From the Director
Welcome to University Honors! Whether you are already part of our community, or interested in exploring and joining us, I invite you to imagine an educational experience that challenges you to think deeply, engage broadly, and make a meaningful difference in the world.
University Honors is much more than taking challenging courses and earning your citation as special recognition. It is about joining an engaging community of curious, motivated, and creative scholars: students, teachers, staff, and alumni, who are eager to ask important questions, tackle grand challenges, and learn from people whose experiences and perspectives differ from their own.
University Honors is designed for those that seek more. Through innovative courses, close faculty mentorship, interdisciplinary exploration, collaborative research, creative scholarship, and community engagement, University Honors students develop all the tools needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Here you will hone your clarity, purpose, and ambition as we help you become the leaders you want to be, the ones the world needs.
My colleagues and I believe that excellence and inclusion go hand in hand. The most powerful learning occurs when talented individuals from diverse backgrounds come together to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and collaborate in pursuit of shared goals. We are committed to creating and putting into practice an environment where every student feels valued, supported, and empowered to reach their full potential.
As Director, my vision is to broaden participation and deepen engagement in our outstanding program. We will cultivate and sustain a community of engaged scholars that encourages intellectual courage, ethical leadership, global citizenship, and a commitment to service. Every University Honors student should graduate not only with academic distinction, but also with the confidence, curiosity, and sense of purpose needed to address the grand challenges facing our communities and our world. And they should make a difference.
I urge you to explore what our program and people have to offer, to connect with our students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and to consider how University Honors can help transform your college experience into something truly exceptional. Reach out with questions, talk with our community members and partners, and join us! The world needs University Honors. Now more than ever. I look forward to welcoming you to our community.
Yours,
Dr. Edward Eisenstein
University Honors Program Director
Our Mission
The University Honors student aligns passion with purpose by fostering relationships intentionally, navigating complexity with humility, and engaging unfamiliar ideas and interrogating familiar ones.
Our Vision
Foster connection. Seek complexity. Explore uncertainty.
Realize your potential.
Our Values
The University Honors Community is guided by the following core commitments:
- Meaningful impact requires mindful collaboration
- Conscientious inquiry requires multidisciplinary dexterity
- Good judgment requires a breadth of vision
- Realizing potential requires contributing responsibly
Program Learning Outcomes
- Home: Students will have found their communities and be able to articulate how they belong
- Navigation: Students will be able to navigate university life and learning with awareness and humility
- Self-Direction: Students will have the skills to plan and forge their futures mindfully
- Proof of Concept: Students will be able to leverage their integrated learning to contribute responsibly
Our History
1966
General Honors Program is born
Founded by VP for Academic Affairs and Professor of Industrial Education, Dr. R Lee Hornbake, the General Honors Program was first led by Professor of English, Dr. John Portz.
1990
General Honors is redesigned
The General Honors Program was redesigned, shifting away from requiring upper-level coursework and a thesis to a model focused on students’ first five semesters. During this change, the program was also renamed University Honors.
Jun 2010
The Honors College is established
Created originally to serve as an administrative hub encompassing University Honors, Gemstone, and Honors Humanities, the Honors College is now home to eight different living-learning programs.
2019
The New UH
University Honors embarked on a multi-year initiative to transform both its curriculum and its student life offerings, welcoming their first cohort into this redesigned program in the Fall of 2020.
Now
Today in UH
The program now features rotating clusters focused on contemporary topics and experiential classrooms. Students are grouped into one of the four UH Houses to participate in the exclusive House Cup Competition.
Land Acknowledgement
Every community owes its existence and strength to the generations before them, around the world, who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy into making the history that led to this moment.
Truth and acknowledgement are critical in building mutual respect and connections across all barriers of heritage and difference.
So, we acknowledge the truth that is often buried: We are on the ancestral lands of the Piscataway People, who are the ancestral stewards of this sacred land. It is their historical responsibility to advocate for the four-legged, the winged, those that crawl and those that swim. They remind us that clean air and pristine waterways are essential to all life.
This Land Acknowledgement is a vocal reminder for each of us as two-leggeds to ensure our physical environment is in better condition than what we inherited, for the health and prosperity of future generations.
Enslavement Acknowledgement
We, at the University of Maryland, recognize and honor the exploited labor of forcefully enslaved people upon which the foundations of the United States and our institution were built.
Enslaved people of African descent farmed, paved, maintained, and developed the land on which our university stands today. Through intergenerational resistance, leadership and a steadfast pursuit of freedom and justice, their descendants fought and continue to fight for a societal transformation in defiance of the profound injustices of the transatlantic trade, chattel slavery, convict leasing, Jim Crow laws, dehumanization and the caste system that permeates our existence. They desegregated and integrated our classrooms and now lead our university and Maryland Terps forward to achieving a better world.
We are forever indebted to the unwilling generational sacrifices and stolen labor of the enslaved Africans and their descendants. Together, we will strive to atone, heal and uplift the unbreakable spirit and beauty of Black Americans.
