Welcome to the UCCS Honors program!
Welcome to the UCCS Honors program!
As the Director of the UCCS Honors Program, I hope to continue the work and legacy of Dr. Michael Hackman: fostering the culture of intentional learners at UCCS committed to service, personal growth, and a positive contribution to the global community. Providing one-on-one faculty interaction with Honors students remains an emphasis of our program. Good ideas need our clear and personal voices. Gray Matters, a cornerstone of our program, provides the unique perspective that opposite views can exist at the same time, thus allowing us to appreciate diversity in both ideas and solutions. Finally, the Honors senior thesis will provide an opportunity to deepen intentional learning in areas that the students are passionate about, encouraging personal growth and community impact.
- Dr. Sudhanshu Semwal
The hallmark of a university education is the cultivation of intentional learners who adapt to new settings, integrate knowledge quickly, and continue to learn throughout their lives. Such intentional learners are informed about their social and natural milieu, empowered by their analytical and critical thinking skills, and awakened to their responsibilities as citizens in a diverse democracy.
The University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) Honors Program serves rigorously trained students who share a desire to become intentional learners. Students work with specifically selected and highly qualified faculty in smaller class settings, thus encouraging them to engage in a collaborative, vigorous intellectual life that prepares them for admission to and success in graduate and professional schools. Students also have access to the Honors Lounge in Library 231, are afforded early registration and enhanced library check-out privileges, are given the opportunity to live on the Honors Floor in UCCS Housing, participate in the annual Honors Student Symposium and other Rocky Mountain Honors Council events, and are given special recognition in the UCCS Commencement Program and on UCCS transcripts.
Fostering the culture of intentional learners at UCCS, committed to service, personal growth, and a positive contribution to the local and global community with an understanding of Gray Matters, which is a distinct perspective, a mindset, that multiple and competitive complex views can exist at the same time, thus allowing us to appreciate diversity in both ideas and solutions.
Honors program students will strive to
embody and promote these core values:
- To foster empathy and compassion for others including oneself.
- To embrace the realization that there are always multiple and diverse perspectives.
- To recognize that both collective wisdom and individual solutions may be appropriate alternatives to creative problem-solving.
- To support diversity and inclusion in action and thoughts.
- To exhibit open-mindedness, self-reliance, intellectual curiosity, personal responsibility, and integrity.
- To promote the understanding of and appreciation for scientific and scholarly discourse.