Although Honors students complete all the requirements for their major field of study within that department or school, the Honors courses form a continuous supplemental thread running through the four years of study. Honors students typically have about half of their courses in the Honors College in the freshman year. In subsequent years most students take one Honors course each semester. Some students elect to take additional courses, and they are welcome to take as many as they wish.

Honors Curricular Sequence and General Education Requirements.

The Honors College program begins in the freshman year with a purposefully designed Honors sequence in Adelphi's General Education curriculum. The Honors curriculum introduces students to the body of knowledge and multiple theories and approaches to knowledge, along with their historical roots, that have most affected our century-in the arts, social thought, science, and humanities. First-year classes include "The Modern Condition," "Western Civilization" (an historical sequence), and "The Art and Craft of Writing."

In the sophomore year all Honors students take a full-year sequence titled "The Human Condition in Literature and Art." These two courses fulfill the General Education requirement in humanities and examine great works of literature, philosophy, history, art, and music from the Old Testament and ancient periods to the present. This course requires students to explore the kinds of narration, topics, and ideas that have preoccupied humanity across the centuries, in different voices, and as different expressions of humanity's aspirations and achievement.

During the sophomore or junior year all Adelphi students also take courses in the sciences to fulfill the requirements of General Education. The aim in these courses is to give students a thorough grounding in the philosophical underpinnings of the sciences as well as in their substance. The Honors College also moves students who are majoring in the sciences into active laboratory work as soon and as much as possible. This assures that students make significant and original intellectual contributions to their academic work quickly and tangibly.

The Junior Seminars.

The junior seminars in The Conditions of Social and Political Life fulfill the General Education requirement in the Social Sciences. These courses attempt to unveil the perspective of the deepest political and moral responsibility and to enlarge the students' grasp of human achievement. The courses are intended to inspire students to develop their own visions of society and social change and to begin an active engagement with the fundamental issues of human society and the complexity of these issues. The courses prepare students to think ever more reasonably and powerfully about social and political institutions and about issues of ethics and leadership that arise in this context.

The Senior Seminar.

In addition to their distinctive courses fulfilling the requirements in General Education, Honors students are required to take an additional seminar in their senior year. This demanding seminar, along with the junior seminars in "The Conditions of Social and Political Life," is the capstone course of the Honors curriculum. The seminar topics are chosen from a greater variety of fields than those in the junior seminars.

Although the seminars are often focused on a topic studied in a single discipline, the atmosphere and point of view of the seminar is interdisciplinary. As experienced fourth-year students from a wide variety of major fields, seniors bring their individual interests and knowledge to bear on the discussion.

Independent Study.

Honors College students may choose in one or more semesters to participate in an Honors College tutorial with the Academic Director, Nicholas Rizopoulos. Modeled on systems such as those at Oxford and Cambridge Universities or Yale University's famed Scholar of the House program, the tutorial provides highly motivated students a chance to explore selected topics in great depth. Independent study also develops their skills in writing and argumentation through the rigorous supervision of the Director.

The Senior Thesis.

All Honors students must complete the senior thesis, a year-long project designed to bring about and to demonstrate intellectual mastery and to encourage the integrity and responsibility that only a complex project can elicit. Often the thesis grows out of a project the student has undertaken in the sophomore or junior year in research or independent work on campus or off campus. Sometimes, students begin something entirely new. Students must agree with their adviser on a topic by mid-October of their senior year.

Throughout the year students are supervised not only by their departmental adviser but also by the Honors College Academic Director who served for years as the Vice President and Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. His years of experience in guiding the work of young scholars enable him to provide invaluable assistance with research and writing.

In the spring, when the student and adviser are satisfied that the thesis is ready for presentation, the student defends the thesis before a panel of readers. The defense is meant to be both an exploration of the student's achievement and a further intellectual challenge.

Honors students find that graduate and professional programs to which they apply respond very positively to the senior thesis. Along with the diverse and interdisciplinary Honors curriculum, admissions committees often express particular praise for the thesis project.

	Not all senior theses are traditional papers! For his senior thesis, Edward Politis, Class of 1999, created Continuum Empire, his science fiction version of Virgil's Æneid. Mr. Politis, a Graphic Design major, worked closely with thesis advisers in both the Honors College and the Department of Art during the preparation of his thesis.
Drawing © 1999 Edward Politis

Foreign Policy Symposia.

Each semester a group of Honors College students has the privilege of participating in a seminar co-sponsored by the Honors College and the Long Island Foreign Affairs Forum. The symposium consists of a panel of three carefully selected experts who explore a foreign policy topic of current interest. The moderator for these events is the Honors College Academic Director. Honors students are given the rare opportunity to have lunch and a private discussion with the panelists before the public session. Recent lunches featured discussions on Mideast policy with Professor Gregory Gause from the University of Vermont and on careers in the CIA with Paul Heer, Visiting Intelligence Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Dean's Reading Circle.

Several times a semester Honors students are given the opportunity to sign up for a meeting of the Reading Circle. Students are provided with a book which they read in preparation and meet on Monday evenings at the Dean's Residence, adjacent to the Adelphi campus. The Honors students first eat dinner with Dean Garner and then discuss the book they have read. The Dean's Reading Circle provides students at various stages of study with the opportunity to get to know each other better, to relax in the Dean's home, and to grow intellectually. More Information...

The Honors College Film Series.

Organized by Professor Gleicher, the Honors College Film Series takes place on Monday evenings when the Dean's Reading Circle is not meeting. This Series, located in the Honors College seminar rooms, presents challenging contemporary films selected for their broad themes and resonance with works or writers encountered in the Honors College curriculum. After the showing of each film, Professor Gleicher, the Dean, and the students share refreshments while they have a spirited discussion.

Recent Honors Seminars:

• Genetic Diseases and Genetic Engineering
• Sex, Morality, and Censorship in Art and Literature
• America in the 20s and 30s
• Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Marx
• Philosophies of India
• The Cold War and Literature
• The Decline and Fall of Certainty
• The Fate of the Earth
• Equality and Inequality
• 20th Century Music and Its Cultural Contexts
• Tradition and Modernization in China and Japan
• Shaking the Invisible Hand: Problems in Economic Policy
• What is Justice? What is Law?
• Shakespeare's Comedies
• Literature and Foreign Policy
• Censorship and Morality

Recent Senior Theses:

• "An Inquiry into the Genetic Determinants of Bi-Polar and Schitzophrenic Depression"
• "Cubist Aesthetic Principles in Picasso's Guernica and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin"
• "The Beggar, the Madman and the Fool: Nonsense and Meaning in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats"
• "Opposition to the Mexican War in New York: A Case Study"
• "Racial Discrimination in the American Political Press"
• "An Original Play, Traumaturgy, Produced and with Script Submitted along with the Director's Notes"
• "26 Short Films About Myself," An original film submitted with a discussion of cinematography and direction.

Richard Garner, Dean
Adelphi University
Honors College
Earle Hall, Room 100
1 South Avenue
Garden City, NY 11530

p - 516.877.3800
f - 516.877.3803
e - garner@adelphi.edu

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