USM Honors Program

Our Courses

Take one to two Honors courses per semester along with your major courses. Each semester builds upon the last until you are ready to research and write a self-designed thesis.

First-Year

HON 100: Thinking and Writing in Honors
This class introduces you to a writing method that strengthens your skills and invites you to reflect and explore your thinking. Students have told us this was one of their favorite classes at USM. What a great way to start!

HON 101: Wisdom Stories From Antiquity
Learn how to recognize the resemblances between ancient stories, images, ideas and your own growth and understanding in the context of contemporary cultures.

HON 102: Truth(s), Lie(s), and Legacy(s) in a Medieval Mindscape
Are you curious to know how past ideas of Truth give insight into our current debates and problems? This course explores the functions of religion in society, how it defines the boundaries of community and thereby renders some as outsiders.

HON 103: Religious and Scientific Perspectives on Human Origins and the Human Body *SENCER
From where do we draw our ideas about human nature and the human body? How do these perspectives reflect historical changes in society, culture and science and how are they still changing?

HON 105: Calculating and Reasoning with Symbolic Logic
How is mathematics a language?  How do the rules of that language inform and support the ways we establish the truth of our conclusions? You will learn how to use mathematics to evaluate how well actual data confirms (or refutes) scientific hypotheses or predictions.

Mid-Career

HON 201K: Interdisciplinary Inquiry in the Sciences of the Human Body *SENCER
Students rotate between labs experiences and seminars on social history and ethical dimensions of science. You will create educational materials and/or panel discussions on important topics such as bioethics, vaccinations and public health policy.

HON 202: Progress, Process, or Permanence: All That is Solid Melts Into Air
Can there be such a thing as “progress,” or is all change only “process”? Is any form of certainty or “permanence” available? Does our “modern” perspective give us a unique point of view for addressing these issues?  

HON 203: Environmental, Population, Behavior, and Global Change *SENCER
How do these four things function separately and how can we prepare for the effects they have on each other?

Concluding/Capstone

HON 301 A & B: Cultural Practices and Ambiguous Identities
Use theory to analyze texts on the topics of cultural, political, economic, sexual, and racial production of marginal identities and do an ethnographic field study through your involvement with a local community. A recent graduate says this course helped him land an international internship.

HON 311: Thesis Workshop I
This writing intensive course functions as a research community and marks the turn in your development as a student from a thinker and a writer into a researcher.

HON 312: Thesis II
Your thesis committee of three faculty advisors will guide your work. You will give an oral presentation on your findings. Your thesis will be bound and archived both for the Honors Program Library and for the USM Library, where it will be catalogued and made available to other researchers.

*SENCER: These courses were designed through a collaboration with several departments at USM, the General Education Council and SENCER Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities