Green Mountain College: Academics

Learning And Creating Change In The Community

The Honors Program at Green Mountain College is founded on the idea that talented students should not only think sophisticated thoughts, but know how to apply their ideas in the real world. Our Honors students do just that.

The program is unified by a single research- and community action-based project that each class accomplishes in the Green Mountain College community.

The project begins with the first-year honors seminar, a one-credit course in which honors students get to know the group they'll work with for four years. They then decide on a single topic of interest to everyone in the group. It could be anything: energy consumption, native species protection, or even a general sense of well-being and happiness among students on campus, so long as it can have a real-world application. That topic will be what they'll research over the following year, and eventually turn into a service project designed to make a positive impact at GMC.

In Voices of Community, the first-year writing seminar, each honors student then researches the chosen topic from his or her disciplinary perspective. Next the students use what they learned in their individual studies to form a collective project proposal.

That's where the "real world" comes in. As a group, the Honors students tackle their plan and, by the time of the junior leadership seminar, the project is done. It's a lesson in turning knowledge into change, and an exercise in personal empowerment.

It's also part of Green Mountain College's central mission: to create conscientious, active environmental leaders who make change happen.

Honors students may also choose to live on the honors floor in Moses Hall, which is dedicated to creating an environment for academic achievement. They may take honors sections of the four core courses in the Environmental Liberal Arts sequence -- Images of Nature, Voices of Community, Dimensions of Nature and A Delicate Balance.

To find out more about the program, visit the honors program page.