Honors Academy
Academy Mission
The mission of the Honors Academy at Park University is to empower qualified students to apply critical thought in an exploration of academic excellence, service, and leadership, with a goal of employing those three essential elements as tools to help shape their local and global communities.
Program Description
The Honors Academy is a special program for which formal application is required. The Academy is open to undergraduate students from all disciplines. Incoming freshmen, current students, and transfer students with a cumulative GPA of 3.500 can Apply to Honors Academy.
The Honors Academy seeks students who desire to learn not only for self-satisfaction, but also as a means through which they may contribute to their campus, city, national, and global communities in support of the University and Academy mission statements. The program is designed to challenge academically well-prepared students while introducing and reinforcing the experiential learning outcomes in Park University’s Literacies.
The three foci of the Academy: Service, Leadership, and Scholarship, are explored through the curriculum. Students explore Service through a class service project, typically completed during their Freshmen year. Students explore Leadership through HN250, typically completed Sophomore year. Students explore Scholarship in a variety of ways. Students may choose to do a one or two semester-long independent research project through HN303 and HN304. In preparation for this undergraduate research, honors students are required to take HN299 and should consult their mentor about research methods coursework within their major. Other students choose to take HN305, a topics-based seminar (HN305 can be repeated for credit). All students complete HN410, the capstone seminar, typically their Senior year.
Benefits of Honors Academy
- Join a community of highly engaged students with a wide variety of academic interests
- Honors diploma designations, Honors medal, and recognition at Honors Convocation upon completion
- Special residential opportunities: Honors housing
- Special honors-only courses based on a 5.0 GPA scale
- Special honors study-abroad opportunities
- Preparation for admission to professional and graduate schools
- An intellectual and social support system to reach a student’s full potential – professionally and personally
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