This course introduces students to the college and the Honors Program, emphasizing the skills required for success in college and the Honors Program, interaction with faculty and students in the Honors Program, and participation in activities that promote leadership, high intellectual standards, and social involvement. The course satisfies the graduation requirements of College 101 and is taken in the first semester of an incoming student's first year. This course requirement is waived for transfer students with an Associate's Degree (GPA > 3.5) or who have completed at least one (1) year good in standing in the Honors Program of another college or university at the time of transfer.

Offered: Every Fall


Credit Hours: 2

This course provides advanced training in writing a variety of types of papers with emphasis placed on writing that requires the student to think critically, support generalizations, and appropriately acknowledge sources of information.

Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ACT/SAT

General Studies Outcome: Collegiate Skills - Effective Communication

Offered: Every Fall


Credit Hours: 3

A study of the methods of summarizing and interpreting data, elementary probability, and its relation to distributions. The meanings, importance, and application of the normal and binomial distributions and the methods of random sampling, testing of hypotheses, analysis of paired data, and interpretation of standardized test scores are covered. Students work on independent research projects to gain first- hand experience with the issues of the course.

General Studies Outcome: Collegiate Skills – Quantitative Reasoning

Offered: Every Spring

Credit Hours: 3

This course provides an overview and understanding of evil. This course includes an exploration of the definition and descriptions of evil as portrayed by religion, pop culture, selected American literature (short story and novel), and cultural anthropology. Additional focus will be given to the lives of serial murderers and law enforcement response to the acts of such people. Additional focus will be given to the topic of both victim and offender profiling.

General Studies Outcome: Methods of Inquiry & Explanatory Schema - Social Science

Offered: Every Spring


Credit Hours: 3

This course provides an overview and understanding of ritualistic crime and deviant cult activities, particularly as it applies to small folk groups, isolated societies, small towns, and rural environments. The course includes an exploration of the definition of evil as portrayed by religion, an understanding of various psychological, philosophical, sociological, and behavioral theories of evil, insights into the dynamics of groups that exhibit extreme violence or self-destructive behaviors and the people that lead them. Particular focus will be given to individual and group deviance, psychological dynamics of charismatic cult leaders and their followers, and church, community, civic agency/law enforcement responses to the acts of such people.

General Studies Outcome: Methods of Inquiry & Explanatory Schema - Social Science

Offered: Every Fall

Credit Hours: 3

This course will examine how people have interacted with the natural world, how they have shaped the nature around them, and how they have been shaped by it. Readings and discussions will focus on how ideas about nature and our understandings of the natural world has changed over time and how they have affected our relationships with it. The aim of this class is to provide students with the knowledge and the tools to be able to think critically about how history has shaped the present state of the earth and human relationships with it.

General Studies Outcome: Methods of Inquiry & Explanatory Schema - Social Science

Offered: Spring Even Years

Credit Hours: 3

This course examines the influence of epidemic diseases on the course of human history and explores the importance of disease to medical, scientific, sociological, religious, economic, environmental, political, agricultural, and jurisprudential aspects of societies. Students in the course will therefore develop an interdisciplinary understanding of disease and learn to integrate and synthesize information from widely disparate fields of endeavor into a comprehensive understanding of the topic. The importance of diseases is examined historically and related directly to contemporaneous events in public health in all major regions of the world. Expertise in biology or health-related fields is not required; students from all fields of study are encouraged to enroll.

Offered: As Needed

Credit Hours: 3

The course describes the development of democratic political systems and contemporary debates about democracy. Students will examine the strengths of, and challenges to, democratic government through readings, discussions, debates, and projects on subjects of historical and contemporary interest, including the trial of Socrates, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, the difficulties of newly-formed democracies in the 21st century, the psychology of voting behavior, war in democracies, and future prospects for the spread of democratic government.

Offered: As Needed

Credit Hours: 3

Forensic Psychology is the application of psychology to legal issues. This course will provide a foundational understanding of the intersection of psychology and the law. Special attention will be given to developing an understanding of the most prevalent mental disorders that are encountered in forensic evaluations and how forensic psychologists assists judges and juries in determining criminal responsibility and punishment. Students will learn about the insanity defense, capital murder and the death penalty, competency to stand trial, offender treatment, eye witness and expert testimony and child custody matters. Additional topics to be covered include the psychological underpinnings and motivations for sexual offenses, murder, and repeated criminal behavior.

Offered: Every Spring

Credit Hours: 3

The goal of this course is to explore complex global issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. The course examines how change and innovation are continuously transforming human endeavors such as technology, business, politics, laws, culture and arts. We will investigate how innovation and change can provide new solutions to the many challenges humanity faces, yet create novel problems and unintended consequences.

Prerequisite Required: HP 101


Generals Studies Outcome: Community, Regional & Global Studies

Offered: As Needed

Credit Hours: 3

This course examines how and why the natural world is portrayed in multiple areas of human endeavor, including art, literature, science, history, geography, anthropology, philosophy, religion, and economics and business. Specific topics within each discipline may vary among offerings. In each discipline, the examination of portrayals of the natural world includes understanding the motivation and intent, the aesthetics and utility, and the consequence of different portrayals of the natural world. The course is interdisciplinary and team-taught by 4-6 faculty members over the 2-course sequence. Completion of the course sequence satisfies the course-sequence requirement for the Honors Program.

Prerequisite Required: HP 101


Generals Studies Outcome: Perspectives on Values, Thought and Aesthetics

Offered: As Needed

Credit Hours: 3

This course examines how and why the natural world is portrayed in multiple areas of human endeavor, including art, literature, science, history, geography, anthropology, philosophy, religion, and economics and business. Specific topics within each discipline may vary among offerings. In each discipline, the examination of portrayals of the natural world includes understanding the motivation and intent, the aesthetics and utility, and the consequence of different portrayals of the natural world. The course is interdisciplinary and team-taught by 4-6 faculty members over the 2-course sequence. Completion of the course sequence satisfies the course-sequence requirement for the Honors Program.

Prerequisite Required: HP 101


Generals Studies Outcome: Perspectives on Values, Thought and Aesthetics

Offered: As Needed

Credit Hours: 3

On any given school day, approximately one out of six citizens is engaged in American public education as students, educators or support staff members. Universal public education is a uniquely American enterprise with a rich history and, given its status as a perennial lightning rod, a very uncertain future. Questions such as 1) What should the schooling process include or not include? 2) How can the schooling process be improved? and 3) What is the cost-benefit to society of the schooling process? - are questions that will be the focus of readings, discussion and debate in this course. This course will challenge students to think critically and broadly about the process of public education in the United States from past, present and future perspectives. In addition, students will learn about sixteen future trends and the five levers of the schooling process - structure, sample, standards, strategy and self - so as to form and articulate a framework of perception and facts that will enable students to be active participants in public education in the future as educators, parents and/or community members.

Prerequisite Required: HP 101


General Studies Outcome: Cultural Literacy, Diversity & Equity

Offered: As Needed


Credit Hours: 3

This course examines the phenomenon of genocide in world history in comparative and historical perspective, with a principal focus on the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Potential topics to be discussed may include ancient, medieval, and early modern cases, the extermination of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia, the Herero-Nama Genocide, the Armenian Genocide, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda

General Studies Outcome: Cultural Literacy, Diversity & Equity

Offered: Spring Odd

Credit Hours: 3