Frequently Asked Questions

(Answers provided by Dr. Randall Bush, Director of the Interdisciplinary Honors Program and Professor of Christian Studies and Philosophy)

Who can be in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program?

First, you need to know that this program is open only to a select number of students who have shown a high degree of initiative, who are motivated to excel academically, who are intellectually curious, and who are willing to work hard to exceed average expectations.

Freshmen students are automatically invited into the program if they have an ACT composite score of 25 or above, an SAT composite of 1130 or above, or a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or above in their high school work.

Persons who do not meet this standard, or Transfer students may petition the Director of the Interdisciplinary Honors Program (Dr. Randall Bush) if they desire to be accepted.

Can you explain how hours earned in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program count toward my degree?

Yes.  The Program translates into a minor.  You’ve heard that everyone has to take the General Core courses at Union?  Well, there are also Specific Cores for the various degrees, such as Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science.

Then there is the matter of the student’s major.  Some majors leave room for a minor, while others do not.  For students going into a major which involves lots of hours, we suggest that they at least take the Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies Course.  If students determine that the program is not for them, then the course may still be counted as an elective.  Most majors leave room for some elective courses.  (Remember you need to have at least 128 hours to graduate from Union).  We believe that if a student wants to do the program, he or she can fit it in.

You said that the Interdisciplinary Honors Program translates into a minor.  How many hours are required?

Eighteen in all, which is less than many other minors.  There are five required courses and one elective course.  Let me break these down to give you a clearer picture:  The required courses include an introductory course called “Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies” (3 hours), a “Great Ideas” course (3 hours), two “Great Books” (Great Books I and Great Books II) courses (3 hours each=6 hours), and the Thesis (4 hours).

In looking for the one elective course needed to complete the minor, students can chose from a wide variety of courses, such as the Scholar-in-Residence Course, travel abroad to Oxford, or courses of an interdisciplinary nature offered across the University such as “Science and the Christian Faith”, the course on C. S. Lewis, or “Faith and Culture.”  The student only needs two hours of elective credit to finish the minor.

If a person decides not to finish the minor, one course, “Great Ideas,” can satisfy the humanities option in the General Core.  Other courses can be counted as electives. 

I think I know what an Honors Program is, but I don’t understand why yours is called the Interdisciplinary Honors Program.  Can you explain?

Of course.  Maybe what I should do first is tell you what it is not.  In many high schools and colleges, the Honors Program consists of courses that are in very specific disciplines, for example Honors English, Honors Math, Honors Science.  While this approach has its merits, we think that such an approach fosters a kind of thinking that makes it difficult for people to see the big picture.  Have you ever heard the story of the five blind men of Hindustan?

I might have.  Refresh my memory.

Five blind men come upon an object.  One thinks it is a snake; another, a fan; and another, a rope.  They argue with each other.  Then another blind man chimes in.  You are all wrong, it is a wall!  And then a fifth gives his riposte—it is a tree!  Can you guess what the object is?

Yes, I think it’s an elephant.

Precisely.  The problem is that the five men are blind, and they are trying to describe the elephant.  But the whole is more than the sum of the parts.  So how does that translate into the context of the modern world and how we think about that world?

I think I see.  Everyone is so focused on their own narrow discipline that they cannot see the forest for the trees.

A good analogy.  Even in a Christian university where we believe “all truth is God’s truth,” we often have trouble seeing the bigger picture.  This is where the Interdisciplinary Honors Program tries to help you.  We try to show you how certain worldviews have influenced human thinking about God and all aspects of the world over the centuries.  How does my worldview, for instance, influence how I think about history, science, psychology, sociology, art, architecture, theology, philosophy, and God?  Until you understand how people in the past have thought about these topics and how they are interrelated, it is hard for you to get the perspective you need to figure out the elephant that is our modern world.

This sounds pretty interesting, but isn’t there the problem of being too general, or seeing the world too simplistically?

This would be the case if we had an Honors program that just focused on topics as I’ve heard some universities do.  The topic approach is something we actually do integrate into the introductory course.  But that being said, we always discuss topics from the standpoint of the readings, and we use the Socratic method to help students recognize how complex reality is.  I have found that many topic-focused courses can lead to a pooling of ignorance rather than to real solutions to human problems.  People just state their opinions, but they don’t always learn to argue or give good reasons for why they think the way they think.

So the overly general and simplistic approach is something we will always be warning you to avoid.  One of our professors has posted on her door the words of H. L. Mencken, “To every complex problem, there is a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”  I really agree with that statement.

So we not only want to give you the big picture, but we also want to allow you to specialize.  This is why two of our courses, “Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies,” and “Great Books I”, are geared toward helping you see the big picture, while two other courses, “Great Ideas” and “Great Books II,” allow you to focus on a specific subject in your major field of study to a degree that other students in your major won’t be able to do.

So this is a minor that can actually allow me to do more intensive study in my major?

Yes, and this is one of the program’s greatest strengths, I think.  We have had some very specialized topics for the thesis that actually allowed students to gain expertise in an area of their major that is often not available for students at the Bachelor’s level.  Most of these students go on to the best graduate schools in the world.

You see, one of the problems with our American educational system is that we don’t allow advanced students enough opportunity to specialize at a time when they are ready to do so.  Instead we make them jump through hoops they have already jumped through before, and we make them do so again and again until they become bored to death.  This is a waste of their time and in the long run does not benefit the student or society.  So to help overcome this mentality, we have tried to integrate the best of American and British methods of education into our program.

What are those methods?

The tutorial method of teaching, such as one would find at British Universities like Oxford or Cambridge, is one.  We try to do quite a lot of one-on-one interacting with our Honors students.  When they turn in a paper, we take it and critique it thoroughly, then give it back to them for a rewrite.  Most students are shocked when they get back the first graded essay because it looks like a blood sacrifice!  But this is our way of saying we care about your future and want you to achieve your full potential.  No pain, no gain, right?  Also, remember that practice makes perfect—something we do in teaching music and sports, but not in thinking and writing. 

We make it a practice not to give a grade on the first draft of the essay, but we give the student the opportunity to rewrite and improve.  This has residual effects on future papers because students learn the quality we expect, and most students tell us that papers in other courses come much easier as a result of this experience.

The other method we use is the seminar method, which is geared more toward the American graduate education experience.  In some of our courses, we allow students to present their papers to the entire class.  This works well to help students think across the disciplines in a very deep and critical way, and it prepares them for the experience of the thesis defense.  One of the best courses where this seminar approach is taken is “Great Books II” which is geared toward the nineteenth century.  When you have one person discussing religious thought; another, English literature; another, philosophy; another, the study of history—and all of these very specialized papers are presented in the same course—you begin to see how common ideas and themes emerge that connect the various disciplines as they were understood during that period of history.  This then helps you understand how to approach any period of history and understand how the disciplines related to one another during that period.  It also prepares you to think about your world in a new way.  It gives you an edge that most people will not have coming out of college.

This sounds interesting, but when I heard you talk about my paper becoming a blood sacrifice, I got a bit nervous.  I don’t know if I like the idea of my paper being a blood sacrifice.

What I tell my students is “just be glad it’s not a burnt offering.”  I’m just kidding, of course.  I know the blood sacrifice analogy sounds pretty horrible, especially to my freshmen students who are already stressed out because they have left home for the first time and have been thrust into the middle of college life with all its opportunities and difficult choices.  We understand what you will be going through, and we want you to know we are on your side and want to help you succeed.

Do you remember the story of Abraham?  God called him to go out into a world that was scary; and I don’t think God gave him a booklet with all the KOA campground listings.  But he took a journey of faith anyway, and this journey, even with its detours, helped him to gain the capacity to receive the revelation that would forever change the way the world would think about God.  Remember Abraham was called upon to sacrifice Isaac, his “baby.”  I use that analogy because students tend to think about their papers as their “babies.”  But remember that God provided the ram in the thicket for Abraham.  Still there was the test Abraham had to pass, and this is what we will be asking you to do if you decide to go into our program.  I assure you the venture of faith, though difficult, is always worth the effort.

The other thing that scares me is the Thesis.  What is that exactly?

It is a senior project that in most cases involves a 50 to 75 page written document that will be bound and placed in the Union library.  This requirement, however, is not always the same across the university.  Students have written novels, poetry, done artistic works, scientific experiments, or other projects in lieu of the thesis.  We let the department of the student’s major help us define what the thesis or project will involve for students in their area.

But fifty to seventy-five pages sounds like an awful lot of work.  What if I can’t do a thesis?

Sometimes when students hear the word THESIS, they envision a flashing neon sign that says ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE!  In the past, some students have decided not to enter the Honors Program because they would be faced with taking all the courses that lead to the minor and come up short of getting the minor for lack of the thesis.

I hadn’t thought of that.  Is there a chance this could happen to me?

Not with the way the program is currently structured.  We have developed an alternative to the Interdisciplinary Honors minor known as the Interdisciplinary Studies Minor.  Instead of the thesis, students may take extra electives to fulfill the eighteen hour requirement and still end up getting a minor.  The main difference is that the Interdisciplinary Studies minor does not carry the Honors distinction.

So I can enter the Honors Program and not have to worry about doing a thesis?

This is not the way we want our students to think about the program.  We want you to come into the program aiming high.  We do everything we can to help students accomplish the goal of the thesis.  We do some arm-twisting and sumo wrestling.  I’m just kidding, of course.  We try to get students plugged into a specific topic as early as the second semester of their freshman year.  We also try to get them linked up with professors who can serve as mentors and who may ultimately serve as the chair of their thesis committee.  We try to help students focus on a specialized topic during their entire stay at Union if possible.  Sometimes students write papers for the required Honors courses that later can be worked into chapters of the thesis.  This is the ideal, because it helps students to focus on quality of work and not just quantity.  This is what we stress—quality.  We want you to be able to out-think and out-perform your colleagues who have decided not to take the Honors route.  We want to be able to recommend you with utmost confidence to the best graduate schools in the country.  We want to help you get the best jobs available and be the best leaders our world has to offer.  This is our ultimate goal.

Still, not everyone decides to do a thesis.  We have provided an option for those who do all the course work in the minor except for the thesis, as mentioned above.  But could I say just one more thing?  Even students who opt out of the thesis tend to do well in graduate school and places of employment because we teach them how to think in the courses they do take in our program.

How does doing a thesis really help me then?

It sets you above the rest of the pack.  It will look good on your resume when you start looking for a graduate school or a job.  But more than that, you will know how to think at a higher level than most people.  I have seen this happen time and time again.  One of our former Honors Students, Matthew Schobert, was recently voted the most outstanding graduate student at Baylor.  Another, Clay Jackson, is a Physician in Memphis.  He did a theology degree at Oxford, too, and now is on the lecture circuit dealing with subjects such as the relationship between science and faith.  One of our recent graduates, Melody Maxwell, had her Honors thesis published in a series of academic articles.  I could go on and on.

If I decide to give the Interdisciplinary Honors Program a try, how do I sign up?

If you have received a letter inviting you into the program, then all you need to do is sign up for one of the sections of HON 210, Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, and present your letter to the person who registers you for classes.  You will have to have permission to take the class, so if you lose or forget your letter, you will need to see me, Dr. Randall Bush, during registration.  I hope you will come by our table and introduce yourself regardless.  We will be there to answer any other questions you have.  If you do not get an invitation into the program and would like to apply, please come by our table at registration or see me so that we can determine whether the program is right for you.

Do I need to do any preparation this summer for the classes coming up in the fall?

This is a good idea, but it is not required.  We understand that some students have to work during the summer, and that study during this time may be difficult.  We suggest that you at least secure the books for the course as mentioned in our invitation letter, and, if possible, read some or all of them before coming in the fall.  Again, this is not absolutely necessary, but it will make your semester easier if you decide to do so.  Also, reading the books in advance gives you time to think about the material, and above everything else, we want to get the gears in your head moving.

Depending on which section you sign up for, you will have either me (Dr. Bush) or my associate, Professor Brenda Alexander, during the first half of the course.  At mid-term, we switch groups, so you end up getting the best (or as a few of my students joke, “the worst”) of both worlds.  You will find the subject matter intriguing.  The novel I use, Sophie’s World, is an intriguing mystery that introduces you to the history of philosophical ideas.  Professor Alexander uses James Burke’s Connections, which is about how one invention leads to another.  So you learn how to see the history of human development from two angles—from the angle of technological advancement and historical events, and from the angle of the history of ideas.  I only wish I had had such a course in college. 

If you want to know more details about the introductory class or any other classes, you can check this website for syllabi.  I look forward to meeting you when you come to Union.  May God be with you as you embark on this new and exciting journey!

Other facts about the program

• The Honors Program has an Honors Students Association that is designed to foster a sense of community among students in the program.  All freshmen are required to attend these meetings during their first semester
• Students who are required to take Introduction to Philosophy as part of the P.P.E. (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) program or the Christian Studies major can opt out of this course by taking the Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies and the Great Ideas courses.
• Great Ideas and the two Great Books courses can satisfy P.P.E. requirements if a student decides not to stay in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program.
• Every two years, a trip is offered for students to go to Oxford and another destination in Europe for two weeks.  Students may compete for scholarships given by the University to facilitate in this travel.  During our last trip, four $1,500 scholarships were given to students who pledged to continue in the program and produce an honors thesis.
• Students who stay in the program claim that the Interdisciplinary Honors Program is one of the best things going at Union.