Information for Faculty and Staff
The OHIO Honors Program (OHP) offers highly motivated students the opportunity to shape their own unique and challenging educational pursuits through a blend of curricular and co-curricular experiences. With the guidance of an OHIO Honors advisor, students choose a mix of honors-level courses and out-of-class opportunities that facilitate a deep exploration of the relationship between theory and practice. OHIO Honors students complete as many as 14 honors experiences over the course of their undergraduate careers at Ohio University.
An emphasis on application is a central principle of OHP, as is the importance of interdisciplinarity. During their first semester, OHIO Honors students are introduced to the value of bringing diverse perspectives into conversation and are encouraged to continue this practice as they work to develop effective responses to challenges they face in academic environments as well as the other spaces they inhabit.
OHP offers three pathways to direct students’ experiences: research and creative activity; community engagement; and leadership. Students explore the connections and distinctions among the pathways, ultimately focusing on one of the pathways as they build toward a fourth-year capstone portfolio.
Propose a curricular experience
If you are a faculty member interested in working with OHIO Honors students in your classroom, we encourage you to propose an honors adaptation to one or more of your existing classes. In these curricular experiences, OHIO Honors students complete the same work expected of other students in the class and are graded on those elements of the curriculum in the same manner as their classmates; however, OHP students also are required to complete additional assignments and/or activities that demand deeper, more complex engagement with the course content to earn credit for the honors experience. These additional efforts are not evaluated with a letter grade but rather are assessed on a credit/no-credit basis to encourage academic risk-taking and the pursuit of challenging educational experiences.
Faculty, propose a curricular experience via our online form.
Propose a co-curricular experience
The OHIO Honors Program is always looking for campus and community partners interested in developing rich co-curricular experiences that benefit both our students and the larger communities we inhabit together. We want our students to think broadly about how their engagement with the world outside the classroom can inform and be informed by what they’re learning in their curricular experiences. Co-curricular experiences may take a variety of forms, including internships, research apprenticeships, project-based community engagement, and more sustained organizational involvement, among other possibilities.
If you or your organization (or campus unit) would like to partner with the OHIO Honors Program to develop a mutually beneficial experience for OHP students, please follow the link below to submit a proposal. Proposals should include a description of the co-curricular experience, a list of anticipated outcomes or products of the experience, a consideration of any risks involved, and a description of the benefit the experience will provide to your organization or the larger community. Co-curricular experiences also require advising, reflection and evaluation plans, but those can be developed and facilitated by OHIO Honors advisors if you have not already developed them as part of your proposal.
Propose a co-curricular experience as a community partner.
If you have questions about the program or the curricular experience model, contact OHIO Honors Program Interim Director Christy Zempter at zempter@ohio.edu.