The Honors Program at Asbury University isn’t just about academics; it’s about asking the big questions that shape who you are and who you’re becoming. Here, you’ll wrestle with life’s most meaningful challenges:
Asbury’s Honors Program challenges you to think critically, grow spiritually, and engage the world with wisdom rooted in historic Christianity.
At Asbury, the Honors Program unfolds within a close-knit living and learning community, an environment designed to support both rigorous intellectual exploration and authentic spiritual growth. Here, you’ll be challenged to think deeply about human value, identity, and calling, all anchored in the rich tradition of historic, orthodox Christianity.
The result? You graduate not just with knowledge, but with wisdom and a foundation to lead, serve, and thrive in every area of life.
The AUHP explores a range of enduring questions concerning our humanness. Questions like, “What makes people valuable?” “What are the implications of finding value in ourselves and others?”
Post-modern challenges to identity and difference have opened up the prospect of rediscovering images and ideas of human worth and dignity often left out of the overly quantitative and scientistic assumptions embedded into the enlightenment-infused modern understanding of humanity. As a result, conceptualizations regarding our humanness are being revisited; thinkers across the disciplines are considering anew the deep nature, meaning, and implications of terms like “me,” “you,” “us,” and “them.” Amidst this discussion lies an opportunity to recover a more sacred understanding of humanness, one in which all people possess unique status and are endowed with intrinsic value; our moral natures being understood not as mere social constructions, but as central features of our identity and our responsibilities to others. The AUHP invites students into a community of scholars who engage in an interdisciplinary exploration of virtue and human value anchored in the richness of orthodox Christianity.
Asbury University, a Christian liberal arts school in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition, affirms a historic Christian understanding of human persons as intentionally created, but terribly fallen, yet greatly loved, and with hope and help for restoration and right-relationship with God and others. Furthermore, Asbury University upholds that the proper grounding for our common humanity and equality is anchored firmly in God’s sought relation to humans, each one of us a dearly loved image-bearer of Himself; as testified to by Jesus’ incarnation, call to repentance and discipleship, act of atonement, and invitation to participate in the divine life. The sacrificial love of God that restores right-relatedness, not only binds us together with other disciples of Jesus but also compels us to recognize our social interdependency and responsibility, and empowers us to live lives of service to others. The AUHP takes up the task of exploring what is entailed in these profound claims through careful and reflective study of human experience in the various academic disciplines of the arts, humanities, and sciences, with an aim towards facilitating transformative restoration.
Asbury University’s living and learning community is an ideal setting for an integrative, rigorous, curricular experience reflecting the width and depth of studies and programs exploring the origin and implications of human value. The program will ever-aspire to comprehend more fully and accurately the Imago Dei and to educate students in light of this truth so that they may live virtuous lives and serve others more abundantly.
The Honors Program honors@asbury.edu
Honors program student applications are by invitation only. Completion of the Honors Program requires at least 6 semesters of study. For more information, contact your admissions counselor or email the Asbury Honors Program.
The Honors Experience
The Honors Program aspires to comprehend more fully and accurately the Imago Dei so students may live virtuous lives and serve others more abundantly.
The Asbury University Honors Program invites students to join a community of scholars engaged in a themed enrichment experience, giving focus to the concept of human value and dignity and the virtuous life.
*Credits come from an additional HP core course, an upgraded “honors” version of a course within an HP student’s major, a 1-credit (or experience equivalent) research project / creative product or internship, and a 3-credit study abroad course.
A First-Semester Orientation Program will serve as a community-building mechanism, as well as an introduction to the particular features of Asbury University’s Honors Program (AUHP), the liberal-arts mission of the institution, and to various faculty who will be involved in the program. This orientation program consists of four mandatory meetings during the fall semester of students’ freshman year.
During each of the first four semesters of AUHP participation, students will enroll in one AUHP core course for a minimum of 12 hours of coursework. These courses will be designed intentionally to focus on the program theme, Studies in Virtue and Human Value, and the ethical implications that follow. Courses may be team-taught and interdisciplinary. They will substitute for various required foundational courses according to the content. The AUHP core courses will reflect the breadth of student learning outcomes, as are reflected in the Asbury University Foundations curriculum. AUHP students will have at least three honors program core classes to choose from each semester. While four AUHP core courses are required, AUHP students may opt to take additional core courses if desired, given availability.
Several features of the HP core courses:
Beyond the 12 credits of required courses outlined in Part 2, each Honors Program student will complete 9 hours of academic work either through additional core courses, a study abroad experience, or via a custom-tailored course within their chosen area of study. An honors student, may, in consultation with their major advisor, enroll in an existing 3-credit course within their major but will take it as “honors.” “Honors” means the HP student and professor have agreed to a reasonable additional expectation for the course – reflecting an elevated version of the experience. However, the upgraded version of the course should still be considered a 3-credit experience. Department chairs will decide if proposed amendments to a course satisfy an “honors” version of the course. Some examples might be an additional paper addressing a challenging concept or theoretical perspective in an upper-level psychology or literature elective, or a more complex analysis of data for a science course, culminating in either an additional written product and/or a class presentation addressing this additional work.
HP students may also choose to take part in a 3 credit academic study abroad travel experience. Studies may be selected from a variety of AUHP approved study-abroad trips (each 3-credit hours) typically led by AU faculty. Some possibilities of two-week experiences may include a Germany Holocaust-studies tour, a biogeography of the Galapagos Islands, or a theological study in Rome, Italy. Students may choose to study for an entire semester abroad for example, by participating in a CCCU sponsored program like the Oxford Studies Program. AU and Honors Program staff will work closely with students to choose a study-abroad option that best suits their personal or curricular interests. This trip can serve as the student’s cross-cultural experience requirement.
Asbury University’s Honors Program students will complete a 1 credit hour (or experience equivalent) associated with an undergraduate research project, generation of a creative product, or an expanded version of an internship within their major area of study. For each option, a subsequent presentation is expected. Summative research ideally results in a SEARCH competition submission.
Summative Experience Verification form
The Honors Program Colloquium series will connect Honors Program students (as well as the broader Asbury community) to important national conversations taking place about matters of social, cultural, economic, scientific, and religious importance. HP students will attend a minimum of eight speaker series lectures or presentations while at Asbury. These events must be sponsored by the AUHP itself or approved by the AUHP as acceptable events. (Those sponsored by the AUHP will have a corresponding event reserved for only AUHP students to facilitate extended interaction with the visiting guest speaker.) AUHP students will work with the AUHP staff to track their attendance at these events.
Asbury University Honors Program students will contribute a minimum of eighty hours of service over four years. Students may choose from a variety of service opportunities both on- and off-campus. Hours are served during regular in-session semesters. Upon completion of the service requirement, students will compose a reflection of their personal philosophy of service as it relates to the program’s theme Studies in Virtue and Human Value and design a resume’ of service experience. Ideally, on-campus service is academic in nature through tutoring in the Center for Academic Success or supporting events such as the Honors Program Colloquium Speaker Series and the annual SEARCH symposium competition. Other Asbury community leadership roles may apply. A wide-range of off-campus service opportunities are available and are pre-approved by the program directors.