Honors Program
Overview
A Community of Learners for High-Achieving and Motivated Students
The goal of the OLLU Honors Program is to enhance the University experience for undergraduate students by developing a community of learners in which the participants are engaged as whole persons (intellectual, spiritual, emotional, social) and engaged in the life of the larger community.
The program offers opportunities to work closely with faculty passionate about their subjects and teaching, socialize with highly motivated students, and better prepare themselves for post-baccalaureate studies.
The Honors Program is a member of the National Collegiate Honors Council and the Great Plains Regional Council, giving students the opportunities to present research to other honors students and faculty at both national and regional conferences.
Our Guiding Principles
As a westside, Hispanic-serving Catholic university founded by the Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence (CDPs), the OLLU Honors Program is built around six guiding principles derived from our university’s mission and history:
- Cultural responsivity
- Community
- Service
- Faith
- Research as service
- Women as agents of social change
Barrio Sagrado: Raíces, Identidad y Cultura
At the heart of the OLLU Honors Program is BRICS, an undergraduate community-based research experience focusing on San Antonio’s westside. This cohort modeled program allows students to become compassionate leaders in their community, all while developing civic engagement, vocational discernment, and highly marketable place-based research skills.
About BRICS
For every incoming Honors cohort, an umbrella topic relevant to our westside community will be selected. The cohort will then spend the next four years narrowing down and studying this topic in-depth, in the community, from multiple disciplinary angles and using multiple research modalities, under the expert guidance of different faculty members and the Honors Program Director. Their findings will serve as a useful resource to community members and city decision makers and will be presented annually to non-profit organizations and city leadership.
Each Honors cohort brings with them a new topic and new knowledge, helping to fortify the relationship between OLLU and the westside, BRIC by BRIC.
Benefits of Participation in the Honors Program
Program Curriculum
The honors curriculum offers students enhanced, thought provoking classes, more classroom discussions involving peers, and less rote memorization, as well as planned activities such as overnight retreats and trips to special events. Honors students complete four required HNRS courses and one capstone project.
HNRS 1300: Exploring the University
This course is designed to introduce incoming Honors students to major concepts within, about, and concerning a university. Furthermore, it explores the specific history of OLLU as a university and how it is oriented within the westside of San Antonio. Through service-learning with the CDPs, students will begin to explore the permeable boundary between OLLU and the westside. During this course, students will also complete their CITI training (certifying them to participate ethically in future research), learn how to conduct a literature review, and narrow down the topic of investigation that they will pursue over the course of the next three years.
HNRS 2300: Community as context
This course examines community and all the factors that constitute it, fully engaging in the challenges and visions for positive change. Building off of the literature review conducting in HNRS 1300, students will have an idea of what they think the problem facing our community is; now is their opportunity to ask the community what the reality of the problem may be. Students will partner with a local non-profit organization to conduct a community needs assessment, including individual and small-group interviews with clients, to better assess the needs of the community on the ground. Findings will be presented to the non-profit partner at the end of the semester.
HNRS 3300: Leadership and Civic responsibility
In this course, students are introduced to the principles of leadership and how these principles relate to becoming an effective, empathetic leader. Using secondary data gathered from local organizations, students will conduct a gap analysis related to their problem of inquiry to determine what is being done to address their identified problem. Through this experience students will learn what it means to meet with leaders of various organizations, and the challenges faced by those who lead. Their qualitative and quantitative findings and a set of recommendations will be presented to the heads of local non-profit organizations and community leaders at the end of the semester.
HNRS 4300: Women, Spirituality and Service
In this final course, students will be led through an exploration of Catholic Social Teaching, women leaders in the faith, and feminist approaches to community development and social change. This course serves as the capstone course in our Honors program as it brings together the history and legacy of OLLU. Having conducted ample community-based research on their topic and offered recommendations to local non-profit organizations, students will now invite the community back to the heart of the westside: our beautiful campus. Students will organize and facilitate an on-campus resource fair, workshop(s), or other event specific to their identified problem, and will then have the opportunity to reflect on how their experience connects to spirituality and the legacy of OLLU and the CDPs.
Capstone Project
During their final semester of study, Honors students will individually complete a Capstone project consisting of a written paper and a presentation open to all faculty and students. The topic is of their choosing, with approval from the Honors Program Director, but should be relevant to their major, and must reflect at least four of the six guiding principles of the Honors Program. Students are encouraged, but not required, to apply their disciplinary lens to the social problem studied by their Honors cohort through the HNRS courses in their Capstone project so that the Capstone serves as an extension of the HNRS courses.
Submit your application through mail or in person to:
Brittany Chozinski, PhD, MPH
Honors Program Director
Moye Hall, Room 203
411 SW 24th Street
San Antonio, Texas 78207
honors@ollusa.edu