Honors Program

The Honors Program interdisciplinary minor creates, encourages, and challenges a community of engaged student scholars who are interested in developing leadership skills and addressing complex issues facing our world.

Advantages of Honors Program

  • Be immediately part of an honors community by attending honors events — such as faculty lectures and social events in and around Rochester such as sporting events, theater, comedy, and trips to the local ice cream shop.
  • Take Academic and College Success 101 class, taught by an honors program co-director, with fellow honors students.
  • Take honors sections of courses — including the Core Milestone Experience, where you will integrate your upper-level interdisciplinary courses.
  • Receive early registration for courses.

What's Required

  • Attend scholarly events each semester, from a list of options.
  • Complete honors foundation courses.
  • Complete one of three engagement tracks of intensive study and create a signature work.

Engagement Track Options

  • Research Scholar, which includes a research methods course, interdisciplinary honors seminar, thesis proposal, and thesis capstone and presentation.
  • Engagement Scholar, which includes upper-level service learning courses, sustained community engagement work which may include a service trip in the U.S. or abroad, and a service capstone project and presentation.
  • Global Scholar, which includes a semester or year-long study abroad program, intermediate-level foreign language courses, upper-level global courses, and a global capstone and presentation.

Honors Foundation Courses

  • Academic and College Success (ACS), honors section
  • Written & Visual Rhetoric
  • Core Milestone Experience Honors (HON 484)
  • Track-focused capstone & Creative Activity and Research Showcase (CARS) presentation

Eligibility

  • Eligible incoming freshmen receive a letter of invitation to join the honors program interdisciplinary minor. Invitees are students who have achieved the highest level of academic performance in their high school environment and have demonstrated leadership outside of the classroom.
  • Transfer students and other matriculating students recommended to the program by faculty may add the minor upon consultation with one of the program directors.
  • A 3.5 GPA is required each semester to remain in the honors program.

Program Requirements and Course Descriptions

Honors program (minor)

Questions?

Email honorsprogram@naz.edu

Carly Maldonado

Alumni Spotlight

Carly Maldonado Alicea '12, communication sciences and disorders major with an honors minor, chose to get a dual-doctorate when her grad school noticed her doctorate-like honors thesis work and offered her funding to pursue a Ph.D.
After earning her dual-doctorate in audiology and in audiology research from Syracuse University, she became an assistant professor in communication sciences and disorders at Nazareth College.

Aubrey Baldauf with professor Leanne Charlesworth

Honors Program Research

For her honors program thesis, social work major Aubrey Baldauf '19 (left) researched how income, housing, food, and structural and interpersonal racism contribute to racial health disparities — and what can be done. Her in-depth honors project "was a reason to push myself, to learn more, to become more confident in the field I want to go into. It was a self-driven learning project, that I'd never done before. I had to set my own due dates. It also helped me understand how to do research. I have a feeling it's going to help me a lot in the future — both the practical information and the skills I learned." Read more about Aubrey's experience >

Recent Thesis Examples

  • "Understanding the Underground: An Ethical, Existential, and Psychological Analysis of Dostoevsky's Underground Man" by Laura Beeley, psychology and philosophy double major, minors in art studio and communication/media
  • "A Music Therapy Perspective: Correlations in Alzheimer's Disease and Alcoholism," by Audra Nealon, music therapy — voice major
  • "An Ethical Analysis of Health Care Delivery Systems," by Meghan Grant, physical therapy major, minor in psychology
  • "Towards a New Interdisciplinary Approach to Forensic Anthropology: A Case Study of the Guatemalan Civil War of Twentieth Century," Candice Gage, anthropology major, minors in biology and multicultural studies
  • "Media, Memory, and Meaning: A Look at Four Presidents Through Film," Meghan Plate, American studies major, minor in history
  • "My Role in White Privilege: My Journey Guided by the Narratives of African-American Women and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye," Maria Allocco, social work and English double major, minor in community youth development
  • "Esports vs. Traditional Sports: Imposter or New Age?" by Ryley Amond, business management and economics double major
GPA Requirement and Probation Policy
Honors Handbook