Bookmark and Share

Honors Program

Mission Statement & Learning Outcomes

Mission Statement

The University of San Diego is committed to academic excellence, and the
USD Honors Program is designed to provide smart, passionate and eager
students with challenges and opportunities that will allow them to
achieve their intellectual goals. The Program emphasizes teaching
excellence, small seminar-style classes, and a core curriculum of
innovative courses. Honors students have numerous opportunities for
interaction with faculty, specialized course work, undergraduate research
and focused academic advising.

Student Learning Outcomes

Single Instructor Courses and Preceptorials:
The single instructor courses vary from year to year and are offered,
in support of the Honors Program, by various departments. The
learning goals for each course can be found within the assessment
documents from those departments.

Team-taught courses:
The team-taught courses are interdisciplinary classes taught between
two or three departments on campus. The student learning goals for
each course will be listed on the syllabus and vary
from class to class. However, the Honors Program has one learning
outcome across all team-taught courses.
i. Students will exhibit mastery, through team-taught classes, in
integrating multiple disciplines to address various topics.

HNRS 495 – Honors Senior Thesis Seminar
This course is the capstone class for all students graduating in the
Honors Program. The students in this course have two major
assignments for completion of the Honors Program. 1) Present a
public seminar on their independent research. 2) Submit a written
thesis that describes their research in detail. This course currently
has two learning goals.

Students will conduct independent, original scholarly research in their
major field of study, as well as communicate this work in written and oral
form as the capstone to their Honors experience.
1. Students must be able to orally communicate their work
beyond disciplinary boundaries.
2. Students must communicate a mastery of their discipline by
submitting a thesis on their original scholarly work.

Spring 2012 Thesis Presentations