Honors JA/SP 2027 Course Catalogue
Take a look at all the Honors Program has to offer this Jan term and Spring!
October 29, 2026
Take a look at all the Honors Program has to offer this Jan term and Spring!
On October 14th, Jon Meacham visited Whitworth at President McQuilken’s 2026 Presidential Leadership Forum, this year hosted at the Fox Theatre. I attended his evening talk at the Fox called, “American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union,” a nod to the title of his most recent book published earlier this year.
Some people go to the lake, some people pick up extra shifts, and some spend hours tanning in the sun. Me? I spend my summer Saturdays attending regional festivals and parades with the Spokane Lilac Festival.
The KSPS PBS micro-internship is focused on their online educational content. PBS has a learning platform called PBS LearningMedia where any station from across the country can upload lessons, videos, and teaching tools for free use by teachers and students. KSPS is one of the stations that contributes material, but they’ve become increasingly aware that the material currently up isn’t as robust as it could be.
SIRC is a conference sponsored by Whitworth and Gonzaga University for undergraduate students across Spokane to present their research and creative works.
The first Honors Lunch Network of the Spring semester focused on how to get internships and faculty research assistantships.
Whitworth to send 9 presenters to the Sigma Tau Delta, an international English Honors Society, Conference March 19-22 in Pittsburg, PA.
Come admire Honors student research, final projects, and creative works in the HUB MPR from 5:30-7:00PM on Monday December 9th.
Some people go to the lake, some people pick up extra shifts, and some spend hours tanning in the sun. Me? I spend my summer Saturdays attending regional festivals and parades with the Spokane Lilac Festival.
The KSPS PBS micro-internship is focused on their online educational content. PBS has a learning platform called PBS LearningMedia where any station from across the country can upload lessons, videos, and teaching tools for free use by teachers and students. KSPS is one of the stations that contributes material, but they’ve become increasingly aware that the material currently up isn’t as robust as it could be.
We are proud to announce that micro-internships, mentors, and upcoming professionalization events now have a home on the Whitworth Launch website. This site hosts the applications and internship postings, connecting you directly with the people who want to give you a job.
Your Planning Guide to 2026 Fall Term Registration!
This Fall semester went by fast! With many speakers on campus, a new Democracy Lab, Honors Lunches galore, a new Co-Director Joy York, Banned Books week, many literary journals, and mentorship opportunities it’s no surprise we lost track of time!
Whitworth’s active Sigma Tau Delta chapter had five students accepted to present at the 2026 Convention in New Orleans!
Elizabeth Atwood is published in WSU’s The Palouse Review, an Honors Literary Journal, for her art piece “Collecting Dust.”
Whitworth’s primary goal as an institution is to educate the ‘Mind and Heart’ of its students, but further than that, the Honors Program wants students to thrive in the world they are stepping into. A crucial part of that is in movement and education of the body, in addition to the trademarked ‘mind and heart.’
On the 2026 Honors Hawaii Jan term trip, we had the opportunity to visit the Bishop Museum. The Bishop Museum is located in sunny Honolulu and is the official Museum of Natural and Cultural History of Hawaii. Here we had the joy of exploring several fascinating exhibits, including sections devoted to Hawaiian and Polynesian history, natural science, and even dinosaurs!
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.
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.
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).
I have always had a passion for understanding learning styles and differentiating instruction based on those styles. Throughout my own education, I have been aware that I am a visual learner, which has helped me choose learning and study habits best suited for me. As a future elementary school teacher, I wanted to explore how teachers can better teach to various learning styles in their classrooms. I believe that we can increase the success of our students when we plan our classrooms and lessons with their learning styles in mind. Building differentiation for learning styles into lesson plans can allow students to engage in the content in the way that best suits them. When I came up with the idea for this project, I wanted to learn more about the improvements teachers can make and why they should make them. One conclusion that I have come upon is that this can be a time-consuming process, though a worthwhile one. When lessons are planned around learning styles, students are more engaged because the content feels more accessible to them. Students also become more able to grasp complex concepts because the information is presented in multiple ways. Among the many other benefits, learning style modifications are a great way to support diverse learners. My project aims to inform my future teaching and educate others on the importance of planning a classroom with learning styles in mind.
Growing up, I’ve always had an affinity towards creativity, art-hobbying, and music. They bring me joy and personal flourishing outside of my every-day life. I think that it is a large part of being human. What inspired my work is the recent conflict between social media platforms and artists. Over the recent years, the content of visual and musical artists have been subjugated to constant thieving of their work by AI and being buried due to biased media algorithms. In a time where many careers are put under threat by replacement via AI, I want to make a change, even if it is a small one. My career of studying marketing and economic tactics has taught me how to be a voice for those who need it. So I have decided to put my skills to the test and bring light to my peers even in these uncertain times.
Access to affordable and preventive dental care remains a significant challenge in Spokane, Washington, particularly for children in low-income, minority, and non-English-speaking families. Many residents with Apple Health coverage, the dental care insurance for low-income families, still face barriers to treatment due to limited provider participation and low reimbursement rates. Compounding these disparities, Spokane is the largest city in Washington that has not implemented water fluoridation, contributing to higher rates of untreated tooth decay among children. This project seeks to address these oral health inequities by developing a proposal advocating for school-based preventive dental programs and curricula, specifically brushing techniques, the truth about cavities, and demonstrations in Spokane’s low-income elementary schools. Ultimately, this work seeks to improve equitable access to dental care for Spokane’s children and contribute to long-term community health outcomes.
Over the past 10 years there has been a huge uptick in violence on college campuses in the United States, however, there has been no significant state or federal legislative efforts produced to work to protect students on campuses. In addition, Campus Security staff members nationwide have been overwhelmed and have been facing burnout due to lack of support from university administrators, leaving college campuses and their students vulnerable. Under the Cleary Act, nationwide, campuses have reported over 23,000 crimes on college campuses. This is a situation that has been pushed forward even more by the increase of political divisions on campuses and the prevalent nature of protests that turn unpeaceful and spark further violence. This project seeks to demonstrate the need for federal legislation that demands one professional campus security officer per two hundred students on any college campus that takes federal funding from the United States government. Currently, in the United States, there is no clear baseline/bench marker for how many campus security officers an institution needs to have. This lack of foresight leaves room for campus violence to surge. Through this project I will write a policy that institutes a required number of security officers on any campus that takes federal funding and identifies itself as a university.