Teaching in Honors

Thank you for your interest in teaching for the Honors Program. If you have an idea for an innovative, interdisciplinary class focusing on discussion as a central pedagogical approach, consider teaching an honors course. The ideal honors course is centered on an original topic, taught seminar style, and committed to interdisciplinarity learning. Faculty interested in teaching an honors course can submit a proposal here. 

Why Teach in Honors?

  • Improve your teaching skills, especially in discussion-centered pedagogies
  • Develop a new, innovative course and teach it in-load
  • Work with a small group of talented students
  • Support high-impact student work, including creative and critical projects suitable for presentation in public forums, such as the Honors Symposium
  • Co-teach with a professor outside your department or college
  • Enhance your tenure file

What to Expect with Honors Students:

You can expect to encounter highly-engaged, enthusiastic students in Honors courses, but they come from a variety of majors across campus. Because of this, an Honors class should not be taught like upper division courses in your field. Instead, you will want to plan your teaching in a way that contextualizes course content and anticipates questions of relevance or meaning. Discipline- specific theories or language will need to be translated. The questions you field might be irreverent in the sense that they come from outside a particular disciplinary framework. This diversity makes for wonderful discussions during class!

Please also remember when planning your Honors course that we are an open-enrollment program. We accept every student who wants to join. Our graduates achieve high GPAs at the end of their undergraduate experience, but they may come to us in search of challenge and inspiration. With this in mind, please consider allowing students to resubmit their work for a better grade or to drop a low score before final grades are tallied. If a student wants to do better, let them.

Teaching Options: 

We offer 1-credit hour and 3-credit hour course options.

  We also offer one Eccles Faculty Fellowship each semester, which provides 6-hours of pay to your department so you may use 3-hours as release time for publishing or presenting around your course idea.  

  More information on all of these teaching options can be found on this webpage. You may also contact Christy Call at ccall2@weber.edu

HNRS 2830 or 2920

1-credit

If you’ve recently read a book, watched a movie, discovered a unique work of art or found an interesting piece of media that would make for a good discussion, this option might be right for you. These courses are light on homework and grading, meeting once a week for 50 minutes.
 

Example:

HNRS 2830: Young Adult Queer Literature & Television

This 1 credit-hour class will read a couple of the best titles in queer YA literature: Last Night at the Telegraph Club and Like a Love Story, in addition to watching queer stories on television. This class will investigate ways in which the genre has developed.


 

HNRS 1100 - 4990

3-credit

If you have a great idea for a course you’ve been wanting to teach or are interested in co-teaching or diving into a topic that doesn’t quite fit in your department, then consider teaching a 3-credit honors course. We cap our courses at 15 students, commonly feature interdisciplinary topics and favor discussion-based classes.

Example:

HNRS 2120 B SS: The Meaning of Life

Ever wondered about the meaning of life? Explore and examine the various answers that Western philosophers, thinkers, writers and historians have proffered to this timeless question since the Scientific Revolution through today.


 

HNRS 3900

Eccles Fellowship

The Honors Eccles Fellows Program encourages faculty to work on their scholarship as they teach. Selected faculty teach one 3-credit honors class and receive 6-credit hours of compensation. The fellowship also includes a funding stipend for the class experience. Learn more here!

Example:

HNRS 3900: Selling Emotion, Buying Feeling

What do amusement parks, shopping malls, and Las Vegas have in common? They are all spaces where emotions are bought and sold. The course explores connections between emotions and consumerism in America. We'll take a study away trip to Las Vegas to observe these “cathedrals of consumption” and how individuals are participating in them as both workers and consumers.
 

Course Proposal

The Honors Program features innovative, interdisciplinary courses. We welcome proposals for experimental subjects, approaches, and pedagogies. Please use the form below to submit course ideas. Upon receiving your proposal, we will quickly follow up to discuss arrangements. Note: We offer co-taught courses 2 credits instructional wage per faculty for a 3-credit class. 

The course proposal process is as follows:

  1. Submit your idea with a title, short explanation, topical outline, and contact information.
  2. Honors reviews materials and notifies you of application status.
  3. If approved, submit your preferred dates/times for the course, any necessary funding requests, and department payment information.
  4. Honors staff will contact you with a confirmed course schedule, details, and poster.

Course Proposal Form