Honors Assessment — Student Orientation

In a minute

Honors asks you to do something no single class does: think across disciplines. Each semester you take on a disciplinary lens — the way a scientist, an ethicist, or an analyst reasons — and you bring it into a shared conversation with peers who hold other lenses. Over four semesters you learn to combine those ways of knowing. You're recognized for how well you reason and how your thinking grows, not for memorizing content.

Your consultant lens

In each honors course you inhabit a consultant identity — a professional thinker built from that course's discipline. You ask the questions that discipline asks, use the evidence it uses, and — importantly — you learn what it can't see on its own. That boundary, its blind spot, is where other disciplines come in.

Epidemiologist

Asks: who is affected, how many, what's the trend? Speaks in rates.

Blind spot: shows who and how many — not whether it's just.

Ethicist

Asks: is this fair, who bears the burden, what would justice require?

Blind spot: shows whether it's just — not whether it's feasible.

When your lens meets another — the Epidemiologist's "30-year gap" meeting the Ethicist's "is that gap an injustice?" — that friction is where real interdisciplinary thinking happens.

Four semesters, one arc

Integrative learning can only be seen after you've worked through several lenses, so it builds across four semesters:

S1 · Identify

Think from within one lens. A learning semester — it sets your baseline, it isn't a judgment.

S2 · Focus

Apply your lens to a problem; engage a peer from another discipline.

S3 · Analyze

Hold two ways of knowing at once; name what each reveals and misses.

S4 · Synthesize

Bring it together in a capstone reflection — where your growth becomes visible.

First semester is a "mulligan." You're still learning the model, so your first scores set a starting line to grow from — they're never held against you.

The shared discussion — and shared projects

The heart of the assessment is a discussion in the Honors Hub, around a shared complex problem. Each semester you write as your consultant and respond to peers two ways:

↔ Horizontal

Engage a peer from a different discipline family — recognize what their way of knowing reveals that yours can't.

↕ Vertical

Engage a peer in your same role (or one you held before) — deepen your lens through dialogue.

In some courses you'll also work on a shared project or panel across two paired courses. There, your work is reviewed by each instructor from their own disciplinary perspective — so you see your ideas through more than one lens at once.

How you're recognized

Your work is scored on a five-part rubric (adapted from the AAC&U Integrative Learning framework) — on your reasoning, not your facts. A thoughtful post that truly reasons like its discipline scores higher than a fact-perfect post that reasons generically.

Do you think authentically from your discipline?Role Fidelity

Do you use the right kind of evidence, well?Evidence Integration

Do you name what your lens can't see?Blind Spot Awareness

Do you engage peers with real depth?Peer Engagement

Do you combine lenses into something new?Integration Across Roles

The capstone

After four semesters of inhabiting different lenses, your capstone reflection (a short piece, 500–750 words) traces your growth: What patterns emerged? What can you see now that no single lens could show you? How does it transfer? This is where integrative learning — the thing that makes honors honors — becomes visible in your own words.