The Honors Program at the University of St. Thomas provides a framework within which outstanding men and women can pursue excellence, leadership, and what the ancients called magnanimitas or “greatness of the soul.” The program’s unique design centers around a community of students and professors committed to the intellectual life. Placed in small classes that emphasize dialogue and conversation, Honors students enjoy the special interdisciplinary benefit of team-lead seminars that focus on original, classical texts. More than the accumulation of information, learning in the Honors Program is the development of intellectual habits or virtues through intensive study and practice.
All Honors classes are team taught by two professors from different disciplines. Rather than lectures, these seminars are conducted as Socratic discussions where students and professors explore the assigned books through conversation.
In the Honors Program at UST, students read the books that have influenced the “great conversation” which has spanned millennia. The exchange of ideas occurs between students and professors face to face rather than through the medium of online discussion boards.