How the Honors Program Works

The Honors Program is designed to challenge students academically and also to engage them in a community of student-scholars. In order to help build this community, incoming honors students live together in Bergstrom Hall. The second floor lounge of Bergstrom is the center for discussions, socials and Student Honors Council meetings.

Incoming honors students also enroll in one of several special “honors” sections of a common course. This class satisfies a general education requirement, as well as serving as a foundational course for the honors students. As students continue in the program, they enroll in special sections of general education courses that are designated as “honors” courses. These sections have an even smaller enrollment than traditional classes, and only honors students may register for these courses. An honors student normally completes six courses designated as honors courses. As seniors, honors students complete an honors project.

The program has been designed to be as flexible as possible, while still maintaining the rigor and quality that such an honors program must have.

For more on the academic course requirements, reading lists and academic expectations for honors students, visit the academic requirements web page.

Honors Program recognition
Those who complete this special course of study receive the designation “Graduate of the Honors Program” on their diploma and transcript. Each honors student is required to be in the top 20 percent of his/her college class, or maintain a cumulative 3.5 GPA or better, to receive this citation.

For information on admission to the Honors Program, visit the admission to the program web page.

Honors Tutorials
An exciting and popular option for honors students are the Honors Tutorials. Honors Tutorials are mini-courses, capped at four students per instructor, that meet outside of regular class times over a three week period. Honors students sign up for a series of three tutorials (nine weeks) and receive 1/2 course credit upon successful completion of the tutorials. A semester of tutorials also takes the place of one honors class. Students may choose to replace an honors course with tutorials twice over their four years at St. Norbert College. Tutorial topics range from "The Chemistry of Chocolate" to "Twelve Diseases that Changed History," from "Slavery Chronicles" to "Fly Fishing."