Honors Program Activities and Events

HOOT (Honors Outdoor Orientation Trek) view photos

In August, incoming first-year Honors students arrive on campus a day earlier than the rest of the first-year students. The next day, when everyone else is moving in, honors program faculty, peer mentors, and first-year students board buses to travel to a local camp for a day-long retreat.  We solve problems, play games, eat, and participate in team-building exercises before the regular orientation begins later that evening. This is our most successful and highest rated event of the year.

Living Learning Community

The Honors first-year  students live together in a living learning community with a Resident Assistant who is an honors student.  The RA, Honors Program Director, first-year seminar faculty, peer mentors, and Honors Council work together to provide programming, service projects, and social activities to foster the unique needs of honors students.   Beginning Fall 2012 the Honors LLC will move to Schlosser Hall and institute a sophomore honors LLC.

Annual NCHC National Conference view photos

Every Fall semester the Director and a small group of honors students attend the National Collegiate Honors Council Conference, held in major cities around the country.  Presentations of individual research and honors program ideas by faculty, administrators and students are the hallmark of this conference.  Students also attend the Northeast Regional Collegiate Honors Council Conference.

Leadership Theory and Practice Service Projects

Every year the students in leadership seminar class plan community service projects and supervise first-year students in their execution.  This year we participated with the Chaplain's Office and the Center for Civic Engagement in the White House Interfaith Campus Service Challenge and served the Power Packs Project, Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, Church World Service Lancaster Refugee Resettlement Program and several local agencies serving food to clients in need.  Some past clients served by the leadership class projects include Masonic Homes, Elizabethtown Public Library, Greater Elizabethtown Area Recreation Services, Willow Valley Retirement Communities, Lancaster City Public Schools, House of His Creation, Milagro House, Vantage House, Brittany’s Hope, The Gate House, and Elizabethtown Child Care Center. 

Homecoming

The Honors Student Council participates in parade float competition and staffs a booth on the Midway.  In 2012 the Honors Student Council won first place in the float competition with Ellis Island. In 2009 we celebrated the fifth-year anniversary of the first graduating class of the Honors Program (2004) at a reception in the High Library, coinciding with its 20th anniversary celebration.

Graduation Banquet

Every spring during Senior Week, we treat the program graduates to a luncheon at the Circular Dining Room of the Hotel Hershey. Students receive their graduation medallions and graduation gifts from the program.

Field Trips and Guest Speakers

Many Honors Courses routinely take field trips and invite prominent guest speakers to class.

• HFYS 100 Big Theological Questions
• HFYS 100 Shakespeare Through Performance
• HFYS 100 Diversity, Identity and Social Justice
• HFYS 100 The Bible as Literature
• HFYS 100 Cryptologic Mathematics
• HFYS 100 Gotta Have It! The Science of Addiction
• HAN 111 Understanding Human Cultures
• HBI 111 Introduction to Biological Sciences
• HPC 105 Introduction to Psychology
• HPC 111 Introduction to Neuroscience
• HHI 112 History of Modern Asia
• HCH 207 Chemistry and Politics of AIDS and Cancer
• HMA 275 Math and Music
• HMA 270 History of Math
• HEN 252 Humor, Irony and Despair in Modern Literature:  Joyce, Kafka and Beckett
• HEN 253 Gaelic and Anglo Irish Ireland
• HRE 285 Amish, Brethren and Mennonites in the United States since 1850
• HRE 289 Communal and Utopian Societies
• HSO 224 The Amish in Modern Society
• HON 301 Thesis Preparation
• HON 305 Leadership Theory and Practice