When you enroll at Susquehanna, you’ll be paired with an advisor and application tool to guide you in your course planning and scheduling. The following is an excerpt from the complete course catalog. Enrolled students follow the requirements of the course catalog for the academic year in which they declare each major and/or minor, consult with their advisor(s) and the Academic Planning Tool.
Curriculum
Students typically enroll in one Honors course during each of their eight semesters at Susquehanna. Students must earn a grade of C- or better in all Honors Program courses. All Honors courses satisfy specific combinations of central Curriculum requirements. Only Honors students may register for Honors courses.
Students participating in the Honors Program must maintain an overall grade point average of 3.40 during each semester at Susquehanna. If a student earns any grade below a C- in any Honors-designated course, the student, at the discretion of the director, may be removed automatically from the Honors Program. The director of the program reviews students’ GPAs at the end of each semester. If an Honors student’s GPA falls below the 3.40 level, the student will receive a warning letter. After a second semester below a 3.40 level GPA, the student is dismissed from the program.
During the first year, students must successfully complete HONS-100 Thought, which focuses on ideas and their expression, and one of the following: HONS-200 Thought and Civilization, an interdisciplinary look at literature and cultures; HONS-210 Thought and The Arts, which focuses on Western aesthetics as seen in varied artistic forms; or HONS-230 Analytical Thought-Logic, a course that examines symbolic logic as the generative epistemology of the scientific method.
In their sophomore year, students must successfully complete either HONS-240 Thought and Social Diversity or HONS-250 Thought and the Natural Sciences, which offer cross-disciplinary approaches. Sophomore Honors students also must successfully complete HONS-260 and HONS 261, the Sophomore Colloquium, in which they engage with an interdisciplinary view of a chosen theme and write a reflection-portfolio.
As juniors, students must successfully complete eight semester hours from a series of HONS-301 seminars that foster interdisciplinary engagement. If the chosen course is part of the student’s major, the student must submit an “honors-level contract” to the Honors Program Director describing, in consultation with the instructor, how the course assignments for the honors student differ from the other students’ work. Since some HONS-301 seminars are occasionally offered as electives that do not fulfill Central Curriculum requirements, students need to check individual course descriptions for Central Curriculum categories and communicate with the Honors Program Director for any needed equivalency adjustment.
The Honors Program culminates in the Honors Research Project, an experiential learning project that applies an interdisciplinary frame to a topic chosen by the student. The research project must last for a minimum of two semesters (two courses, with a minimum of 1 SH each), and may be built around the student’s capstone project. Students may register for HONS-450 after completion of the Sophomore Colloquium (HONS 260+HONS 261), and after the project proposal is officially accepted by the Honors Program Director, which requires securing an academic research mentor. The conclusion of the research project must include a public presentation, usually in a forum organized by the Honors Program.
Honors Courses and the Central Curriculum
The Honors Program aligns its courses with Central Curriculum requirements, however, Honors courses fulfill Honors Learning Goals that follow guidelines from the National Collegiate Honors Council. For Honors students, the manner in which Central Curriculum requirements are fulfilled may differ from the manner in which Central Curriculum requirements are defined in the course catalog. Honors students enrolling in Central Curriculum courses should consider whether or not to select Honors options to fulfill those requirements. A student who completes the requirements of the Honors Program also fulfills the interdisciplinary requirement of the Central Curriculum. Students with special concerns about their programs should seek additional advising from the Director and/or Associate Director of the Honors Program.