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Honors Courses The Loras College Honors program involves the following sequence of courses: Foundational Honors Courses (nine credits)Since these Foundational Honors courses are writing and speaking intensive, students who complete them will be waived from the General Education requirements in College Writing and Communication. Honors Modes of Inquiry: introduces students to a holistic approach to critical thinking and active learning by examining a significant cultural or historical event from a variety of perspectives. Recent offerings have focused on the trial of Socrates, Democracy & Global Diversity: Reacting (To) The Past: Revolutionary France (1791) & India on the Eve of Independence (1945) "Reacting (to) the Past" is an innovative program developed at Barnard College in New York in which students investigate fundamental philosophical and political issues by playing roles in games set in past moments of historical crisis. Through a major three-year grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, Loras College has an exciting opportunity to work with Barnard in refining the "Reacting (to) the Past" program. In our version of this course, students will assume the ideas and values of participants in two major historical events: the National Assembly in France that gathered in 1791 to fashion a constitution for a new France and the Simla Conference organized in India in 1945 to determine the structure for a new independent nation of India. Students will be assigned roles of key players in each of these crises, i.e., King Louis XVI and his supporters, Jacobin revolutionaries, British colonial officials, Gandhi and his supporters, Muslim nationalists. Using primary texts from each of these periods, students will make the case for the positions associated with their assigned role. The purpose of this role-playing game is not so much to win. While that competitive dimension will make the course lively and enjoyable, the real aim will be to develop a deeper understanding of crucial questions such as, "who should govern a society?" "how should a society deal with the threat of despotism?" "what is the relationship between the individual and the larger community?" "how is wealth distributed in a society?" The Catholic Tradition: develops an awareness of the religious dimensions of human experience either by exploring the lives of several significant Catholic figures or by contrasting Catholicism and another religious tradition. Examples of possible courses would be “Autobiography and Spirituality: Augustine, Margery Kempe, and Thomas Merton” and “The Roots of Religion: Attitudes toward Nature in Catholicism, Celtic Christianity, and Native American Spirituality.” Advanced General Education Courses (15-16 credits) At the sophomore and junior level, students in the Honors program will explore themes central to a broadly based, comprehensive study of the liberal arts by taking courses in the following categories: Humanity in the Physical Universe: Courses in this area will address the following questions-What is the scientific method? What is nature and role of truth, evidence, and proof in science? How can science be used to place important public & philosophical issues in context? Foundations for Values and Decisions: Courses in this area will consider how one formulates a reasonable and coherent set of moral values, whether there are moral principles that are affirmed across cultures, how one connects moral reflection to action and to philosophy of life. Identity and Community: Courses in this area will focus on how human identity is formed, on the ways in which humans are social and psychological beings create their identity through everyday interactions with other people and institutions. The Aesthetic Dimension of Human Experience: Courses in this area will address the ways in which writers, artists, or composers express meaning through the structure of their work and how the fine arts or literature articulate and transform cultural values and meanings in a civilization. Cultural Traditions Across Generations: Courses in this area will explore the nature of culture, how factors such as gender, class, and ethnicity affect the ways in which humans interact within a culture, and how cultures both change and retain continuity throughout human experience. Advanced General Education Cluster: In order to foster interdisciplinary connections, students will take two of the courses from these categories together in a thematic cluster. These courses will be taken in the same semester and coordinated so that students will learn how to bring separate areas of knowledge together to address a common issue or theme. Senior Capstone Experience (3 credits taken during fall of Senior year) The Senior Capstone course centers around a service learning project designed by the student in consultation with a community service organization. The service learning project was developed by the 1999 Honors class. It gives students the opportunity to become more aware of key social issues and leadership theories and then to apply what they have learned by developing projects that address the needs of various service agencies in the community. In recent semesters, students have developed projects to enhance the work of homeless shelters, victim-offender mediation programs, adult literacy programs, and agencies serving abused and troubled youth. Electronic Portfolio (1-2 credits) The portfolio is a web-based document that will be accessible to a community of readers and evaluators that includes other students, faculty, potential employers, and graduate schools. Through their portfolios, students will demonstrate how they have fulfilled the goals of the Loras College mission statement and the Honors program. Students will present their portfolios to the Honors committee during the spring of their senior year. List of recent and upcoming Honors courses Modes of Inquiry · Graphic Novels (Animé) Catholic Traditions · Priest, Minister, Rabbi Advanced General Education courses · Utopia and Dystopia |
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