Program Overview

The Chancellor’s Honors Program is built upon four pillars: specialized course work, undergraduate scholarship, international & intercultural learning, and the honors community. To facilitate their exceptional academic ambitions, Chancellor’s Honors students also receive priority in course and housing registration as well as enhanced library privileges.  The Chancellor’s Honors Program also distributes funds annually on a competitive basis in support of undergraduate scholarship among honors students in all UT-sponsored honors programs, and these college and department sponsored honors programs provide additional benefits and privileges for their members.

In order to earn an honors-designated UT diploma and Honors Key, students must complete the Honors First-Year Experience and a sequence of subsequent honors-designated course work.  In total, Chancellor’s Honors students earn a minimum of 28-credit hours within the context of their typical 120-hour undergraduate degree program.

While most of this course work enhances and enriches General Education, Chancellor’s Honors students must also complete a 3-credit hour Senior Project, the result of faculty-mentored independent scholarship.  Senior Projects are the Chancellor’s Honors student’s crowning academic achievement and are celebrated, when not elsewhere, as part of the annual UT Exhibition of Undergraduate Research & Creative Achievement.

Chancellor’s Honors students also participate in specialized study abroad.  Our students may spend a May Mini-Semester at Cambridge and Oxford studying the history of the university, a Fall Semester taking a full range of courses at the University of Wales Swansea, or a portion of a summer in Beijing teaching English as part of UT’s marquee collaboration with Tsinghua University.  In 2007, Chancellor’s Honors student, Scott Thurman, received a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English in Hong Kong.

Back at home, Chancellor’s Honors students participate in high-profile forms of community outreach. Whether via honors service-learning course work, UT's Clinic Vols, or community service sponsored by the Honors Council, Chancellor’s Honors students are involved across the campus and throughout the community.  Three of 2007’s five UT Torchbearers were members of the Chancellor’s Honors Program.

Finally, the Honors Community learning/living collaboration is centered in Morrill Hall, but is hardly contained to it.  First-year and returning Chancellor’s Honors students join one another in the Honors Community to enrich their collegiate experience via common activities and shared experiences.  The arts, speakers, outings, sports, special meals—the Honors Community is so much more than an honors residence hall.  The Honors Community is where our students grow in ways they will always cherish; it’s where they receive support for their academic ambitions; it’s where they make friends for a lifetime.