College Requirements

The College aims to provide students with a rigorous educational experience that emphasizes high-impact learning practices and enrichment opportunities designed to help students mature into skilled researchers, innovators, and artists. In addition, the Honors College will promote collaboration between students, between students and faculty, and between students and the community. We shall draw on the regional resources that make UMass Dartmouth unique, such as our historical and cultural resources, to develop a College that has a local focus with a global vision. The College emphasizes the interactions of three dimensions that result in an optimal teaching and learning environment - integrated community, promotion of academic excellence, and bounded freedom - to allow innovation in a supportive environment and give students freedom and responsibility for their education.

General Requirements

Graduating as a Commonwealth Honors Scholar requires you to take a minimum of 24 credits. These are broken down as 21 coursework credits and a minimum of 3 APEX credits (this is the final project that all Honors students complete). Each College/Major may require a specific set of courses. You may take 6 of these coursework credits by Contracting (Honorizing) a regular non-Honors course. Please see the Curriculum Sheets below and the Honors College Handbook for details. Transfer students should contact Kristin Kadlec (kkadlec@umassd.edu) prior to enrolling in classes for help in creating an academic plan for their college career.

In some cases a college or department may identify a required course as a "carve-out." This means that Honors students will be taking the class with non-Honors students, but will be enrolled in a different section identified as an Honors section. "Carve-out" classes will be designed to produce greater intellectual engagement with the material. Students can expect to meet 3-4 times per semester with the instructor outside of the scheduled class time.