Honors Program Curriculum

Students take two seminar classes, FYS 101H in the fall semester and HON 102 in the spring. In addition, most students start their language requirement in the first semester, depending on placement. Check with your advisor and the Honors directors for recommendations.

FYS101H

The fall Honors First-Year Seminar (August-December) is co-taught by professors from different disciplines. Students will acquire skills in critical thinking, writing, and speaking as well as general skills for success in college and in their future.

FALL 2022 topic: Cities

Click the titles below to learn more about each subtopic. Honors students may choose the subtopic that interests them most, and throughout the semester, you'll have a chance to learn about all three. Your "home" professor will also be your academic adviser until you declare your major. 

• Gender & The City with Dr. Lisa Marcus, French and Gender Studies
• History & The City with Dr. Jennifer Ross, Archaeology
• Arts & The City with Dr. Noel Verzosa, Music

Recent field trips for the Honors fall seminar have included:

• The National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.
• Performances at Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, D.C.
• Zipline and obstacle course outing at Tree Trekkers in Frederick County
• Walking tour of the Tidal Basin monuments, Washington D.C.
• Escape room adventures at ClueIQ in Frederick
• The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.

HON102

In the spring semester (January-May), students may choose one of four different sections of HON102. Each class focuses on a topic that takes an interdisciplinary approach to the sciences and technology in relation to society. 

Some recent topics:

• Not Sustainable: Environmental Burnout and Resilience
• Are Humans Unique?
• Plagues and Peoples
• Thinking about Thinking: Phantom Limbs, Blindsight, and Your Brain
• GIS and Historical Studies
• Nature’s Medicine Chest

Class field trips for the spring seminar have included: 

• U.S. Botanic Garden, Washington, D.C.
• National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Frederick, Md.
• Lunch at a local farm-to-table restaurant, The Orchard, in downtown Frederick
• The National Zoo, Washington, D.C.
• The National Building Museum, Washington D.C.
• Antietam National Battlefield, Sharpsburg, Md.

Students take two seminar classes, Hon 201 in the fall semester and Hon 202 in the spring. In addition, most students finish their language requirement (through the 202 level) in the second semester of their second year, depending on placement. Check with your advisor and the Honors directors for recommendations.

HON201

Students can choose from a menu of classes that focus on global issues and differing cultural perspectives for HON 201, the fall seminar.  They will be encouraged to imagine the world from many points of view and challenged to examine how they think about and interact with the global community. 

Sample classes:

• Constructing Identity in North Africa
• Religion and Empire
• Pharaohs of the Sun: Akenaten to Tutankamun
• Ethics and Globalization

Class field trips for HON 201 have included:

• Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C. 
• Islamic Center, Washington D.C.
• Dinner at Marrakesh Palace, Washington, D.C.

• Crime Museum, Washington D.C.

HON202

Students will work closely with a faculty advisor of their choice for the spring semester practicum. Each student chooses a social or intellectual problem to address, writes a research paper and works at an off-campus site, gaining experience and connections that may also lead to paid employment or help determine a future career. The broad, overarching theme of this class is social justice, but the sites students at which students have chosen to volunteer are many and varied.

Recent practicum sites have included: 

• Heartly House 
• Frederick Memorial Hospital
• UNESCO Center for Peace
• Delaplaine Visual Arts Center
• David Trone Congressional Campaign
• Legal Aid
• Catoctin Nature Center
• Civil War Medicine Museum
• Lincoln Elementary School
• Advanced Biofuels
• Days End Farm
• Monocacy National Battlefield 

Sample research papers:

• “Power Shifting and Getting in Gear: The Youth Movement Toward a Sustainable Future” Site: Energy Action Coalition
• “19th Century Health Care” Site: National Museum of Civil War Medicine 
• “Environmental Justice Through the Eyes of the Deep Ecologist” Site: Catoctin Zoo 
• “Slavery and Social Injustice”
• “Acid Victims: A Spotlight on Social Injustices Faced by Women in South Asian Countries” Site: Frederick Memorial Hospital

Students choose upper-level honors electives from a wide array of options. Students may also elect to study abroad; sites chosen by Honors students include France, Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Israel, Korea and New Zealand. Study abroad counts as one honors elective. Students who successfully complete a departmental honors paper also receive credit for one honors elective.

Sample Honors electives:

• African Political Autobiography
• Images of Women (team-taught by an archaeologist and a historian)
• Law and Cyberspace (team-taught by a lawyer and a computer scientist)
• Dante and Giotto (team-taught by a literary critic and an art historian)
• Censorship in America (team-taught by a political scientist and a journalist)
• Frederick – Colony to Suburb
• Revisioning Motherhood in Modern Western Culture
• The Chesapeake Bay
• Philosophy of Music
• American Landscapes: Environmental Literature in the US
• Exploring Utopia
• Orientalism and Egyptomania

Class field trips for upper-level electives have included:  

• Dinner at Mediterranean Grill, Frederick, Md.
• Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.
• Maryland State Police Computer Forensics Lab, Columbia, Md.
• Special Beginnings Birthing Center, Arnold, Md.
• National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The senior seminar is a high point of the honors program. Students choose a topic of broad interest and select a faculty member to teach the course. Sample seminar classes:

• Beauty and Culture
• Investigating Serial Killers
• Heroes and Monsters
• The Politics of Music
• Science Fiction: Text and Context
• Shakespeare’s Tempest and its Ramifications
• Doing and Undoing Gender
• America in the Sixties

Honors 470 field trips have included:

• Performance of "American Idiot" at the Hippodrome in Baltimore
• National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

The Honors Program welcomes qualified transfer students. More information about the requirements for transfer students can be found in the Hood College Catalog. Requirements differ depending on the level of involvement a student had with Honors at their prior institution. Transfer students work closely with the Honors co-directors to identify which requirements of the Honors Program apply to them.

The Honors Program welcomes qualified early college students who have completed an AA, or equivalent, during their high school years. Early college students work closely with the Honors co-directors to identify which requirements of the Honors Program apply to them. In general, early college students intending to complete their bachelor's degree on an accelerated two-year schedule would do the following:

First year:

• take FYS 101H in the fall
• take Hon 202 in the spring

Second year:

• May take Hon 201 in the fall semester to complete their Global Perspectives Core requirement, if needed. (This Core requirement is sometimes fulfilled within the major.)
• Take 1 300-level Hon elective and 1 Hon 470 

Students satisfy the global language requirement in one of the following ways:

• Demonstrate proficiency in a global language through the 202-level (by coursework or placement exam)
• Successfully complete any two global language courses
• Complete one global language course and one culture course, as listed in the Hood College Catalog