• Add polish and distinction to your major, your transcript, your resumé, and your commencement ceremony in a way that employers recognize.  

• Join a community within a community, a social and intellectual arena for personal development, challenge, and collaborative work with dynamic and interesting peers and faculty from every program. 

• Focus on collaboration, not competition.  

• Expand your horizons. Honors courses are not Advanced Placement-style courses that ramp up ordinary courses in the general curriculum. Instead, they are specially-designed for Honors students to ensure different dimensions of experience that will enable you to reach beyond the bounds of your profession, that offer social and intellectual practice, debate, and dialogue to ensure you have the ingenuity to advance in that career, and, even better, that develop the confidence and mental flexibility to tackle life problems and questions as they arise.  

• Develop multidimensional thinking and problem-solving skills through Honors Courses, Honors Components, and a number of unique activities and opportunities.  

• Stand out from the crowd. Honors is a national "brand" in that employers who do not know Lasell will know you are in the top 10% of your graduating class nationally.

• Demonstrate proven accomplishment. You will demonstrate the drive, cross-cultural experience and global perspective that employers seek. You will gain the flexibility, depth and innovation in thought that equips graduates to advance in your careers, build your own investigation or enterprise, or change the world. You will excel in the endeavors you choose because you gain the skill and confidence to research problems from a number of angles. You develop the team and leadership strategies necessary to organize action and implement solutions. Close working relationships with faculty foster independent thinking, social responsibility and enthusiasm for the power of ideas

• Take part in special opportunities for networking, teamwork or leadership in social media team, Laser Focus (our online magazine and home for student first-person essays edited by Honors students), Honors Student Council executive board, travel, events, and fun off-campus and on!

• Intellectually curious
• Demonstrating creativity, depth, and innovation in thought
• Distinguished by drive, enthusiasm, and engagement in learning and problem-solving inside and outside the classroom
• Possessing academic ability and promise
• Distinguished by leadership abilities and promise
• Demonstrating social awareness and responsibility

Lasell University Customized Honors Curriculum = 4+4

4 Honors Courses + 4 Honors Components

This sequence is designed to blend with any student's major, minor and set of interests, including students who participate in Lasell Works, athletics, double majors, study abroad, three-year degrees, and more. 

4 Custom Courses

These are specially designed for Honors students and offer opportunities and activities distinct from the regular curriculum. Pacing is up to the student, but typically, each year (fall or spring) students take one course specially designed for Honors students. It works to a student's advantage to take HON101 in the fall.

4 Custom Components

These are investigations into things that interest the student.  Each year students select a regular course they would like to tweak or customize by substituting a project they themselves design (with the professor) by modifying or replacing a project the other students may be doing. These are worth 20-25% of the course grade and get factored into it as part of the normal end of term grade.  Components are different work, designed by students, pursuing personal passions.  They need not be more work unless one designs the Component that way. These students pace themselves.  Some may decide to do two or zero in one a given year. 

Other special group Component options will be offered on occasion such as reading and film groups, marketing projects, social media teams, etc.  Honors students are notified of options through the Honors director. Guidelines and sample Components are available.HON299 "Honors Component Workshop" is an optional 1-2 credit course that enables the student to work on independent Components in a team-based, workshop atmosphere. It is designed for those unsure of their project idea as well as those eager to go it alone. 

Continuing Eligibility Requirements

Students are invited in during the admissions and first-year orientation process prior to the first year, or they must nominate themselves or be nominated during the fall semester. Transfer students, non-traditional students and advanced students should speak directly to the director about entry to the Program.  Students must pass all Honors courses and components with a grade of C or better. Students must maintain a 3.5 overall cumulative average to continue in the Honors Program. If they are unable to do this for a semester, they may be placed on "Honors Probation" for the next semester and then return to GPA eligibility at the end of that semester.  Students can appeal Program decisions.