Honors Program

The Honors Program

Since its inception in 1982, the Honors Program has provided outstanding students with a truly unique set of academic and social opportunities.

Unlike many honors programs that offer a single "honors seminar" or that add "honors sections" to existing courses, the Honors Program at Randolph-Macon College provides its members with an array of innovative Collegiate Honors Courses developed exclusively for the program. Drawn from a wide variety of disciplines and often interdisciplinary in nature, these courses demand active student participation and have their enrollments limited to 15 students. The course offerings change each year. Each of the courses offered by the program can be used to satisfy a collegiate requirement, so students in the Honors Program do not need to take "extra" courses.

Honors students in their junior or senior year will engage in an in-depth study of a particular topic in their field of interest. These Departmental Honors Projects can assume a wide variety of forms, and individual students have a great degree of latitude in designing them. One possibility is to engage in research with a faculty member, an opportunity generally not accessible to an undergraduate at a large university. The necessary forms to report a Departmental Honors Project are available here. Students who meet the requirements of the Honors Program receive a graduation medal and have successful completion noted on their diploma and transcript.

There is far more to the Honors Program than academics alone, however. A strong sense of community has existed for years among its members. The Honors Program at Randolph-Macon College is one of the few Honors Programs in the country with its own house, the Honors House.

The Student Honors Association (whose members include most current Honors students) is a very active body on campus, providing events such as coffee houses after performances by the Student Drama Guild, movie nights, outings to musical and theatrical performances offered by such groups as the Richmond Symphony and the Barksdale Theater, and informal conversations with faculty and guest lecturers. Each year students have attended conferences held by state, regional, and national honors organizations.