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.
Honors Floor Past and Present At Whitworth, first-year Honors students have the unique opportunity to join the Honors Floor learning community. From 2021-2023, the Honors
Honors Lunch Network, Fall 2024: Democracy and Discourse We live in an age of polarizing opinion and shrinking common ground. The theme for this
Next spring, SC-126: Infinite and the Void will become an Honors class, allowing it to count towards Honors credit for Honors students.
This course examines concepts of math through an interdisciplinary lens. Charlie Rodriguez, a senior math major who TA’d for the class, said that people often think that mathematics has no meaningful connection to life. He says this “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Jade Truong, a senior who is majoring in health sciences, is using Honors to connect with the community by hosting an teaching event about personal nutrition and exercise.
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!
Kyle Marquez spent his summer interning with the Department of Agriculture, specifically the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Washington.
This semester, the Honors Program and its students were hard at work promoting our message of thriving in the world as it is and developing it as it should be.
Come admire Honors student research, final projects, and creative works in the HUB MPR from 5:30-7:00PM on Monday December 9th.
Whitworth’s 6-person Ethics Bowl team has set their eyes on the podium this weekend at Regionals.
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).
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.
My project, MisMatch, started from a real-life frustration — how much time and energy it takes just to pick an outfit. Research shows that people spend around 102 hours a year deciding what to wear (Marks & Spencer), and about 50% of Americans say it’s the most stressful part of getting ready for an event (Trunk Club). At the same time, the fast fashion industry produces around 92 million tons of textile waste each year (UNEP), most of which ends up in landfills. I wanted to create something that helped people in their everyday lives while also promoting more sustainable habits.
Aging Americans and their caregivers should have easy access to dignifying end-of-life care. The rapid increase in the 65+ population requires policy innovation in current Medicare regulation concerning hospice. Coordinated, intentional efforts between government and private sector providers, insurance navigators, community organizations, and houses of worship are also needed to change public attitudes towards hospice care, encourage referrals, increase uptake, and offer emotional, psychological, and spiritual support.
Broadly speaking, our world tends to see religion as a sort of ‘meaning-making’ device. In faith, one is able to carve divine order into the chaos and fragmentation of the human experience. This makes faith a vehicle for hope—for settling the existential realization that nothing in our lives makes sense. The premise of this project, however, challenges that assumption: What if grasping after order and unity is not a source, but an obstruction to our ability to embrace life?