University Honors Program

Marquette’s University Honors Program is designed for intellectually curious, academically engaged students who want to learn in a close-knit community of their peers at the heart of a vibrant research university. Its broadly based, interdisciplinary curriculum addresses our most pressing contemporary challenges with cutting-edge knowledge and research and the wisdom of centuries of Jesuit values and pedagogy. The University Honors Program offers an intense, individualized and experiential education by which students learn to become leaders — at Marquette and in their careers.

The UHP offers two ways to participate in Honors: Core Honors, in which students follow an Honors version of the Marquette Core Curriculum throughout their undergraduate career; and Disciplinary Honors, in which students do Honors work in their majors.  Students may participate in either program or both.  Core Honors is open only to incoming first-year students who are eligible to apply after being accepted to Marquette; students apply to Disciplinary Honors programs in their sophomore year. Core Honors offers an Honors Living-Learning Community in Straz Tower for first-years and sophomores. For more information on both programs, please browse our website or contact us!

News and Events

2020 Virtual Undergraduate Research Fair
UHP celebrates research from the 2020 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship awardees and MU4Gold Research Scholars in a virtual setting. Browse the student’s research posters, watch videos introducing their research, and sign up for a virutal Meet & Greet on the Research Fair webpage.

Honors Summer Research announced for summer 2020
The University Honors Program offers undergraduate summer research fellowships to Honors students, in the amount of $3500 each, on a competitive basis for research to be performed June-August 2020. Summer 2020 Recipients.

Honors Study Abroad Awards
Marquette’s Office of International Education and the University Honors Program have designated four particularly outstanding Study Abroad Programs as Honors-specific. Call for applications for spring 2020 for summer 2020 and fall 2020.

Honors student earns award in Science Coalition Challenge
Watch Alissa Wuorinen, HPSAB co-president and Health Sciences senior, talk about her research in her prize-winning video.

University Honors Program Research Presentations
The Honors Program demonstrated the variety of research within both the Honors Summer Research Fellows and the MU4Gold Scholars. For more information 

A Conversation with Honors Alum on Discerning and Designing Your Path
Hilary Braseth, Honors A&S ECON and POSC 2011, is the current Director of Product for Voatz, making voting in elections more secure. She sat down with current students for a casual conversation on experiences ranging from the Peace Corps in New Guinea, West Africa to the definition of entrepreneurship.

Sound Judgment
Can you talk about music for hours? Are you constantly in search of your favorite song? Honors students spent time with 88.9 Radio on-air host Ayisha Jeffers who gathered their musical opinions for the 88.9 programming team. For more information.

Honors Living Learning
Honors students in the Honors Living-Learning Community gathered for two days of events that included visits to the Haggerty Museum of Art, the Urban Ecology Center, and 88Nine Radio Milwaukee.

MU4Gold: Mentoring Exceptionally Able Students and Promoting a Culture of Research on Campus

Jack Smedley accepted to University of Michigan's prestigious CERN REU Program
Jack Smedley, an Honors Physics student,  has been accepted at the University of Michigan’s prestigious CERN REU program for summer 2019. Congratulations Jack for admission to the most competitive REU program in particle physics.

"Black Lens" Film Series at Milwaukee Film Festival highlights Black Culture
Donte McFadden of Marquette’s Educational Opportunity Program team-taught the junior honors seminar #blacklivesmatter. He was recently featured on CBS 58 Sunday Morning for his work as co-founder of Black Lens an important extension of the Milwaukee Film Festival, an organization that will be sponsoring the Minority Health Film Festival Sept. 12-15, 2019. 

Honors Student Christina Curtis: what it feels like to be at 13%
The Marquette Journal follows her back to campus after a lung transplant and bronchiolitis obliterans.

Honors Peer Mentor Program
Thanks to junior Hannah Hamwi’s leadership, Honors launches HPMP, the Honors Peer Mentor Program, with pizza and introductions. If you’d like to get involved, there’s still space.

Honors Research on Covid-19
Honors student Gretchen Zirgaitis delves into research with COVID-19 Student Commentaries, an outlet for Marquette undergraduate students to perform research stemming from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and gain experience writing research pieces. See Gretchen's commentary.

University Honors Program Virtual Commencement 2020
Senior Class Video and Program

Honors and the Arts
Jacob Riyeff regularly teaches the Core Honors First-Year Seminar and along with required texts, he includes a field trip to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra on his syllabus. 

Comic relief: Radio WUWM takes to the airwaves with "atomic bombs" and first-year Honors student Pouya Mirzaei who turns a chemistry assignment into a comic book. Take a listen.

Final Presentations for the Honors Capstone Seminar on the Mission to Mars
Honors students presented research on the challenges of sending humans to Mars, from rocket and inhabitant design to the effects of microgravity and radiation all within historical context of human exploration.

HiH Information Session
Disciplinary Honors in Humanities: open to all declared majors in English, Languages, Literature & Cultures, History, Philsophy, and Theology. For more information

Study Abroad Scholarships Awarded for Spring 2020
Congratulations to the following students who have received $1500 Honors study-abroad awards for spring 2020: Joey O’Connor, Loyola University Chicago, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Emma Knott, the American College of Greece; and Cory Ehlenbach for Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) located in Winterthur, Switzerland.

All Honors Welcome Picnic
Current students welcomed first-years and enjoyed the opportunity to meet and talk about the Honors experience at Marquette.

Prestigious Fellowship Workshops
Competitive fellowships and scholarships offer unique opportunities, both nationally and internationally, to expand your horizons and deepen your understanding. Across a variety of fields and disciplines, they fund undergraduate and graduate degrees and projects as well as summer fellowships and internships. 

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