Overview
The overarching purpose of the HP is to provide Oregon Tech students with a complementary academic curriculum and a collection of extracurricular learning experiences that promote a more well-rounded future career professional, a socially responsible person, and connected and liberally educated student: this is the idea of the professional as a person. A professional, understood in this way, is a person connected to many communities, locally and globally, scholarly and civic-oriented, and is a person who strives to make the most of those connections with others to lead a more meaningful life.
Honors Course Requirements
All Oregon Tech Honors Program (HP) students must complete a required number of Honors courses (see below), Honors Option courses or Honors Thought Projects, including the third-year Honors Answer Project, which is comprised of two questions students must answer. To graduate from the University Honors Program, they must have a cumulative GPA of 3.0.
- Students must complete 30 credits total through the Honors Program
- Complete the Core Seminar Sequence [9 credits]
- Complete the remaining credit hours through Honors Contract courses, Honors Thought Projects, or equivalent work [21 credits]
- Participate in Honors Program events and activities
First Year: The Honors Idea Seminar
HUM 251Honors Idea Seminar-I: Ideas in the Past
HUM 252 Honors Idea Seminar-II: Ideas in the Present
HUM 253 Honors Idea Seminar-III: Ideas in the Future
Satisfies social science general education requirement. One credit per course.
Second Year: The Honors Question Seminar
HUM 351 Honors Question Seminar-I: The World of Questions
HUM 352 Honors Question Seminar-II: A Text to Question
HUM 353 Honors Question Seminar-III: Questions for a Better Life
Satisfies humanities general education requirement. One credit per course.
Third Year: The Honors Answer Seminar
HUM 451 Honors Answer Seminar-I: Brief Answers to the Big Questions
HUM 452 Honors Answer Seminar-II: Answers in Context
HUM 453 Honors Answer Seminar-III: Answers in Medicine
Satisfies humanities general education requirement. One credit per course.
The main outcome of the Third Year Seminar sequence is the completion of the Honors Answer Project.
All Years:
Honors Contract Courses, Honors Thought Projects, or otherwise designated
21 additional credits total after the Honors Core Seminar Sequence
A minimum of 30 total Honors credits is required for graduation from the Honors Program. Courses taken as an independent study, special seminar, or online may all be included in that total if they are taken as an Honors Contract course. All Honors courses must be completed with a grade of “B” or higher.
Honors Idea Seminar Sequence
Ideas shape the world, and ideas change the world. The Honors Idea Seminar is the required three-term sequence of one-credit seminars for first-year HP students devoted to thinking through the past (fall term), present (winter term), and future (spring term) of one idea, each year, that has contributed to the world and influenced how people live in the world today. Each year, first-year students are treated to an "idea theme" that will never be repeated. Students read a required "anchor" text each term, sometimes go on local field trips, and learn about ideas from guest speakers.
Honors Question Seminar Sequence
The art of asking important, meaningful, and productive questions is valued in the Honors Program. The Honors Question Seminar Sequence is the required three-term sequence of one-credit seminars for second-year HP students. These courses are devoted to understanding and working with questions. Students study Warren Berger's A More Beautiful Question in the fall, a special selection of a Penguin Classic, or similar, novel each winter term, and Clayton Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life? in the spring term. Through these required readings, students will develop the ability to construct the kinds of questions that will make them more effective students, ultimately more capable career professionals, and greater contributors to society.
Honors Answer Seminar Sequence
Answers are the solutions to the work we accomplish with ideas and questions. Answers represent a significant way we understand the world. The Honors Answer Seminar is the final required three-term sequence of one-credit seminars for third-year HP students, and it is devoted to completing the Honors Answer Project. Students learn how to derive Answer Observations and Answer Insights by studying three special texts over the course of the three terms. The Honors Answer Project consists of two questions: The Honors Faculty Question and the Honors Student Question. The Honors Faculty Question asks students to consider the relationship between ideas, questions, and answers, which they have been studying for the past 3 years. The Honors Student Question provides students with the opportunity to answer their own questions based on what they are curious. This third seminar sequence caps off the Honors Program with the Honors Answer Symposium: a unique opportunity to share their answers with peers, friends, and faculty.
Honors Option Courses and Honors Thought Projects
In addition to the Core Seminar Sequence, HP students must earn 21 more credits, minimum, to graduate from the Honors Program.
Students can ear their remaining credits in two main ways.
- Honors Option Classes: These are classes regularly offered by Oregon Tech faculty; however, the professor and honors student will negotiate a "contract" for how they will approach this course so the student can earn honors credit for it. The main ways to approach such a contract course include adding assignments or work to the course, exchanging some assignments or work for other assignments or projects, or providing a completely different and unique set of requirements for the honors student.
- Honors Thought Projects: These are no-cost, often, independent study academic projects with objectives and outcomes, and assignment requirements that can be earned as "credit-equivalent" kinds of academic work.
Participate in Scheduled Honors Activities
Honors Orientation, Induction Ceremony, Advising Meeting, and Cording Ceremony
Students are required to attend an all-day Orientation to be held on usually the second or third weekend of the fall term. Additionally, Students will attend an Induction Ceremony that same evening. During the first week of their participation in the HP, students will attend an Advising Meeting during which time the Director or Assistant Director will review the HP Curriculum and Program Requirements in toto. All Students are asked to attend specific activities, such as the Cording Ceremony, as well as other to be designated events and days of significance to the HP.
Honors Experiential Learning in the Outdoors (HELIOS) Fieldtrips
Students are required to participate in regularly scheduled Honors Program experiential learning field trips: approximately one per term for their first year in the program. These activities include one weekend educational excursion each academic quarter, for one day of the weekend. Examples of such excursions include trips to Crater Lake National Park for snowshoeing, tours of the Tule Lake Unit, WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which includes “the Tule Lake Segregation Center, the largest and most controversial of the sites where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II,” and field trips to Upper Klamath Lake by canoe. All required activities are at no cost to the student.
Honors Connections Events
It is important for HP students to connect across the disciplines, with the campus, and to be connected to their community. Each term, the Honors Program will identify talks, lectures, films, or other opportunities as “Honors Connections” events. These events serve to foster a sense of community among the students, expand their cultural horizons, and generally broaden their sense of engagement with the world and community as Honors Program students. OTHP students are expected to attend four such events per academic year. Multiple opportunities will be available each term.
Our World to Lead and Serve (OWLS) Projects
Honors Program students also recognize that in addition to connecting to their world academically, they can make important contributions to their world through service and leadership projects, and that such work can meaningfully contribute to our communities. Our World to Lead and Serve (OWLS) Projects require all Honors Program students to complete approved leadership and service projects or activities each year for the first two years in the Honors Program. The OWLS Projects may benefit the Oregon Tech Honors Program, the Oregon Tech campus and students, the Klamath Falls community, or another city or place that is important to the student. Students may fulfill these projects individually or as part of a group.
HP Student Support
Honors Program students, Honors Program Core Faculty, the Director and Assistant Director all share in the responsibility for a student’s progress through the program. Honors Program students will meet with the Director or Assistant Director each fall to discuss courses and activities, and the student’s experiences in the program. To support the goal of progress and completion, students will receive an Honors Program Progress Toward Graduation report, which will account for all requirements toward graduation from the Oregon Tech Honors Program.