The ISI Honors Program
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The Honors Program is an undergraduate fellowship offered annually by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute since 1995. It is a highly selective year-long academic experience that offers fifty of the United States’ most promising undergraduates an opportunity to receive personal intellectual mentoring from elite professors committed to an honest exploration of the achievements of Western civilization. To date, over 500 undergraduate students from a wide variety of disciplines have been awarded a place in the Honors Program.
Honors Fellows are selected after a national competition held by ISI each spring. Applicants present, among other items, a résumé, 2-3 page personal philosophical statement, and a 5-10 page academic writing sample.[1] Honors Fellows are selected for their potential intellectual and leadership abilities, as displayed in these application materials.
[edit] Summer conference
The Honors Program year begins with a week-long, all-expenses-paid, intellectual retreat consisting of lectures and small-group seminars led by ISI faculty members from the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
The 2007-2008 Summer Conferences will be held in Québec City, Canada, on the theme of “Law in the Western Tradition: Common, Constitutional, Natural, and Divine.” [2] The first session will take place between June 25 and July 1, 2007, the second session between July 30 and August 5, 2007. Successful applicants will be invited to attend one or other of these two conferences.
The summer conference attempts to explore the ideas that underpin the American heritage, and that of Western civilization as a whole. Past Honors Program conferences have examined “Individual & Community in the Settling of America” and “Order & Liberty in the American Tradition.” [3]
[edit] Intellectual Mentoring & Library Building
Prior to arriving at the conference, the Honors Fellows are paired with a professor who will be in attendance during the week. These pairings are often based upon such criteria as common field of study or geographic location. The academic relationship between the Honors Fellow and this Faculty Mentor is, perhaps, the program’s most valuable component. The Fellow and Mentor work together over the course of the academic year on an individual course of study which can either compliment the former's degree course, or explore an area of scholarship as yet unexamined by the Fellow.
Honors Fellows interact with the other program participants via an online listserve, and at the weekend colloquia that they are invited to throughout the year. Honors Fellows may also request books of their choice from the Institute’s publishing imprint, ISI Books, and receive such academic journals as The Intercollegiate Review, Modern Age, and The University Bookman.
