The Honors Integrative Studies program serves as a campus-wide hub for the work of academic integration. In its broadest and most common usage, the word "integration" suggests bringing together disparate parts to form a whole. In Honors Integrative Studies, we intentionally and thoughtfully pursue four kinds of academic integration:
- Faith and Reason: Integrating faith and reason is implied in the very motto of the University, religio et eruditio, and is central to the purpose of any Christian university.
- Humanities and Sciences: All truth is God's truth. While disciplinary silos have their uses, they are counterproductive to Christian formation if they prevent seeing the whole of creation as a purposeful unity. So we put a wide array of academic disciplines into conversation with one another.
- Theory and Practice: Faith without works is dead (Jas 2.26); doing without understanding is also dead (Mk 7.1-8).
- Head and Heart: Aligning the intellect and the emotions with the truth is a particularly important task for Christian discipleship in the context of late modernity, for "what we love we grow to resemble" (Bernard of Clairvaux).
Moreover, our English word "integrate" ultimately derives from a Latin word meaning “to make whole” or “to restore.” Our work in Honors Integrative Studies is, then, redemptive work, offering both students and faculty the tools to participate in the Lord's ongoing work of re-creation, of making all things new (Rev 21.5).
