Honors Activities

The Honors Program sponsors a variety of activities aimed at nurturing an intellectual culture that permeates the classroom and extends beyond into the life of the student. Honors students will have opportunities to attend and discuss lectures, performances and an annual retreat.

Examples include:

• Lectures and discussions are geared to a cross-disciplinary audience and chosen to stimulate thinking and discussion. Following lectures, there may be small group discussions led by Honors students or opportunities for Honors students to interact in a reception-style setting with a particular speaker/mentor.
• Performances: The Honors Program will organize groups of students to attend performances in the arts, both on and off campus.
• Retreats: Each year, the program will have a retreat for the Honors students and faculty, focused around a theme.
• "Community as Text": There will be activities each year aimed at exploring the Virgin Islands, the Caribbean and the international "community" in an academic way.
• Project Presentations - Each year graduating Honors students will display mastery of the content and delivery of the material in an oral defense of the thesis/project for the Honors Council and other students in the Honors Program.
• Activities are planned by Honors students.

Honors Community Service 
The Honors Program promotes leadership development through the Community Service component, and recognizes the vital role played by community service in your development. In addition to benefiting the local and regional communities and promoting social justice, your community service enables you to engage in identifying and solving significant problems, encourages civic responsibility, and expands your educational experience through the practical application of academic theory. You might consider this "giving back" to the community, or a way for you to demonstrate your commitment to the betterment of society.

The Honors Community Service component will include a planned, supervised project in which you will research and propose a solution to a specific problem in the community. You will investigate academic research questions related to your project, and involve various levels of the community in your proposed solution to the problem. Examples of specific projects would include establishing a remedial reading program, developing an intramural sports program, etc. Your community service project can be completed in a community outside the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Students will negotiate a contract. Students will be provided with a exemplary contracts as examples. To fulfill the requirements of the Community Service Component, students will examine a social problem in the local community. Students might not all work on the same problem, but they may. Students who want to communicate with an existing community organization involved in the selected problem will have UVI available to initiate such communication. Student involvement in the Community Service Component will be as follows:

• Freshman - Students are required to take a special Honors section of FDS. (Freshman Development Seminar.) Theory will be introduced through readings and discussions. Students will be expected to attend and participate, and assessment will be by grade in the FDS. section. Additionally, freshman students are required to attend activities which expose them to problems and issues through the "Community as Text" theme of many UVI activities.
• Sophomore - Students will attend an Honors course in Research Methods, with a focus on researching problems in the community. Students will be assessed through their research reports.
• Junior - Students will choose a community problem, and submit a community service contract for their proposed project. Students will be assessed on their report.
• Senior - Students will give a final presentation to the public, which will include a plan to address the problem under consideration. The students can attempt to have their solution implemented by informing the public and legislature. Students will be assessed on their plan and presentation.