Academically exceptional students who have already been accepted to Wilkes University are invited to apply to the Honors Program.
Honors components enable students to pursue breadth, depth, complexity, and/or interdisciplinary within their undergraduate education.
This means that the Honors Program as a whole cultivates opportunities for:
- independent work, including research or creative performance;
- experiential learning, including study abroad or internships; and
- engagement with the unfamiliar, including people, places or ideas new to the student.
Specific Opportunities
- honors coursework that rewards ambition for more expansive academic challenges
- grant funding to support study abroad, research, internship, conference and similar co-curricular experiences outside of class
- Honors housing for first-year residential honors students to build connections among those of different backgrounds and interests
- Honors lounge and office that offers space to gather with fellow Honors students, as well as candy, hot chocolate, water, tea, coffee, and whiteboards for group sessions;
- a $500 educational stipend to support educational needs (the first year)
- a $1000 housing stipend for students living on campus (all four years)
- preferential course selection to support honors students’ ambitions when registering for classes that allows Honors students to register before any other group
- no additional cost for course overload related to honors work to ease students’ pursuit of their academic ambitions
- social events such as field trips, international travel, service trips, dinners and access to notable speakers to connect students with each other and with new experiences and potential mentors beyond campus
- special notation on transcript and recognition at Commencement
Skills Developed
- critical thinking (ability to make evidence-based arguments and judgments)
- meta-awareness (thinking not only about what is happening, but also about how and why it is happening, in order to act purposefully)
- comfort with ambiguity, uncertainty and the unfamiliar
- problem solving
- project management
- clear and persuasive writing
- clear and persuasive oral presentation.
Such skills advance:
- intellectual, personal and professional development
- contributions to the campus community
- post-graduate success, whether through employment or continued education