HON 101: Manoa Campus and Its Neighborhoods (3 credits)
This course is offered exclusively to first-year Honors students as a means to introduce them to the range of research and creative work that goes on at a research-intensive university like the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The course promotes inquiry-based learning, helping students develop skills of critical thinking and independent research. Students are introduced to a selection of dedicated faculty at UHM. These faculty will provide an overview of their personal research and assign you mini-projects which you will work on in the class, on campus, and sometimes in the "field" of Manoa Valley. In the process you will learn about the research process, including how to formulate research questions, how to locate and evaluate secondary sources of information, and how to undertake the own collection and analysis of primary data.
Guided by peer mentors and faculty, you will thus begin your voyage of learning within the Honors Program, one that we hope will culminate a Senior Honors Project--the writing of a thesis or presentation of creative work. This will be the capstone of your undergraduate experience and it provides a valuable stepping stone to graduate or professional school, as well as to some careers.
Comments from former students:
This class paid off in opening my eyes and giving me the desire to do better than okay, even if okay in high school meant an A. It helped me to see how much more I could learn about something if I would simply press harder and dig deeper.
This Honors class has enabled me to effectively pursue my own interests. It has helped to make a positive difference in my sense of what college and a liberal education is about because it's so open-ended.
The research performed over the course of the project has made me more aware of how large a role research plays in the lives of college students and how important it is to our future.
I think that this class has had a positive impact on my sense of college by offering a different perspective for me. My attitude of get out fast has radically changed. I find it funny that the thought never occurred to me before this course to take a class because I was interested in the subject instead of counting it toward requirements. College is learning about yourself.
