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. 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.
Usually limited to 15-17 students, the seminars are SAS courses, with the SAS Honors Program and the Honors College serving as your department when you teach them. We offer support in terms of locating classroom space, funding outside speakers and class trips, and facilitating other course matters (copying, etc.). Many of the Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars are now taught in the smart classrooms in the new Honors College. But Honors Seminars can also be taught on any campus at Rutgers New Brunswick.
Each fall, the SAS Honors Program and the Honors College solicit interdisciplinary honors seminar proposals, which are then reviewed by their faculty boards and deans. Individual professors should seek approval from their departments when putting forward proposals.
Our goal is to offer between 30 and 35 seminars each semester.
Best Practices and Advise
- Most students in these courses are in their first two 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.
- Both the SAS Honors Program and the Honors College emphasize service, 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.
- Some Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars are linked to 1-credit travel/cultural experiences, in which the faculty member accompanies the students on a week-long trip over a break.
- SEBS also hosts Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars that serve students in their Honors Program as well as students in the Honors College and some students in the SAS Honors Program.