George F. Whitworth Honors Program

Honors Life at Whitworth

Recent:

Experiencing the Theatre in London

Over the course of the 2026 Jan term trip to London I had the privilege of attending nine different stage productions, all very different, but all equally valuable to my experience studying abroad. It was an opportunity I had never had before to be able to go somewhere where dozens of shows of West End quality were all playing at the same time. I bought as many tickets as I reasonably could with my budget and aimed to get the maximum value out of each show I saw. Over the course of the trip, I gained a renewed appreciation for the performance arts and their value, not only to British culture, but society in general.

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January 29, 2026

Wahiawā Botanical Gardens: The Art and Tradition of Lei Making

At the Wahiawā Botanical Gardens, the practice of lei making is taught to visitors, both to carry on the tradition and teach the significance of the weave to visitors, but also to aid in the onerous task of weaving approximately 53,000 lei for Memorial Day. The Wahiawā Botanical Gardens contributes 7,000 natural lei every year to the project. In the hour and a half the Whitworth students were there, we made one hundred woven Ti lei. Hundreds of organizations run similar lei making sessions for the five months leading up to Memorial Day, freezing the lei braids to keep them until May.

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January 29, 2026

Haoles in Hawaii: Trip to the Polynesian Culture Center

On the 5th day of the First Year Honors group’s stay in Hawaii, we visited the Polynesian Cultural Center. After a long, sun drenched day full of information, performances, and beautiful scenery, most of us came away with a deeper understanding of Polynesian culture and the complex traditions preserved in places like the PCC (Polynesian Cultural Center).

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January 25, 2026

Beach Cleanup on Mokulē‘ia Army Beach: A Jan Term in Hawai’i

To end our first week on the island of O’ahu, Hawai’i, the 2026 Jan term Honors class went down to Mokulē‘ia Army Beach, a 2-minute drive from our camp, to clean up trash from the beach for an hour. We split up into groups of 3 to 6, turning our project into a little competition of which group could collect the most trash.

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January 25, 2026

Upcoming Opprotunities:

Student Job Openings for 2024

Are you passionate about Honors and looking for an on-campus job? The Honors Program is hiring for four separate positions! Click here to learn more about the positions and how to apply.

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March 21, 2023

Honors: Courses for Fall 2023

George F. Whitworth Honors Program: Fall 2023 Offerings Questions: Contact Honors Director Dr. Bert Emerson at dbemerson@whitworth.edu Shared Curriculum Offerings Upper Division “H” and Major

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March 16, 2023

Spring 2023: Honors Events

In Spring of 2023, the Honors program will be offering a few honors-specific and campus-wide events. Mark your calendar using the list below, so you can be sure you won’t miss out on these amazing opportunities!

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February 14, 2023

Internships:

On-Campus Spotlights:

HN 400 as a Platform for the Future

Grace Pedersen, a senior majoring in psychology, used HN 400 as a platform to launch her future. HN 400 gives students the ability to complete an individual project with faculty support and guidance.

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April 21, 2023

“We all started crying, of course”

Every year during the Spring semester, Whitworth hosts a few Honors scholarship weekends. These weekends are times in which highly motivated students are invited to stay at Whitworth. During the weekend, the invited students give a speech, participate in a discussion group, and write an essay in hopes of winning a full ride scholarship or a runner-up $1,000 a year scholarship. This year, one of the full-ride scholarship winners is eighteen year old Stella Ester Palmisano.

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April 21, 2023

Research on the River

Hannah Neuberger, a senior majoring in biology, is researching the level of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s) in the Spokane River in her HN 400 class.

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April 13, 2023

Study Abroad:

DOA-LA19: Warner Bros Studio Tour

#DOA-LA19: Day 6 Warner Brothers Studio Tour by Alyssa Meier, ’22 The Warner brothers worked together distributing film entertainment long before they started the multimillion-dollar

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August 12, 2021

DOA-LA19: Art at the Beach

DOA-LA19: Art at the Beach by Gabi Coprivnicar, ’22 “Life’s a beach!” – Anonymous Santa Monica, first established in 1875 [1], has grown into an

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August 12, 2021

Research:

Lizzie Berns

My research is specifically looking at Whitworth and how they treat sexual violence on campus. I looked into what resources and programs there are for sexual violence survivors on this campus or any education about what sexual violence is for the rest of the student body. What I found was scarce, not only the research around Christian colleges and sexual assault, but also the resources on this campus for students.

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May 6, 2025

Caleb Flegel

As the world increasingly deals with the presence of Climate Change, we will increasingly need quality research to understand how it will affect the ecosystems that surround us. For this reason, this project is a collaboration with an existing research team investigating the effects of a changing climate on small aquatic ecosystems such as ponds. In the past, the associated research project has focused primarily on the effects of increasing pond temperatures. But, water oxygen saturation is another key indicator of ecosystem health. Not only does oxygen saturation directly affect the well-being of pond flora and fauna, but it also is affected by a warming climate.

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May 2, 2025

Zachary Brooks

In an era where over 15,000 self-help books are published in the United States each year, everyone seems to have two cents to share about how we can improve our lives. Despite these countless publications, each quick-fix or new mindfulness appears ephemeral. Self-help needs help.

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May 1, 2025

William Henke

Modern language has become violent in a way that abstracts our words from their actual meanings. Phrases like “slay” “break a leg” “you’re killing it” and many others reveal how violence has settled into quotidian linguistics. This reorientation towards violence desensitizes people to its larger social implications and promotes inadequate communication. Language that was once, and by dictionary definition still is, seen as violent or harmful is now utilized in neutral or even uplifting ways. Desensitization towards larger problems in society like gun violence, racism, global warming, etc. engenders an escalation of language in order to gain an appropriate reaction to said issues.

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May 1, 2025