Southern Nazarene Honors prepares gifted scholars to serve the world around them. Our program is designed to stimulate creative, interdisciplinary analysis, facilitate student-faculty mentorship, and enable high quality undergraduate research that will carry the student beyond graduation. By requiring participation in service-learning and cross-cultural experiences, we teach motivated students to lead by example. By encouraging excellence in scholarship and creative analysis, we create life-long learners learners who will use their intellectual gifts to enrich the professional, social, and religious communities in which they live, beginning with the campus community at SNU. Honors Program students not only lead the larger community of students around them but nurture a community that values scholarship and service. The goal of Southern Nazarene Honors is to challenge students to challenge themselves, to strive without ceasing to be the best witnesses of true and godly scholarship that they can be.
Early Application Deadline: January 1
Submit your application before January 1 and enter to win a $25 Amazon gift card!
The benefits of completing a degree through SNU Honors are manifold:
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The Tangible
- Eligibility for Honors Scholarship covering over-the-block tuition up to 20 hours
- Special Freshman Year Experience courses
- Access to Honors Lounge in the A.M. Hills residence hall
- Early enrollment for classes after matriculation
- Extended network printing privileges
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The Intangible
- Personal mentoring relationships with excellent faculty
- Membership in a community of diverse but motivated and gifted learners
- Research opportunities guided by students’ own interests
- Scholarship opportunities for academically excellent work
- Enhanced preparation and advising for post-degree professional and graduate school experiences
- Increased opportunities for cross-cultural experience
- Formative, integrative, and longer-term service-learning experiences to learn the needs of the world around us
- The self-knowledge that comes from having actively applied oneself and surpassed one’s own believed limitations
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Undergraduate Research Symposium
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Who Can Apply?
- Non-provisional, incoming SNU freshmen
- Current SNU freshmen in good academic standing
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Criteria for Admission
- Any non-provisionally admitted student may apply for admission. Those who do not meet the criteria below will need to complete the Online Application Form + Honors Admission Essay.
- Students meeting the following criteria automatically qualify and only need to complete the Application Form to apply
- Automatic qualification criteria
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- 25 or higher ACT/ 1100 or higher SAT (Math + Verbal) OR two or more concurrent enrollment courses completed with a grade of B or better
- Top 10% of high school graduating class preferred
- Credit or waive-status for Comp I completed/received student’s fall semester freshman year (this can be met by concurrent enrollment, AP or CLEP testing, or simply scoring 25+ on the English portion of ACT)
The Honors Program application includes
- Honors Online Application Form
- Honors Program Admission Essay (if applicable):
- If you have less than a 25 ACT/1100 SAT score, you must complete this short essay to be admitted into the Honors Program.
How Applications Are Evaluated
Each application is evaluated individually. Applicants will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. When we reach the maximum number of students (22), applicants will be added to a wait-list. -
Application Process
- Complete the Honors Program Application Form.
- If you do not meet the suggested score requirements: Write an Honors Program Application Essay (instructions provided on pg. 3 of this document) and email it to gweaver@gregorybgallagher.com.
- We accept applications throughout the year. Anyone who meets the requirements will be accepted into the Honors Program; however, once slots in the program are full, you will be placed on the waitlist. The earlier you get your application in, the better! You may be accepted into the Honors Program if you have already attended a Storm Surge prior to application, but your fall semester schedule will have to be revised.
You may be accepted into the Honors Program if you have already attended a Storm Surge
prior to application, but your fall semester schedule will have to be revised.Selection Procedure
• Each application is considered independently, and if the applicant qualifies for the program, he or she will be accepted until all spaces are filled.
• Some applicants may be asked to interview by phone before admissions are finalized.
• Approximately twenty-two students will be selected to participate in the Honors Program each year.
• Some students may be placed on a waiting list and invited to join the HP at a later time.
• Non-selected students may re-apply in the second semester of their freshman year.Post-Admission Requirements to Remain Eligible for Honors Scholarships
• Progress towards completion of Honors Program each semester
• Maintenance of 3.5 or higher cumulative and semester GPA (a student who falls below a 3.5 GPA in any one semester will be placed on probation; if a student’s GPA remains below 3.5 the following semester the student will be no longer be in good standing with the program and will not be eligible for the Honor’s Scholarship until a 3.5 GPA is attained)
• Maintenance of good community standing based on a report from the Office of Student Life and student’s major departmentPost-Admission Requirements to Graduate with Honors Program Designation
• Successful completion of 24 hours of Honors Program work, including Honors Thesis/Project and Intercultural Practicum.Honors Program Application Essay Instructions
ONLY TO BE COMPLETED IF YOU DO NOT MEET THE SUGGESTED SCORES
Write a response to any one article listed on Arts and
Letters Daily (http://www.aldaily.com/). You may choose only from the columns “Articles of Note” and “Essays and Opinion.”*Details
• Your essay should be 500-600 words (equivalent to 1.5- 2 double-spaced pages). Run longer if you like, but 2 thoughtful pages are sufficient.
• Your goal is to demonstrate that you like to think. Write pro, con, or pro-and-con, but be persuasive. Give evidence and make illustrations. Be rhapsodic or terse or satiric or whatever you so desire: show us an energetic mind!
• No substitutions in genre or media, please. Don’t send us a research paper, a painting, a poem, a PowerPoint show, or a video, etc. instead of an essay. Those are valid ways of responding, and you may very well use them in honors assignments here, but an essay is what we need now.
• If you have questions about these instructions, please email the Honors Director at gweaver@gregorybgallagher.com.Format
• At the top of your essay, give your name, email address, and phone number(s).
• Give an original title for your essay.
• Below your essay title, state the article you’re responding to (author, title, place of publication, and Web address).How to Submit Your Honors Program Application Essay
• Preferred method: Submit your essay electronically (by email attachment), along with your other application materials to honors@gregorybgallagher.com.
• If you have already completed your Honors Program Application Form, there’s no need to duplicate the application form. Just send the essay with a note that your application is already in.
• Alternative method: Submit your essay by snail mail to Honors Program, Attn: Dr. Gina Weaver Yount, Southern Nazarene University, 6729 NW 39th Expressway, Bethany OK 73008.Follow-up
We will email you to let you know that your essay arrived.*This activity and explanation used with permission from Chris Willerton, Abilene Christian University Honors Program.
For more information, please contact gweaver@gregorybgallagher.com.