Director
Catherine Buell
Objectives for the Honors Program
The Honors Program provides an enriched, stimulating set of courses for the best-prepared and most qualified students. Students will be admitted to the program in the freshman year. Students who complete the program do so in place of the Liberal Arts and Sciences requirements. Students may also apply for admission into an Honors minor in the freshman or sophomore years.
The Honors Program emphasizes the following skills and areas of expertise: conceptual and applied knowledge; communication, collaboration, and organization; problem solving and synthesizing; initiative and creativity; ethical reasoning, and citizenship and service. Students are expected to apply their learning in both the college and the larger community. A GPA of 3.3 must be maintained to continue in the program.
Criteria of Invitation to the Honors Program
Freshmen students are invited to join the Honors Program based on their high school preparation, SAT scores, and documented evidence of leadership potential.
Students may also apply for entrance into the Honors Minor. Students applying for the minor must have completed at least one semester at Fitchburg State University with a GPA of at least 3.3 and must apply for admission to the Honors Director.
Curriculum for the Honors Program
The curriculum consists of a freshmen foundation year, 4 honors seminars to be taken in the sophomore and junior years, and 2 semesters of Senior thesis. In addition students must demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language at the intermediate II level and take either a math course, an upper level course for their major, or HON 1700 Honors Applied Statistics.