The Ohio State University Honors and Scholars Center recently announced the Honors Standards, an academic standard to unify honors requirements across Ohio State’s colleges and schools. Previously, once students were enrolled in the University Honors Program after being admitted to the university or applying as a current student, their requirements to remain an Honors student and graduate “with Honors” were determined by their degree conferring college with few commonalities between Honors requirements in other academic units.
Under the Honors Standards, these requirements are unified with less variation, allowing students to more easily change their major, transition campuses, or transfer to Ohio State and maintain their Honors status.
“With the creation of The University Honors & Scholars Center in 2005, a key charge has been to enrich the academic experience by creating and enforcing unified minimum academic honors standards across all Colleges,” said Dr. Julie Humbel-Courtney, Program Director of the University Honors Program. “The changes occurring are subtle and are rather a bigger picture view of the Honors student experience at Ohio State agnostic to their college program affiliation.”
A university-wide group of stakeholders was gathered by the Honors and Scholars Center to develop the Honors Standards, with broad input from all colleges offering an Honors program.
“Our partnership with faculty and honors directors in the colleges were instrumental in the process to develop a standard that could be unanimously approved by the Honors and Scholars Faculty Advisory Committee this past spring,” said Dr. Ola Ahlqvist, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Enrichment, Executive Director of the University Honors and Scholars Center and Professor of Geography.
The Honors Standards are comprised of six components that will be common for all Honors students regardless of their major or college of enrollment. Colleges are able to determine exactly how students are able to fulfill the standards during their time at Ohio State, but upon graduation, all students who graduate “with Honors” will all have accomplished the same six standards, which include:
- First year Honors Survey or Honors module in Survey
- 18+ credit hours of Honors quality courses
- Consistent experiential learning, culminating in Honors Thesis or thesis equivalent capstone
- Compilation of Honors ePortfolio
- Honors Reflection or Honors module in Capstone
- Maintain minimum Honors GPA
The Honors Standards will be implemented for new first year Honors students beginning at Ohio State in Autumn 2024. Individual colleges will determine how, if at all, current Honors students are grandfathered into the Honors Standards from existing Honors requirements.
According to Humbel-Courtney, the updated Honors Standards will offer greater support to Ohio State Honors students regardless of their path to degree.
“The standards will support students in their OSU Honors experience should they change their major or transfer campuses. This will also help Honors students create a deeper connection with the recently implemented General Education curriculum and the ePortfolio.”