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Honors Program: University Scholars

SPU Honors

ɬÀï·¬ Pacific students in the Honors program are intellectually curious, seek truth, and love to learn about everything.

The Program

The SPU Honors Program is an accelerated alternative honors track to the regular for intellectually curious and motivated students. The program is guided by the framing question, “What does it mean to be human?” Its challenging, inquiry-based, and interconnected curriculum asks students to go deeper into the key questions at the heart of our lives, our faith, and our world.

Honors at SPU is also an important vehicle for fostering equity and inclusion through a curriculum that focuses explicitly on knowledge construction in order to both understand and interrogate it. This commitment is foundational to the liberal arts tradition as well as to faithful academic scholarship, informed by values of intellectual hospitality, inclusion and embrace, and “loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

Successful completion of all requirements leads to a Bachelor of Arts degree in Honors Liberal Arts as a second or co-major only. A minor in Honors Liberal Arts is also available for interested students.

As a University Scholar, you will:

  • Learn from and engage with world-class faculty from across the disciplines.
  • Push yourself to use the intellectual, personal, creative, and social abilities God has given you.
  • Discover what it means to learn in a rich intellectual community of fellow scholars.
  • Forge deep, lifelong friendships with other honors students over your years in the program.
  • Graduate prepared to join the ranks of SPU honors alumni now in successful careers and graduate programs.

“What does it mean to be human?”

This question is an over-arching theme of the Honors curriculum. And we ask this question in an inter-connected and interdisciplinary set of courses, forming a close-knit learning community of students and faculty members seeking and inquiring together.  More detailed honors course specifics can be found here (.doc).

If you are interested in learning more, explore this website for further information about courses, professors, students, alumni, and application information.

You can also contact the Honors Program Director Joshua Tom.

Faculty Contact

Joshua Tom

Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of the Honors Program
PhD, Baylor University

Email: jtom@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2547
Office: Alexander Hall Room 311

Apply to the Honors Program

Connect with past and current SPU Honors students on Linkedin

What's amazing about the SPU honors program

Liz Knodel is one of SPU's outstanding University Scholars and the winner of the President's Citation for 2018 (as the top graduate of the year). Here she tells us more about the amazing honors program at SPU -- and how it helped change her life.