About UW Honors

Our Mission

The University Honors Program engages a diverse population of students through a rigorous curriculum that promotes expansive, innovative thinking and conscious global citizenship. The UW Honors Program engages students with the issues of our times through innovation and collaboration. Our students grapple with complex global issues of power and privilege through coursework, experiential learning, leadership, and intentional learning from diverse communities.

Overview

Operating as a service unit within the office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, the Honors Program brings students and faculty from every corner of campus together for original learning opportunities focused on cross-disciplinary curriculum, experiential learning, research, and critical reflection. Our Program runs a comprehensive Interdisciplinary/College pathway and oversees Departmental Honors pathways to annually enroll approximately 1400 undergraduates, with about two-thirds of the students in Interdisciplinary/College Honors and the remaining one-third in Departmental Honors.

What Is UW Honors

Honors prepares students to ask and answer bold questions about the challenges facing our ever-changing world. The UW Honors Program offers multiple pathways for achieving a degree with Honors from the UW. Students may engage in Interdisciplinary Honors, Departmental Honors, or both by earning a degree with College Honors. Regardless of what pathway students choose, your students are our students, and they are an active and important part of our Honors Program community – eligible for Honors student community groups and activities, Honors scholarships, Honors study abroad, and so much more. Our students participate in small classes with faculty from all across campus and are involved across the university, sharing their enthusiastic engagement with their communities – local, national, and international. Ultimately, our mission is to create engaged citizens and leaders who serve their communities.

Who should apply?

The Honors Program is a community of curious people who think about college as a place to explore and grow. We seek students who are eager to think in complex ways about big global challenges, challenge themselves to take risks along the way, and act in the world through the lens of their own diverse experiences. Don’t let test scores and GPA hold you back from discovering your full potential at the University of Washington. We won’t.

Honors at a Glance

Meet the Honors Staff

Honors Options

Students apply for different Honors pathways at different times in their undergraduate career, depending on their goals. Upon fulfilling the combined requirements of both Honors and their major(s), these students add the distinction of Interdisciplinary, Departmental, or College Honors to their UW degree at graduation.

Interdisciplinary Honors

Interdisciplinary Honors students are asked to make connections between and across the different branches of knowledge. They take a majority of their UW general education requirements in Honors-specific courses, complete experiential learning requirements that takes learning outside the formal classroom, and engage in critical reflection by keeping a portfolio throughout their time in the program. Students join this pathway beginning early in their academic careers (mostly as incoming first-years).

The Interdisciplinary Honors curriculum brings together diverse disciplines to study connections between and across the different branches of knowledge, primarily through small, seminar-style classes. Experiential learning requirements promote learning outside classroom and Honors’ portfolio practice strengthens reflection and synthesis across disciplines.

Departmental Honors

Students who delve more deeply into their majors through upper-level electives, research, or an extended thesis conducted in close working relationships with faculty mentors can earn the distinction of Departmental Honors.

Departmental Honors is an excellent pathway for those who have been admitted to an undergraduate degree program and wish to forge close ties with faculty, distinguish themself in their field, and advance knowledge in an area of interest. Requirements and application procedures differ across all majors and interested students should consult an academic adviser within their department for full details.

College Honors

Students earn the distinction of College Honors when they integrate many areas of knowledge and ways of learning with deeper, generative experience in their chosen field(s) by completing requirements for both Interdisciplinary and Departmental Honors.

This is the highest Honors distinction possible, combining all of the benefits of our Interdisciplinary Pathway with the benefits of Departmental Honors.

Honors on the UW diploma

On fulfilling both their Honors pathway and degree requirements, the distinction of Interdisciplinary, Departmental, or College Honors is added to students’ UW degree at graduation. This distinction varies by Honors pathway and appears on the transcript and diploma as follows:

• Interdisciplinary Honors: Diploma says “[name of degree] with Interdisciplinary Honors”
• Departmental Honors: diploma says “[name of degree] with Honors in [name of major]”
• College Honors: diploma says “[name of degree] with College Honors in [name of major]”

Note that students in the Foster School of Business and the School of Nursing will see the Honors distinction appear as follows:

• Interdisciplinary Honors: Diploma says “[name of degree] with Interdisciplinary Honors”
• Departmental Honors: diploma says “[name of degree] with Honors”
• College Honors: diploma says “[name of degree] with College Honors”

Equity and Justice Statement

The UW Honors Program fosters an environment grounded in ethics of intersectional equity, diversity and justice for advanced and socially-engaged intellectual growth, and as a foundation for life-long learning. We believe equity, diversity and justice are core principles of ethical academic engagement, and we hold ourselves accountable to be a better and stronger Honors Program with these values threaded throughout everything we do.

We recognize that “…in order to support and sustain diversity and equity at the UW, as well as in the local, regional and global communities we serve, we must directly confront bias and racism at the individual, institutional and systemic levels” (UW Race and Equity Initiative). We see this work as vital and as part of ongoing institutional transformation at the University of Washington.