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The ºÚÁÏÉçÇø Honors College offers a rigorous, engaging, and distinctive learning experience for its honors ºÚÁÏÉçÇøs, utilizing the NCHC’s definition above as the foundation for its academic mission. The Honors College fosters an academic environment within its course offerings that builds community and inspires and challenges honors ºÚÁÏÉçÇøs to build their academic competence by connecting classroom learning to their learning outside the four walls of a classroom, and integrating intellectual concepts and tools to assume deeper relevance and application to the world at large. To this end, Miami faculty, staff, and ºÚÁÏÉçÇø members of the Honors College Advisory Committee (HCAC) have developed the following set of defining characteristics of Honors College courses, to be used by faculty to shape the pedagogical spirit of their course.

Faculty who propose new Honors College course offerings, and those who teach existing courses, integrate these characteristics into their plans and approaches for their courses. Although these characteristics are defined here individually, it is the judgment of HCAC that each of them can be conceived as working well in conjunction with one another. These characteristics will assist faculty in developing courses into a learning experience distinct from non-Honors versions of the same course and/or other non-Honors courses in their cognate areas. These characteristics are also designed to be flexible enough to give faculty the freedom to design lessons, projects, and assignments that align with their particular cognate area. HCAC recognizes that there is no one way to teach an Honors course. However, these characteristics acknowledge that there are best practices and approaches which each faculty member should consider when designing Honors courses, which makes an Honors learning experience distinguishable.

From the following list of characteristics, faculty are required (A) to incorporate research at some level; and (B) to demonstrate how they will embed at least one (1) of the other characteristics into the course.