For more than sixty years, the LSA Honors Program has helped ambitious students take full advantage of what Michigan has to offer. The 350 students who enroll each year combine a deep exploration of the liberal arts with a comprehensive approach to their major, including research experiences that culminate in a senior thesis. By participating in Honors, they join an exciting, diverse campus community, which builds friendships and habits of mind that last a lifetime.
Implicit in the word “Honors” are challenge and intellectual stimulus. The Honors Program at the University of Michigan offers a rigorous academic career through special courses, research with faculty, prime housing and commons space, and a vigorous intellectual community. The Honors Program enables students to identify their intellectual interests and to pursue them deeply. Graduates of the Honors Program are particularly prepared to enter the world and meet its challenges, solve its problems, and make a difference.
Your Gifts at Work
Your support helps students participate in leadership and civic engagement opportunities, allowing for deeper community involvement that promises significant project outcomes.
"Honors has defined much of my Michigan experience. It's given me my best friends, key mentors, and innumerable opportunities to both explore intellectually and pursue my interests with fervor. Looking back, I think Honors has been a catalyst for personal growth. The program’s support has given me confidence in my ability to navigate challenges and has shown me the value in my own ideas.”
–Sarah Renberg, LSA Class of ’22
“I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I had to attend the International Conference on Fibonacci Numbers and Their Applications in Sarajevo. [...] The conference focused on the field of study I had been researching, so it was a great opportunity to learn about open problems in the field and the cutting edge research being conducted around the world. At the conference I had the opportunity to meet many distinguished professors and learn firsthand about their research. I have also been in discussion with several other professors who were interested in my own research and have discussed ways to continue exploring and proving new results. The conference was a great learning experience and will help prepare me for presenting at future conferences while in graduate school.”
–Eliel Sosis, LSA Class of '24
Giving Opportunities
Honors Strategic Fund (309547)
The Honors Strategic Fund pays for a wide range of activities: Kickoff, the summer reading book, Lunch with Honors, classes taught to freshmen by Honors seniors, information sessions about professional schools and scholarship programs, and more. Gifts to Honors help us to increase the intellectual vitality of the program and to admit and recruit students of the highest caliber. By putting a variety of academic and cultural initiatives into place, we bring faculty and students together for informal intellectual gatherings, research experiences, and leadership opportunities that extend and enrich the Honors community.
Honors in Engaged Liberal Arts
Unlike like the traditional Honors major, which typically requires the writing and submission of a thesis, Honors in Engaged Liberal Arts (HELA) is a path to graduation for students in any major who wish to combine their academics with civic or leadership experience by developing projects that involve a serious engagement with a significant intellectual, social, political, or practical problem. HELA requires that students integrate curricular learning with co-curricular and engaged modes of learning in which theyexercise their own agency to solve problems, enhance civic assets, or otherwise catalyze meaningful change within a community. Annual gifts of $5,000-$25,000 are needed to fund students' project-based initiatives, including research and travel, and to fund the development of robust intellectual, academic, and engaged learning programs tailored to the needs of each year's HELA student cohort. An endowed gift of $500,000 will meet the needs of HELA students in perpetuity.
Honors Research and Travel for Students
Honors supports student research activities, helping to pay for research travel, extraordinary expenses, and conference fees. Requests for funding have grown in both number and size and have expanded to include requests for unpaid internships as well as research support. Gifts will enable studentsto pursue their theses, may inspire a life in research, and will encourage students to engage in the vital hands-on learning necessary in today’s world. With requests outstripping our capacity, we are in need of additional support to make research and internships accessible to all Honors students. We alsohave a special application grant called a “Critical Difference” that allows students to take advantage of suddenly-arising opportunities. An expendable gift of $50,000 annually will provide the funds to support the research, internship, and Critical Difference needs for all Honors grant applicants. Honors Research and Travel for Students.
Contact Us
We are happy to help you determine areas in which to designate your giving, answer questions about the process, and give you a tour of our facilities and program.
Contacts
Mika LaVaque-Manty, Ph.D. | Director: mmanty@umich.edu, 734.647.4478
Elisabeth Broome, Ph.D. | Associate Director: lbroome@umich.edu, 734.763.5853
Thank you for helping Honors with the proud tradition of academic inquiry and intellectual community at the University of Michigan!
