A Picture of the Three-Year Experience in Honors Study at Augustana


Why do we offer a three-year honors experience at a four-year liberal arts college? Because we know what that fourth year is like for talented students. Applying for jobs or places in graduate schools. Finishing up that major, often with a demanding seminar or senior paper. Acting in that last play, playing in that last concert, or hitting that last RBI double. We realize that talented people are busy people.

Furthermore, we realize that college students need proof of their excellent qualifications by their junior years, so that in the fall of their senior years they can create persuasive applications to grad school, med school, the Peace Corps, or any other desired destination. That's why we calculate our entire honors experience to foster intellectual growth over three years, culminating in the junior year with a truly independent and creative final project.

Here is a picture of the three-year Augustana College honors experience:

First Year:

  • Foundations
    A first-year option in Great Books and Great Ideas, involving four of your ten first-year courses. Click here for a further description.


    • or

  • Logos: Discourse and Discovery in Science
    A first-year option in the history of science and the conduct of scientists today, involving four of your ten first-year courses. Click here for a further description.


Second Year:

  • Liberal Studies 220: Certainty/Uncertainty
    A second-year course designed to combine graduates of Foundations and Logos in a productive exploration of key questions. How do science and civilization interact? What do scientists and humanists have to teach each other? Are they really so different from one another? Can they agree on the fundamental values and certainties? What can we be certain about in this complicated world?


Third Year:

  • Liberal Studies 330: Capstone Tutorial
    The "capstone" holds the whole structure together. That's what we expect from this course, which you design. After two years of honors study, you're ready to explore ideas on your own, conducting your own research, asking your own questions, creating your own work of art or scholarship. You choose a faculty member to help you, and design a final honors project of your own.



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