple legitimate perspectives on a topic;
4. Interact with one another and the educator intensively to learn and explore ideas;
5. Gain insight into their strengths and limitations as a scholar, thinker or person.

Tier One Honors Experiences can follow any of these formats:

• A newly designed honors-only seminar or intensive co-curricular programs that exclusively enroll honors students and that are typically capped at 24 students;
• An honors-only version of an existing course that enrolls only (typically 24) honors students and has been modified to suit the needs of honors students;
• An honors contract course or intensive co-curricular program which is an existing course or program that enrolls both honors and non-honors students and includes additional expectations for the honors students to receive honors credit.