Honors Program
The honors program at Earlham is a unique opportunity for students to grow their interests and talents with a focus on their own personal career goals. Our students learn they can make a difference—change the world—through their individual abilities and actions.
And students will find opportunities for growth and resume-building through the Rhodes, Fullbright or Watson fellowships, undergraduate prizes like the Hult Prize, competitive internships or prestigious civic awards.
Joining the program
There are two paths into Earlham’s Honors Program. Based on traditional measures of academic achievement, students may be invited to join the Honors program before they arrive at Earlham. Or, any first-year student can also submit an Honors admissions project during the fall semester.
If a student completes an Honors admission project, their performance on that project is the only factor we consider. We don’t look at their grades, majors or other accomplishments.
Benefits and opportunities
As an honor student, you’ll gain access to:
- The Honors Advantage—$1,000 to help pay for grad school application fees, test-taking fees and visas.
- Honors housing, both within residence halls and (coming soon) in off-campus houses.
- New technology and the chance to use it creatively (e.g., the Honors Squirrel Machine to harness the power of Generative AI to create pictures of our Honors Mascot crying into its OChem textbook).
- Opportunities for collaborative research projects with faculty from your area of interest.
- Enhanced advising to get you closer to your goals and connect you with a network of alumni.
- Resume-building collaborative leadership opportunities.
- A strong and engaged cohort of peers.
Our honors faculty are here to support you. Reach out to learn more.
Past student projects
Whether you design quantitative literacy lessons for first-year students, organize a town hall event featuring two U.S. senate candidates, work with Earlham faculty on Network Theory (a method for modeling how things like information and diseases travel among populations) or design something new, there are endless opportunities to gain experience in your field(s) of interest.
Increasing transparency in the marketplace
Ruslan Dominic (’23) developed Harvest, a browser plugin that calculates an environmental sustainability score for products from different online retailers.
In the classroom and beyond
The Honors program helps students discover and develop their talents in the classroom, and beyond. Through regular programming and gatherings students will be informed of fellowships, connected with alumni and introduced to opportunities through Earlham’s Epic Centers. The Honors program is designed to support our students as they apply their passions to their future goals.
Honors also helps students through two experiences unique to our program: Honors Seminars and the Honors Pathway.
Honors Seminars
Through Honors Seminars, students will discover complex social problems that speak to their interests and values, and help them develop the technical and interpersonal skills needed to address these problems.
Honors Pathway
The Honors Pathway is an enhanced system of advising that connects students with opportunities in Earlham’s curriculum and co-curriculum along with internships, fellowships, projects and alumni networks, as part of a coordinated plan learning.
Courses and curriculum
If you join Honors this fall, you’ll take seven credits’ worth of Honors classes over the next three years:
One-credit seminars in which you’ll investigate, analyze and discover how to improve situations around the world. You’ll also be matched with an Earlham alum whose interests and talents are similar to your own.
A two-credit seminar that will help you apply qualitative, quantitative, analytical and abstract reasoning techniques to a complex real-world problem.
A three-credit project—with a team that may include other students, community members, alumni, companies and community organizations—that will help you develop and showcase your interest in improving the welfare of your fellow human beings along with your technical excellence, leadership and ability to collaborate.
Honors 350 will take place during your third year so that, during your fourth year, fellowship committees, employers and graduate schools will see compelling, detailed evidence of who you are and what you can do.
Want to learn more?
Nate Eastman
Honors program convener
For questions about the Honors Program, contact Nate Eastman, the program convener.