Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars invite students and faculty to think about complex problems and issues across disciplinary boundaries. The seminars enable students to explore emergent fields and specialties while developing a breadth of foundational knowledge at the start of their academic careers at Rutgers.
Rather than deferring advanced concepts and questions to upper-level courses, Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars initiate sophisticated scholarly discussions in our students’ first years, eliciting the genuine curiosity that makes them eager to learn more.
Usually limited to 18 students, these seminars broaden students’ perspectives and place knowledge in context, providing Honors students with the opportunity to find their intellectual passions—to discover the ideas that capture their imagination, focus their attention, and inspire them to delve more deeply.
Each fall, the Honors College solicits interdisciplinary honors seminar proposals, which are then reviewed by the Honors Council and deans. Individual professors should seek approval from their departments when putting forward proposals to ensure that they can offer the course on load.
Faculty often find the experience so rewarding that they regularly teach seminars, telling us that the Honors Interdisciplinary Seminars are "the most enjoyable teaching assignment" that they have had at Rutgers.
Special Sections of Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars
As you can see from the call for proposals, we are often seeking faculty who wish to teach specially-designated sections of Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars. They range in format, substance, approach, and goals, but are an excellent way to contribute more deeply to the College's offerings, intertwine your own interests with new dimensions, and find a broader teaching community.
Coordinated Online International Learning
Designed to offer an international perspective but through the use of technology rather than travel, faculty are invited to co-design a class with a colleague from an international university that includes at least one substantive and extended unit of study (of three weeks) that requires engagement, in real-time and asynchronously, with the students and fellow faculty from that university. Teaching Les Miserables? Work with a colleague from France. Want to explore social justice and political action movements? Teach with a colleague from South Africa. The world is truly your oyster as you develop both the relationship and new teaching practices. Faculty who teach a COIL course receive additional financial support for travel between campuses (Rutgers and that of their global colleague) as well as special class site visits, guest lecturers, and more.
LGBTQ+ Learning Collaborative Themes
As part of our fully-articulated Learning Collaborative, faculty may choose to offer a course that explores the depths and dimensions of LGBTQ+ issues. Intended not only for those who may identify with the various communities, but equally so those who are allies or who see the need to understand the myriad of topics and issues in and among the communities and their presence in a larger social framework, these classes are a rich opportunity to teach something more dynamic and pedagogically expansive. Faculty who teach an LC course receive additional financial support for both their own teaching as well as special class site visits, guest lecturers, and more.
Embedded Travel-Study Seminars
Teach a semester-long course while adding a ten-day travel study on as an extra component when you apply to offer an Embedded Travel-Study course. Previous courses have included travel to South Africa, Japan, Costa Rica, and Ireland, all as a way of taking students on an extended series of site visits to put their learning into context. Faculty expand and expound on the theme and topics throughout the semester and then, working with Rutgers Global plan a ten-day program offered over Winter Break, Spring Break, or following Spring finals.
Cross-Cultural Communities Topical Seminar
The CCC Topical Seminars--we aim to offer at least two sections every semester--are an outgrowth of the CCC class as originated and designed by our students in 2021, centered on the ways that various communities intersect with an issue or topic and the ways that they digress. These courses are a way for faculty to frame a topic across communities--of viewpoints, ethnicity, nationalism, gender, and more--so that students see how the issues are comparatively framed through language, experiences, histories, ideologies, and practices. The sections also are required to integrate with our Honors Unbound bi-annual theme, and our chosen Common Reading each year.
In 2025-2026 the four sections will be focused on environmentalism and health care, one each in both semesters.
Call for Interdisciplinary Honors Seminar Proposals 2026-27 Academic Year
To apply to teach an Interdisciplinary Honors Seminar [Application Opens August 1, 2025 and Closes October 15, 2025. If you are still interested in teaching in Spring 2026, please email J.D. Bowers, Dean, by September 15, 2025 before submitting an application].
Policies and Procedures for Applications and Decisions
All New Brunswick faculty are contacted in the early fall of each year with an invitation to submit proposals forInterdisciplinary Honors Seminars for the subsequent year. The Honors Dean will notify faculty by the end of the Fall semester to let them know if their proposal for the following year has been accepted by our Honors Council. We also accept Honors Seminar proposals on a rolling basis if the timing permits us to add them to the schedule based on registration dates and other considerations.
Our goal is to offer between 35 and 40 seminars each semester.
We offer support in terms of locating classroom space, funding outside speakers, and facilitating class trips and site visits. Many of the Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars are now taught in the smart classrooms in the Honors College's central building at 5 Seminary Place on the College Ave. campus. But Honors Seminars can also be taught on any campus at Rutgers New Brunswick.
Interdisciplinary Seminars will be offered under XX:090:292, XX:090:293, XX:090:294, XX:090:295, XX:090:296, and XX:090:297, where the XX will be substituted with the proper School designation of the instructor's primary assignment: 01, 07, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17,30, 33, 37, or 77. Those that are offered under SAS (01), SEBS (11), and RBS (33) can be used to meet the SAS Core Curriculum goals in Writing and Communication [WCd].
Faculty who are selected to teach are expected to participate in a mandatory meeting prior to the beginning of the semester in order to discuss the unique facets and approaches to teaching in the Honors College. This brings together experienced and new faculty for an in-depth conversation about grading students who often have high expectations for themselves, deploying new teaching methods, how to work with students in topical and field areas outside of their usual skillsets, and ways to ensure that the writing expectations are met beyond a single major paper due at the end of the semester.
For additional materials and information, please see the links below:
Best Practices and Advice for Teaching in Honors
- Most students in these courses are in their first three years of college (this is NOT a graduate seminar).
- The subject matter itself does not necessarily have to be interdisciplinary in the sense of covering multiple fields (though this is, of course, encouraged), but the course should appeal to and be accessible to first- or second-year students from a wide-range of majors and disciplines. To put it another way, "interdisciplinary" means that students from any discipline or interest should be able to engage with and benefit from the class.
- In titling and designing seminars, keep in mind the broad array of students who are your potential audience. Students are greatly influenced by seminar titles.
- Honors students are often drawn to courses that address big questions, even if the course frames those questions through very specific topics, examples, or phenomena.
- The Honors College emphasizes global engagement, community service, and innovative ideas, so classes that develop students’ ability to understand the past, present, and future of problems that the world or specific communities face are particularly welcomed.
- The seminars are designed to fulfill the WCd (Writing in the Disciplines) core requirement.
- At individual departments’ discretion, specific Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars can be used towards a department major or minor.
- SEBS also hosts Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars that serve students both in their School as well as students in the Honors College.
QUESTIONS
Please reach out to the J.D. Bowers, Dean, for more information or questions you may have about applying to teach for the Honors College.