Three universities.
Three institutions offering distinctive, nationally recognized academic programs. Three unique campus cultures and climates.
Students of high caliber seek educational experiences of equally high caliber; but how does one assess the quality of an educational experience?
One measurement is the quality of relationships.
Serious scholars seek a community of peers, a critical mass of others who are as academically well prepared and who seek the same level of intellectual challenges. It is a common misperception that one can find such an experience solely at Ivy League universities and small, selective colleges. Arizona’s universities, though large, utilize their honors programs and colleges to create campuses within their campuses, achieving the same kinds of academic communities and experiences as their Ivy League counterparts.
Educational experience is only one part of the equation, however. The value of an education is also measured in outcomes.
What happens to Arizona’s top students after graduation? Exactly what one would expect from the best and most motivated learners. Most pursue further formal education: law, medicine, creative writing, architecture, public health, environmental policy, biochemistry. Not surprisingly, they tend to do so with significant or even full funding from their post-graduate institution. These students even undertake their life’s work overseas, continuing a pattern of global study and travel they began as Flinn Scholars, supported by the country’s most prestigious and competitive national awards: Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Gates Scholarships.
They are able to do so because Arizona’s university honors programs and colleges help them establish the relationships they need—whether with faculty, students, or community members—to be able to craft an individualized education. Some elements of that experience include:
- Curriculum. Honors courses—courses designed for small numbers of highly interested, high achieving, and thoroughly engaged students—are available in most disciplines on all three campuses. These classes bring together students with a broad range of interests to work through The Big Issues: the history of thought in the Western world; the nature of creativity; the role of technology in shaping human behavior. These are the courses that give students a common referential and intellectual vocabulary that they can apply to the equivalent Big Questions they will find in their chosen field.
- Honors contracts. In other courses, honors students negotiate a set of course requirements that suit the student’s level of preparation and specific interests in the course. These honors contracts allow students to play a role in designing their own courses, customizing their educational experience within the standard offerings of the university.
- Independent studies. More advanced pupils may partner with a faculty member whose expertise fits the students’ curiosity; together they plan a course of readings, activities, and meetings that comprise a self-designed plan of study. Through these courses, students pursue their most field’s most vital questions—and, in so doing, help the Flinn Scholars Program meet its goal of contributing to the generation of new knowledge by advancing Scholars’ understanding of themselves, and of the world.
- Study Abroad. We live in a world that is wonderfully diverse in its peoples, cultures, and experiences. Not to experience that world, or to do so only via the Web, is to lose an important dimension of experience: that of building relationships with and in the larger world. All three universities allow honors students to develop their own study abroad programs when none exist, taking the initiative to shape a radically distinctive experience.
- Residence halls. All three universities provide housing specifically for Honors Students, accommodations that provide an atmosphere that fosters a culture of creative problem solving. Such options demonstrate well that a great deal of the most important learning we engage in occurs outside of the classroom, and that the entire university environment offers opportunities for learning and personal growth.
There is a distinctive theme to these advantages, and to honors education in Arizona: Whatever you imagine, these universities exercise considerable flexibility in helping their best students—students like you—fulfill their highest ambitions.