Honors

Philosophy through Sound: Understanding the Music of John Cage

John Cage is one of the most important and significant American composers and thinkers of the 20th Century. His music challenged conventional notions of music, sound, and the concert experience. It is often his words and writings instead of his music that garner more attention from philosophers and musicians. This class will examine his life, philosophy, and work.

Religion and Science

Students will examine issues like evolution, death, and the afterlife, healing and alternative medicine, and stem cell research in order to investigate the relationships between religion and science. This course asks students to consider how a better understanding of science as well as awareness of multiple religious perspectives can help us understand the complexity of issues in which religion and science come into conflict, conversation, and/or collaboration.

Diagnosing Art

Brain function and its manifestation in the visual arts has long been a topic of speculation and discussion. Students will explore theories explaining unique brain functions of famous artists and will be charged with investigating the value of such theories. The first half of the course will be devoted to lectures on selected artists and the medical/psychological issues that supposedly afflicted them. The second half of the course will provide the students with the opportunity for trips to the Cleveland Museum of Art/Allen museum to view works first hand, to conduct research on their chosen topics, and ultimately to present their research to the class.

Put Wealth Within Reach

Students will be provided an overview of personal financial planning to help individuals and families live more securely by understanding money management, investing tax planning, and major life purchases. By living below your means and saving regularly, you can retire earlier and live comfortably. Your role as leaders in your community will also be addressed. The course is taught in an interactive and engaging manner to create a positive learning environment.

With flexibility and self-direction in mind, honors options allow a student to turn any non-honors course into an honors experience by adding an additional project.

Hannah Nagy '20, Biology: For her Environmental Politics class and under the advisement of professor Franklin Lebo, Hannah researched and completed a paper discussing how the field of Biomimicry can help improve the healthcare system.

Rachel Neuerer '20, Public Health: As part of her Techniques of Spanish Translation course, Rachel partnered with the Cleveland Department of Public Health to translate various documents about diabetes into Spanish for the greater Cleveland area.

Stephen Tsambarlis '20, Music Education: Stephen transcribed a motet from Ottaviano Petrucci’s “Harmonice Musices Odhecaton” from white mensural notation into modern notation and rehearsed a small chamber group to perform Marbrianus de Orto’s Ave Maria.

Honors service-learning classes give students an opportunity to connect their classroom learning to the lives and organizations of the surrounding community. Students in a service-learning section of honors English write grants for local nonprofits, and students in a course on social justice serve meals at an area shelter and conduct historical research for a Native American organization.

As one of three pillars of the honors program, our focus on student-directed research is about empowering students to learn to ask their own questions and seek sophisticated answers. With numerous options available, honors students pursue research in every discipline with the guidance of a faculty mentor.

Every honors program student will culminate his/her college experience with a thesis project tailored to each student's needs and interests. While many projects take the form of a traditional thesis focused either on laboratory or text-based research, other students choose creative or technical projects.

R. Justin Frankeny '18, "Sincere Art or Selling Out? Contemporary Art Composers and the Conflict of Creativity, Funding, and Accessibility"

Zachary Stahl '18, "The Effect of Prenatal Exposure on the Development of Food Allergies"

Paige Lindauer '18, "Bridging the Gap for Refugee Children: Promoting native Language (L1) Literacy Through Parent-Child Book Reading"

Additional opportunities to pursue research and produce original creative work abound at BW, many of which can generate honors credit. Honors students frequently participate in summer scholars, a competitive, funded, summer research program. Others work during the school year on collaborative research or creative projects through faculty/student collaborative research courses. Students who have completed research projects are able to get support from the honors program to present their research at academic conferences in their areas of study, or can go with the honors program to present at the Mid-East Honors Association conference each spring.

Aspiring OB/GYN physician Sarah Cunningham '16 united her passion for women's health issues with research relating to her public health major. With partial funding from the BW honors program, she traveled to Uganda to conduct field research — an opportunity she described as a dream come true. 

Working under the tutelage of a leading medical school professor, honors student Benjamin Brown '15 is listed as a co-author for a groundbreaking research study published in a renowned journal.

Each fall, the honors leadership through mentoring program teams our upperclassmen with our incoming first-year students for a mentoring experience that revolves around service. Mentors and mentees develop lasting relationships by making meaningful contributions to the lives of others together.

Dedicated to holistic education, the honors program sees community engagement as an essential element of student growth and development. As one of the pillars of the honors program, service to our communities helps students develop transferable skills as well as deepening their awareness of the wider world around them.

The David & Frances Brain Center for Community Engagement offers a wide variety of opportunities to get involved in service, some of which can generate honors credit hours or can be financially supported by honors. Honors students attend alternative break programs, traveling around the country to serve over University breaks. Project Affinity is a summer service program that counts as an honors experience by placing students in nonprofit internships.

This past spring, the honors leadership board led a campus-wide drive that collected nearly 3,000 personal care items for Trials for Hope, a local nonprofit outreach program.

Honors students have access to enhanced educational opportunities designed to foster long-term intellectual, personal and career growth. These include unique, interdisciplinary courses that encourage creative and critical thinking, opportunities to be mentored by upperclassmen and then to become a mentor yourself, career-development workshops, leadership training, service-learning opportunities, participation in academic conferences and more. You are also part of a community of learners. Many honors students have met their friends for life through the program because of the bonding that took place freshman year through shared living in the residence hall, enrichment activities, classes and other community-building experiences. Mentoring and personal development are also a major part of the honors experience. In addition to having an academic faculty advisor in your major, you will work closely with the honors program director, Dr. Amy Story, and associate director, Margaret Stiner, to achieve your personal and professional goals.

Honors students have access to special educational opportunities designed to foster their long-term intellectual and personal growth, thus setting them up to be more successful in their applications to jobs or graduate school. Having studied a second language, completed a higher level math, written a senior thesis and participated in internships, research experiences and substantive service work are all important markers that demonstrate a commitment to go the extra mile to develop your abilities and to take full advantage of the opportunities presented to you. Our coursework and personal development experiences will help you become a better leader, team-member, critical thinker, and communicator—all skills that are highly sought-after in the working world. The diverse body of experiences and competency across skill sets is what sets our students apart from their competition.

The honors program has a few graduation requirements that go a beyond what you might have to do for your major or the regular BW core curriculum.

• Complete a minimum math level of pre-calculus (MTH 140) or Honors Math (MTH 151H).
• Reach intermediate level second language proficiency (equivalent of two years of college language study), or one year of study in two languages.
• Write a senior thesis, a project intended to give you an opportunity to work with a faculty mentor and produce a final product that will assist you in reaching your long-term goals.
• Take a total of 24 credit hours in honors (about 20% of your total hours required to graduate).

The 24 credit hours will be made up of a variety of honors courses and experiences. Some courses are basic requirements, like the first-year English course (ENG 131), while others are special topics courses. Honors students can also fulfill honors elective credits through a wide range of options that encourage them to broaden their experiences, engage with community partners and build their resumes. For example, students can get honors credit for studying abroad, partaking in substantive service work, securing competitive and educational internships and doing independent research with a faculty mentor.

The honors program does require a somewhat more rigorous core curriculum than that required of the non-honors BW student, as noted above. In terms of the experience in honors courses, there is no reason to believe that these courses will be “harder” than non-honors. Instead, honors courses are of a different nature than non-honors. They are intended to be interdisciplinary explorations of specific topics and are designed to help students make connections between theoretical ideas and real-world experiences. Additionally, what you get in honors courses that is different is a more engaged and well-prepared group of classmates and thus a higher level of discussion about and comprehension of the material in the class. Honors classes do not necessarily involve longer papers, harder reading, more homework, etc. than non-honors courses.

The honors program works to create a schedule that allows the most flexibility for our students as possible, and provides priority registration times to ease our students’ ability to schedule all of the courses they may need. Honors classes typically range from 1-3 credits (most courses in departments are either 3 or 4 credits), so they are smaller and easier to fit into a demanding course schedule. We also have a number of ways that students can get credit in honors without sitting in an honors class. You can turn ANY course into an honors course by working with the honors director and the faculty member teaching the course to design an additional project that goes beyond the class curriculum.  You can also get honors credit for study abroad or for internships, to give two examples out of many. Overall, while most honors courses will not be classes that fulfill your major requirements, they will fit in with your major(s) and minor(s) and should not add time to your graduation clock. 

The honors program values having a community of students that is inclusive of all areas of study on campus, including the Conservatory of Music. While study in the Conservatory is demanding of students both inside and outside the classroom, completion of the honors program is still possible and offers great advantages to Conservatory students in terms of broadening their community and base of experiences and opportunities at BW. 

• 3.5 or higher high school GPA
• ACT – 27 Composite with 24 English and 25 Math
• SAT – 1290 with 560 Reading & Writing and 570 Math
• We also look for second language study, AP courses and other signs of a rigorous course of academic study in high school.

In addition to the students who meet the established criteria, other qualified students may be issued an invitation to join the program based on recommendations from the admissions committee and honors program director. If you would like to be considered for the program, please contact either admissions or the honors program to alert us to your interest.

The honors program curriculum culminates in a senior thesis that allows students to select a topic of interest and engage in extensive research with a faculty mentor. Honors theses range from traditional in-depth studies of authors or texts to writing creative works like novellas, plays and musical compositions to constructing case-studies, business plans or web-portfolios. Ultimately, the thesis is a “product” that students can use to market themselves to graduate programs or employment opportunities.

Yes! The honors leadership board organizes service, leadership, social and educational programs throughout the school year for the honors program. Events include a fall picnic, documentary viewings and discussions, holiday celebrations, trips to local events and service drives to collect items for local communities in need.

Students in the honors program receive priority course-registration times in order to help them accommodate our additional expectations. Incoming honors students experience a two-day welcome orientation prior to the start of fall classes in order to start bonding as a class and becoming integrated into the honors community. Honors students can also elect to live in Honors living and learning communities, which are dedicated to fostering academic excellence and interpersonal growth.

Throughout the academic year, honors offers many opportunities for career- and leadership-development experiences, including our leadership-through-mentoring program and our leadership-and-career-development workshop. 

The honors program does not award students with scholarships. However, honors students are able to apply to the program to request funding to support travel to conferences, community service trips, study abroad or the purchase of research supplies. Students can apply for up to $1,000 to study abroad. 

We encourage all students who meet the qualifications for the honors program to apply for admission. Students who are interested in the honors program and may require accommodations are encouraged to contact director Dr. Amy Lebo at (440) 826-2266 or at alebo@bw.edu or associate director Margaret Stiner at (440) 826-2242 or at mstiner@bw.edu.

The BW Honors Program works with all of our students to meet their educational needs and to achieve their academic and personal potential. The BW Office of Disability Services for Students creates usable, equitable, inclusive learning environments for qualified students with disabilities by ensuring equal access to all University programs, services and activities — including those of the honors program.

Yes! The transfer-admission qualifications for the honors program include:

• 3.5 or higher college GPA
• Readiness for or completion of college-credit-bearing pre-calculus math or BW honors math
• Completion of the equivalent of BW English 131 (with minimum grade of B+)
  or ACT – 27 Composite with 24 English
  or SAT – 1290 with 560 reading & writing
• Application to the BW Honors Program

If you have earned BW-transferable college credits in a college honors program, you may transfer up to 12 honors credits to the BW Honors Program.

If you want to begin your BW experience as a transfer honors student, please contact director Dr. Amy Lebo at (440) 826-2266 or at alebo@bw.edu or associate director Margaret Stiner at (440) 826-2242 or at mstiner@bw.edu. We will help you understand the requirements of the honors program and discuss options for fulfilling the requirements within your semesters at BW.

We’d love to hear from you! You can contact the honors program office to speak with director Dr. Amy Lebo at (440) 826-2266 or at alebo@bw.edu or with associate director Margaret Stiner at (440) 826-2242 or at mstiner@bw.edu.