Honors at the University of Maryland has a rich history beginning in 1966 when Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Industrial Education, Dr. R. Lee Hornbake founded the General Honors Program.
Professor of English, Dr. John Portz served as the first director of the program from 1966 until his retirement in 1978. In 1990, the General Honors Program was redesigned and renamed University Honors Program. At that time, the program shifted away from requiring upper-level coursework and a thesis option to one that focused primarily on students in their first five semesters. UH freshmen and sophomores enjoyed small, challenging courses that met general education requirements outside their major before moving to upper-level Honors work in their major in their junior and senior years. In 1996, Gemstone and Honors Humanities were created to offer more specialized opportunities for students. In 2009, the Honors College was created to serve as an administrative unit encompassing University Honors, Gemstone, and Honors Humanities. Between 2010 and 2013, several other specialized programs were added to the Honors College, including ACES, DCC, EIP, and ILS.
In 2019, University Honors embarked on a multi-year initiative to transform both its curriculum and student life offerings. In Fall 2020, we welcomed the first cohort of students into the newly redesigned program.
At the heart of this transformation is an innovative, multidisciplinary curriculum comprised of thematically organized courses on topics of contemporary and enduring significance. Designed to enable students to pursue their curiosity and to prepare them for departmental honors and other pursuits (e.g., national and international scholarships, education abroad), these clusters and tracks of I-series courses and small seminars are taught by teams of tenure-line and professional-track faculty drawn from across the university’s colleges and schools, as well as by area-experts from the Washington, D.C. area. Students’ intellectual experience in these courses is bookended by innovative new courses—Gateway Seminar in the first semester, Vantage Point Seminar in the fourth semester—which focus on personal, preprofessional, and postgraduate development. The introduction of twelve full-time faculty members will facilitate greater faculty-student interaction and mentorship. All of this was accomplished whilst reducing the program’s citation requirements to 15 credits and preserving the sort of flexibility and choice that UH students have long enjoyed.
At the same time, the program also dramatically expanded its student engagement and co-curricular programming offerings. Today, our student community is structured into four “houses” (House Altair, House Denebola, House Eltanin, House Shaula), which compete annually for the House Cup. The Leader Network offers an array of opportunities to participate in the life of the program, including as members of our Student Life Council, as Peer Academic Leaders (PALs), and as tutors/tutees and mentors/mentees. The University Honors Student Board (UHSB) advises program staff and is at the forefront of strategic initiatives in the program. And program alumni continue their involvement in our community through the Alumni Network.