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Honors
Colleges / Schools
Overview of Honors Program Mission and Goals
We Are A Community of Learners, Doers and Emerging Professionals.
Mission
Arcadia’s Honors Program is a place where students with many talents and passions are encouraged to feed their strengths, refine them, and then own them. The program grows in the direction of our values, passions, and talents. Students are encouraged to take the best of themselves to create impact in ways that are fulfilling to individuals, teams and the larger community in a way that positions them to go forth and make positive impacts on innovative, strategic and empathetic teams and also recognize the pathway to their own happiness.
The program invests in specialized opportunities for professional-level scholarship, co-curricular experiences, mentoring, academic service learning, and presentations are provided to ready our students for their professional careers, and maximize their marketing ability and ensure a truly engaging academic experience that spills from the classroom to the larger community.
Honors Values
- Empathy (Make understanding others a priority)
- Collaboration (Play well with others; there is strength in teams)
- Innovation (Problems are just opportunities waiting to be explored)
- Integrity (Be who you say you are)
- Passions (Follow them)
- Communication (Voices heard and understood create a difference)
- Connection (Every connection is an opportunity for greater happiness)
- Inclusivity (Everyone has a special place within the community; explore yours and use it to change the community for the better).
- Shared vulnerability (being willing to take risks, learn from setbacks and most of all, ask for and give help. In shared vulnerability real connections occur and trust is built.
Working to Ensure You Own Your Strengths
In the Honors Program we believe that everyone needs to learn how to maximize their own strengths and be able to articulate how they will do just that. Our foundation class, The Study of Self and Teams, focuses on getting students consciously aware of why they believe what they believe and how they can use their skills and strengths to create successful team outcomes in line with those core values and missions.
The Honors Program focuses in and out of the classroom on students’ leadership potential. Leadership is seen as the ability to work to your strengths in a team environment where your influence can lead to positive changes. We begin our study in HN201 The Study of Self and Teams where students move through a curriculum focusing on empathy, storytelling, mission statements, shared vision, values, communication, motivation, teamwork, networking and innovation. These same areas of emphasis are explored more experientially in HN 390 courses, where Honors Students use those skills to design and innovate in order to problem solve in real world scenarios. Then students are encouraged to use their developing leadership skills intentionally outside of the class in the vast array of supported opportunities to mentor, create campus events, intern, present and publish their work.
Program Goals
- Establish a community of Honors Students that fosters scholarly pursuits and leadership.
- Provide Honors courses that are academically inviting and challenging while encouraging students’ talents and broadening their knowledge base.
- Provide specialized opportunities to be mentored and be a mentor.
- Provide a curriculum that requires deep introspection of individual talents, values, and means of contributing to a team to create positive change.
- Provide opportunities beyond normal campus activities to expand and encourage cultural, scientific and artistic appreciation.
- Encourage Honors Students to actively participate in campus activities, assume leadership roles, and create new campus programs and events.
- Involve Honors Students actively in the Honors Program through the Honors Council and by initiating Honors projects.
- Provide access to and mentorship through scholarship applications
