At FGCU, Honors courses take many forms. What they all have in common is that they offer Honors students the opportunity to cultivate a qualitatively richer university experience.
General Education: Honors students may complete as much of their core as they’d like through Honors General Education courses. These courses are interdisciplinary in nature, emphasize writing and critical thinking, and provide students with unique insights into the subject matter under discussion. Generally, these courses are taught seminar style and include practical, hands-on experiences that link learning with life.
Major Classes: Many majors offer Honors sections of upper-division courses. In these courses, both Honors students and non-Honors students with exceptional G.P.A.’s in their major deal with the most difficult subject matter in the discipline. These courses are always taught by full-time faculty in the discipline.
Honors Readings: In Honors Readings faculty and a very small group of students (no more than 4 or 5) meet together to discuss important books and timely issues. Students might read about the World Bank in one and then follow it up with Animal Rights in another.
Humanities Symposium: Here, Honors students take advantage of the world of culture. They attend plays and exhibits, talks and conferences, galas and demonstrations and then come together to talk about the important issues and ideas raised through those events.
Honors Contracts: Honors Contracts help students to gain even more from their non-Honors classes. For an Honors Contract, students and their teachers design learning experiences that complement their normal coursework. Usually chosen in the student’s major, the Honors Contract helps the student to add depth and breadth to a course by working with the professor on an additional paper, in designing a lecture, giving a talk, etc. While contracted courses do not count toward the student’s Honors credit graduation requirement, they do allow the course to be marked as Honors on the student’s transcript. All contracts are taken with full-time FGCU faculty members of rank and must be approved by the Honors Program.
Honors Tracks
FGCU is a unique institution. Essential components of our mission include better understanding human impacts on the environment and learning to respect ideals of democratic citizenry. Because of this, the Honors Program recognizes students who holistically develop their understandings of these areas.
Students who complete three Honors core courses in our Environment and Ecological Stewardship Track and complete an Environment portfolio will receive the FGCU Medal of Excellence in Environmental Stewardship.
Students completing three core courses in our Ethics and World Affairs Track along with an Ethics portfolio receive the FGCU Medal of Excellence in Civic Leadership. For information on how to go about building a portfolio, see Carey Fells in Library 453B.
Honors Portfolio & Co-Curricular Transcript
Every Honors student completes an Honors Portfolio. This includes work done to fulfill the co-curricular transcript and year-end assessments of your progress by one professor and yourself, your goals for the next year, and the way you will go about fulfilling those goals.
To complete the co-curricular transcript, students must complete transformative experiences from each of the categories below. We encourage students to be creative in this endeavor. For example, a student might choose to complete 4 semesters of a foreign language to complete the Cultural Exploration section, or they might study abroad. All that we ask is that the experience is qualitatively deep enough to actually perform transformation.
Transformative Categories:
1.Community Leadership: Students might complete this option by becoming a leader in student government or a campus organization, by organizing significant community events, by participating in leadership training seminars and classes, or by organizing political events, etc.
2.Community Service: Students might complete this option by engaging in a significant engagement project that utilizes their area of academic expertise, by making long-term volunteer commitments to organizations that serve the community at large, etc. Acting as a member of a service team for a full two years is how most Honors students will complete this requirement.
3.Cultural Exploration: Students might complete this option by studying abroad, acquiring a foreign language, working within a culturally diverse community, teaching English as a second language, working or studying in another part of the States, becoming a regular supporter of local cultural events, etc.
4.Personal Transformation: Students might complete this option through engaging in a long-term, reflective process of personal transformation that is guided by a mentor etc. All students choosing this option must complete 2 credits, taken in consecutive terms (Fall/Spring or Spring/Fall), of Honors Transformation.
5.Thesis/Independent Research/Public Performance/Internship: Work under a mentor on an advanced, long-term research project. Students working in the sciences or fine, performance or media arts will be expected to demonstrate that this experience extends beyond that of a regular undergraduate student. Students performing internships must demonstrate that the internship extends beyond one normally required by their major.
