Each semester, CHP students must attend a certain number of Becker Seminars. These academic or cultural events appeal to the vast array of academic interests of honors students. Dubbed “Becker Seminars” in honor of program founder Dr. Susan Becker, these events are honors-sponsored lectures and events as well as other campus programs approved by the Chancellor’s Honors Program. The seminars are individually selected, and they are held most weeks throughout the academic year.

Past Becker Seminars have included:

• Ken & Blair Mossman Lecture featuring renowned scientist Bill Nye the Science Guy
• Annual Alfred and Julia Hill Lecture featuring Joe Palca, National Public Radio science correspondent
• Howard Baker Center Memorial Lecture featuring Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda
• Cornell West, professor of philosophy and prominent race lecturer

Each academic year, CHP students go out into the greater Knoxville region to perform service for the community. In an effort to challenge students to engage in communities that are unlike their own, service provides students with an opportunity to enact real change in the world around them. Opportunities to volunteer in the local community are virtually endless. Knoxville is home to many service-oriented organizations, nonprofits, civic organizations, and agencies that serve those who are homeless, impoverished, or part of a protected population. UT’s Jones Center for Leadership and Service connects students to a wide variety of volunteer opportunities across the campus and in the community.

The ability to communicate across cultures and negotiate differences is essential regardless of a student’s field of study. All Chancellor’s Honors Program students complete an international/intercultural experience called “Ready for the World.”

The Ready for the World requirement may be fulfilled through (a) study abroad, (b) international travel for service, research, or other academic purposes, (c) majoring or minoring in a foreign language, or (d) an approved intercultural domestic project.

Ready For The World Grant

In order to help our students facilitate their RFW experience, the CHP offers Ready for the World grants to its students. Awarded on a competitive basis several times a year, CHP students can apply for funding to help meet their goals for international awareness.

Curious where our students are traveling, studying abroad, and researching? Visit our Chancellor’s Honors Program blog to read their blog entries from around the world.

The CHP offers a resource exclusively for its students to highlight and showcase their CHP academic experience and their career goals and interests through E-Portfolios. From a CHP student’s first day to their graduation, students will begin constructing an interactive and visual platform to showcase their academic achievements, learning experiences, career goals, and future outlooks.

The e-portfolio is a “living” document: it will change and grow as students accumulate experiences such as conducting research, attending a study abroad trip, completing an internship, compiling your thesis, or reflecting on your extracurricular participation in student organizations, athletics, or travel. You can think of it as an interactive resume, but in the form of a website, yet it offers the ability for students to reflect own what they have completed and hope to complete during their tenure as honors students.