Oakton offers Honors courses for students with strong achievement records in high school and for students who have excelled at Oakton. Honors at Oakton includes Core Seminars, small, challenging honors sections of regular courses taught by outstanding faculty, as well as an active co-curricular and social program. Honors courses transfer either as general education or elective credits. All Honors courses are specially marked on the transcript. There are two ways to participate in Honors at Oakton. Students admitted to Honors may:
- take one or several Honors classes and Honors contracts in areas of their interest, or
- pursue the Honors Scholar degree designation, which requires 18 credit hours of Honors course work including one Honors Core Seminar, a 6-credit-hour interdisciplinary learning experience comprised of two courses taught as a learning community.
Honors students have transferred to many colleges and universities including Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin, and Grinnell. Students enrolled in career programs at Oakton may fulfill general education requirements in appropriate Honors courses.
Requirements
A new student must have one of the following to be admitted to Honors at Oakton:
- a 3.5 GPA at any accredited college
- an ACT score of 25 or an SAT score of 1200.
A currently enrolled student may be eligible for Honors at Oakton by maintaining a GPA of 3.5 or above for at least 12 credit hours of college course work, or a 3.25 GPA with at least one instructor recommendation. Students with slightly lower GPA may request an interview to determine eligibility. Students with associate’s degrees or bachelor’s degrees may also be admitted.
For more information, contact the Honors co-coordinators or visit https://www.oakton.edu/academics/special-programs/honors/ for a list of Honors courses offered each semester.
Program Learning Outcomes
All Honors courses – core seminars, single-section and co-listed courses, and contracts – must meet at least two of the following general education learning objectives, each one from a different category, that are appropriate to the specific course and discipline. It is expected that Core Seminars will choose at least one objective that has a multidisciplinary focus or emphasis.
1. Honors Critical Thinking Outcomes
- Identify and/or apply multiple disciplinary approaches to defining and solving problems within the discipline.
- Evaluate and interpret ideas, concepts, and methods from multiple disciplines to a question or issue.
- Employ principles of academic research or performance skills appropriate to the course and discipline.
2. Honors Communication Outcomes
- Use creative thinking and writing skills to express complex ideas in multiple formats appropriate to the course and discipline.
- Present ideas, facts, theories and arguments through multiple disciplinary perspectives, using appropriate technologies, to a variety of audiences.
- Collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds and abilities.
3. Honors Literacy Outcomes
- Identify and/or articulate the disciplinary, historical, or cultural assumptions behind core or central arguments within a text (how the questions are framed/how they are answered).
- Analyze and explain connections among knowledge learned inside and outside the classroom to solve problems.
- Analyze and explain connections between different disciplinary approaches to textual interpretation and/or knowledge gained inside and outside the classroom.
4. Honors Responsibility Outcomes
- Discuss and/or analyze the interrelatedness of local, global, international, and intercultural issues, trends, and systems.
- Develop a multi-perspective analysis of local, global, international, and intercultural problems.
- Participate in and/or reflect upon participation in local, global, international, and intercultural problem solving.