The honors program is a vibrant learning community within the life of Saint Joseph’s College. It offers high achieving, intellectually curious students an enhanced academic experience with corresponding extra-curricular activities, all of which reflect and engage the college’s core values and mission in the Mercy Tradition in an intentional way. 

Because any meaningful community depends upon bonds built over time, the honors seminar is at the heart of the program, as it consistently brings together a small group of students and dedicated faculty members from the beginning to the end of the students’ experience at the college. Specifically, each year, with their cohort peers, students in the program take a special honors seminar that provides them a unique path to fulfill core-curriculum requirements for all students at the college. 

These exclusive honors seminars are based on the multi-faceted value of sustainability that animates the college’s core curriculum. And because Saint Joseph’s College is a Catholic college, founded and sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy, each honors seminar inflects its approach to sustainability according to the Mercy Tradition’s commitment to humility, justice, and compassion in solidarity with the marginalized. Sustainability of Knowledge (the Freshman experience), aims to help students think well about how to think and become independent life-long learners with a compassionate orientation to the good of others; Sustainability of Self (the Sophomore experience) fosters the idea that care for others is not possible without care for oneself, and so students have the opportunity in this seminar to undertake an artistic, creative, ethical or spiritual exploration; Sustainability of Community and Planet (the Junior experience) builds on these previous seminars by presenting students with certain challenges to good stewardship in a complex, globally interconnected 21st century world; and finally, the Honors Capstone (the Senior experience) gives students the opportunity to bring their time at the college and in the program to a meaningful conclusion by allowing them to design a final project (typically but not necessarily a major research essay) that integrates their personal, academic, and professional interests with the college’s core values and mission. 

Extra-curricular activities—fun on-campus events, local excursions, opportunities for service—are also an integral part of the honors experience. These extra-curricular activities frequently stem from the work students do in their seminars. The content for a given Sustainability of Self seminar might, for instance, prompt a trip, open to all honors students, to the Portland Museum of Art; or students in the Sustainability of Communities and Planet seminar may want to host a special lecture series related to themes they are studying together in class. Such activities, and others like them, not only further the program’s commitment to building a genuine community within the college; they also give honors students an opportunity to reflect back to the college and to the local community what Saint Joseph’s College is all about. 

Each honors cohort selection into the program is based upon an application in which students convey their desire to join the program as well as their academic ability and potential for success. All students accepted to the college with a 3.8 G.P.A. will be invited and encouraged to apply. The Honors Program, in short, allows students to explore important, practical topics in great depth, work closely with dedicated faculty members, and develop friendships with students who have similar academic profiles and interest.  If you are interested in joining the program, contact your admissions counselor.  

Selection

The Admissions Office, working with the Director of the Honors Program, issues invitations to incoming first-year students based on their record of achievement and potential for academic success as indicated by such factors as high school GPA, SAT scores, etc. It is also possible to be admitted into the Honors Program by individual request after a student has begun studying at the College. The Director of the Honors Program will consider each request, placing particular emphasis on college performance and faculty recommendation.

Learning Outcomes

• Build meaningful bonds of community over their time at the college with peers, faculty, and staff through academic seminars and correlative extracurricular activities.
• Acquire foundational knowledge of the diverse human condition, human society, and natural world.
• Develop higher-level skills in critical thinking, acquiring effective habits of mind for independent, life-long learning.
• Make connections among domains of knowledge encountered across their coursework and to utilize those connections to bring depth and purpose to day to day life and to help solve real world problems. 
• Acquire skills that are valuable not only for professional success but personal enrichment and avocational pursuits, and therefore help promote a well-rounded education for whole person. 
• Engage in multi-disciplinary debates about sustainability in 21st century human life, and thereby attain the historical and civic literacy necessary to be responsible participants and leaders in public life.