HONORS LIVING AND LEARNING COHORTS
Learning and Living Among Friends
Villanova’s innovative Honors Learning Cohorts bring together students with similar interests—like Medical Humanities or Business and Society—to take coursework alongside like-minded peers in the Honors Residence Hall. Most Honors students choose to participate in one of these optional, enriching learning-living experiences.
Students live and learn alongside peers with the same interests, all while remaining fully immersed in programs that allow them to pursue their own path. Joining a learning cohort makes class discussions more engaging and creates deep friendships.
Within Honors Learning cohorts, students remain an integral part of the larger Villanova community, making friends across all academic disciplines, attending athletic and cultural events, and experiencing all that being a Villanovan entails.
Learning Cohort Sequences
The Honors Program offers the following Learning Communities:
What is the good and what makes for a good life? How can we know the truth and live truly? What attracts us to beauty and does beauty matter? These are the most fundamental questions of human life. They apply to everything in our lives: from the world and society we inhabit, to our deepest convictions about the meaning of life to our chosen professions, friendships, even to the shows we watch and the products we buy. In our Examined Life Cohort, we aim to consider these questions in dialogue with great thinkers, artists, and writers from the ancient world to the present. Informed by the Augustinian tradition, we live out the Villanova mission statement and “affirm the intrinsic good of learning, contemplation and the search for truth.” Read more
What is the vocation of a businessperson? What is the meaning and purpose of society? Can technology serve the common good? Guided by these questions, Honors students are given the opportunity to put their interest in business and technology into dialogue with the liberal arts and the fundamental questions of human life.
Grounded in the Augustinian tradition and humanities enquiry, BST aims to understand the role entrepreneurial and technological skills have in establishing a just society. Fulfilling the Villanova Mission, BST shapes students who “commit to the common good” and who can “apply the knowledge and skills of our students and faculty to better the human condition.”
Students in BST take two semesters of the Augustine and Culture Seminar together and then take a special Ethics course shaped by moral questions regarding business, society, and technology.
This sequence provides students the skill set to: 1) engage in critical reflection on the meaning of concepts such as the nature of suffering, health, quality of life, disability and the purpose of research; and 2) analyze and formulate recommendations for action in situations of ethical dilemmas in health care. Read more
What is a good person? How can we be good citizens? What do we need for just communities? In a world facing political and economic complexities that are both perennial and new, we need students prepared as persons and citizens through the rigorous study of philosophy, politics, and economics. Students enrolled in this cohort are shaped by Augustinian values. They engage with issues of justice and the common good on local, national, and international levels. They are prepared to lead our broader society to shaped by love, community, and truth. Read more
Shaping a College Life
This co-curricular, one-credit experience aims to help Honors students navigate a successful transition to college. Various themes are explored and students are introduced to resources on campus that highlight these topics.
This reflective experience provides students with the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of themselves, their peer group and Villanova.