Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

Call for Interdisciplinary Honors Seminar Proposals 2025-2026 Academic Year

Dear Colleagues: 

We invite you to submit a proposal to teach an Interdisciplinary Honors Seminar in academic year 2025-2026. 

Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars are a vital part of honors education at Rutgers, and a highlight for students and faculty alike. They invite you to think about complex problems and issues beyond traditional disciplinary trajectories with a small group of high-achieving students. Faculty who teach honors seminars often describe it as teaching “the way we always imagined it.” 

We welcome all schools, fields, and areas of teaching and research. We invite proposals laying out innovative pedagogical approaches and subjects; we view Honors Seminars as a space to try out new ideas, work through topics with students, and experiment. We also highlight an opportunity to design Cooperative Online International Learning (COIL) Courses, which are described in more detail below. In addition, we are interested in proposals that seek to advance an understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access across a range of fields. We encourage proposals that incorporate students’ backgrounds, experiences, and cultural/linguistic frames of reference and that consider disciplinary histories in terms of whose contributions have mattered and why. In particular, we have a program to offer honors seminars focused on the teaching and learning of LGBTQ+ history, contemporary affairs, culture, and intersectional inclusivity, which is described in more detail below.

General information about honors seminars: 
200-level, 3-credit courses, taught in-person
Enrollment capped at 18 students  
Open to honors students from a wide range of Rutgers-New Brunswick schools including SAS, RBS, SEBS, SOE, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, and Mason Gross 
Certified for the SAS Core Curriculum goal “Discipline-based Writing and Communication” (WCd) 
Taught by full-time faculty members (tenure track and non-tenure track) from all units across Rutgers-New Brunswick 
Before submitting a proposal, please consult with your Department Chair and Undergraduate Director. As always, your department’s undergraduate and graduate teaching needs come first.

If you have questions about developing an honors seminar proposal, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

For examples of current Honors Seminars, see: 
https://sashonors.rutgers.edu/academics/curriculum/interdisciplinary-seminars 
https://honorscollege.rutgers.edu/academics/curriculum/interdisciplinary-honors 

To propose an Honors Seminar, please use the following link:  
https://secure.sas.rutgers.edu/apps/forms/semprop/login.php 

Please submit your proposal by November 13, 2024. All proposals will be reviewed by the Honors Seminar Committee, whose members offer helpful feedback. If your proposal is selected, Honors will work with you on administrative arrangements.   

We thank you for your support and look forward to working with you.  

Sincerely,  

Musu Davis, School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program  (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
J.D. Bowers, Honors College – New Brunswick (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
 

Cooperative Online International Learning (COIL) Courses 

The Honors College, in cooperation with the SAS Honors Program is seeking proposals from RU faculty to teach a Cooperative Online International Learning (COIL) interdisciplinary honors seminar. 

A COIL course is one that is not only concerned with global topics (broadly defined), but also includes at least one multi-week (three or more) unit of study that is integrated and aligned with the same or very similar unit of study conducted by a professor from a non-US university and taught synchronously using live-streaming platforms (e.g., Zoom). At the time that the unit is offered, both classes will be online, synchronously, co-learning, comparing interpretations, discerning both national and international contexts and frameworks, and unpacking the differences of knowledge and learning across borders. 

The Honors College will provide funding to both develop the course as well as visit with the partner faculty member from abroad (with the hope that their institution will support the same for them to visit Rutgers) during the planning or post-teaching periods, to further facilitate the growth, interactions, and discourse that will enrich both classrooms and the overall goals of this project. RU faculty will be responsible for identifying and making the connections with an international partner, and the HC will work with the institution following that, to secure the partnership. 

Faculty planning to propose such a course should consult with Dean J.D. Bowers (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Assistant Dean Andrea Rydel (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) prior to submission. 

LGBTQ+ Learning Collaborative

 The Honors College, in cooperation with the SAS Honors Program, is especially interested in seeking proposals from RU faculty to teach an interdisciplinary honors seminar that is focused on the teaching and learning of LGBTQ+ history, contemporary affairs, culture, and intersectional inclusivity. The course’s foundational field and discipline are unrestricted, but it must take an overall interdisciplinary approach with LGBTQ+ at the core of the subject-matter and content. 

This initiative is supported by a major gift to the Honors College and this call for courses is the second of five, between 2023 and 2028. Our goal is to build a cohort of faculty who are interested in offering courses that enrich and enhance our interdisciplinary approach to learning within this field of study and to gather the teaching faculty into a cohort who will be able to document and disseminate their teaching experiences as well as participate in the broader initiative—including workshops, speaker series, collaborative programs across campus, a residential community, and public events. 

Faculty planning to propose such a course should consult with Dean J.D. Bowers (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Assistant Dean Andrea Rydel (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) prior to submission.