From our inception, we’ve understood that our mission must be grounded in a community-based approach to promoting excellence both in and beyond the classroom. We seek to do this through…
Promoting the values of…
APETH: EXCELLENCE
Excellence is not an abstract value or virtue, but something very concrete. It is what happens when talented individuals choose to do excellent things. Excellence requires expecting the best from yourself and others, and being ambitious without being competitive.
KOINΩNIA: COMMUNITY
Community means belonging to a group that comes together to encourage, support, inspire and enjoy one another. Authentic community is a place where individuals are encouraged to be individuals while being aware of and caring for how they impact others.
Both first-years and upperclassmen live together in Andrews Hall with faculty founder and director, Professor Scot Douglass and his daughters. They study together throughout Andrews and enjoy an array of both academically-oriented and fun events throughout the course of the year.
EYKARIA: OPPORTUNITY
Opportunity means seizing the present time at hand to create an overall educational experience that matches your individual abilities and ambitions (through special classes, research positions, internships, study abroad, service projects, mentors, leadership training, etc).
Knowing other honors students from all four years means regular exposure to peers involved with research, design, international development, and competitions. This is especially valuable for new EHP students to see the possibilities in and beyond the classroom.
Community Experiences
Unique Events
Every year there are cultural, educational events like trips to the Denver Center for Performing Arts, Andrews Hall Symposiums, and banquets with special guest speakers. In addition, there are many purely fun and social events. In past years these have included climbing a 14er, going to a pumpkin patch, open mic nights, the Time Travelers Ball, movie nights, art nights and karaoke.
Peer Mentoring
Whether it’s your recitation leader for Critical Encounters, an upperclassman who lives down the hall of someone you met at an event, you have access to those who’ve gone before you. Vertical integration is a key component of EHP and upperclassman offer a wealth of knowledge to incoming students.
Annual Retreats
You’ll deepen friendships, make new ones, and glean some scholarly wisdom from the EHP Director at the annual EHP Retreat… all while enjoying the beautiful Glen Eyrie Castle grounds.
Special Andrews Courses
Each fall, Professor Douglass teaches multiple sections of Critical Encounters I for all incoming first year students. During the Spring, he teaches a variety of classes that change each year.
EHP also offers Andrews sections of the basic Applied Math series (see below). In addition, we offer a variety of special topics courses, some of which are also listed below.
Critical Encounters I (EHON 1151)
Required of all incoming EHP students, this course fosters a variety of critical encounters (between students, students and professor, students and ideas, students and culture) in order to equip students to more thoughtfully map out who they are, who they want to be and ways to be intentional about pursuing that. To do this, we explore literature, philosophy and film. The course explores critical, literary and philosophical approaches to the following related problems: how we organize knowledge and construct meaning, and how we locate a sense of self, as both individuals and members of various groups, amidst the resources and demands of competing interpretations, traditions, challenges and circumstances. Critical Encounters I is an approved course for EHP students’ lower-division humanities requirement.
The Applied Math Basic Series: Calc 1, Calc 2, Calc 3 & Differential Equations (APPM 1350, 1360, 2350 & 2360)
These are the basic math courses required of all Engineering students. In the Fall, Andrews offers smaller sections of Calc 1, Calc 2 and Calc 3 and, in the Spring, Calc 2, Calc 3 and Differential Equations. The Andrews sections are limited to EHPers and capped at 28 students but participate in the same common exams given to all sections of these courses. That is, they are not Honors versions of these courses, but cover the same material in smaller classes with EHP peers.
Critical Encounters II (EHON 3843)
CE2 is an elective offered each Spring for graduating seniors. Whereas CE1 frames what it means to be an authentic and intentional person with their undergraduate university education ahead of them, CE2 looks back at this education and forward to what’s next. We explore what it means to be a fully human being: through group discussion and closely examining individual works of culturally and historically significant philosophy, literature and art.
Engineering, Ethics & Society: Harry Potter and the Conflict of Being (HUEN 3843)
The Harry Potter series addresses the idea of conflict from a wide variety of perspectives: personal identity, class, race, morality, education, age, ambition and friendship (to name just a few). This course will explore how these themes are worked out both within this extended coming of age narrative and against the classical background that J.K. Rowling so freely appropriates. Through a close reading of the texts, themselves (minus the “Epilogue”), we will map out their philosophical and existential significance and how this is related to their popularity. This course is taught every 3-4 years.
Engineering, Ethics & Society: The Brothers Karamazov (HUEN 3843)
This course explores of one of the greatest accomplishments of literary philosophy: Dostoevsky’s “polyphonic” novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Organized around a murder mystery, this novel gives voice to competing responses to many of the great questions that have vexed and inspired humankind: What is good and evil? What is the purpose of suffering? What is the nature of justice, forgiveness, personal responsibility, family, faith, intellect and desire? Dostoevsky does not flinch from facing the most difficult questions of life, and he asks us to face them with him. By doing this in novels (as opposed to essays or philosophical treatises), Dostoevsky approaches these ideas by exploring what it means for individuals to embrace them, wrestle with them and attempt to live in light of them. This course is offered every 3-4 years.
Engineering, Ethics & Society: Literature and Leadership (HUEN 3843)
By looking at literature and leadership, as opposed to the literature of leadership, this course will examine fictional characters living out leadership within all the complexities of the world of the text or film. In doing so, we will see that the question of what it means to be a leader cannot lose sight of the verb “to be.” That is, being a leader has everything to do with being attentive to a complex set of responsibilities within an multi-faceted context. A number of things make this project complex: the complexity of the person who would be a leader; the complexity of the situation in which the leader must be; the complexity of the project that requires leadership; and the complexity of the disparate realities that any particular call to leadership inherits: legacies of success, failure, scandal or entrenchment; people who unnaturally believe in you, love you, hate you, suspect you or envy you; your own responses of over-confidence, insecurity, fear, impatience, etc.
Program Requirements
The Engineering Honors Program is committed to providing a qualitative, not a quantitative, addition to the normal curriculum. As a result, our structural requirements are very few and are integrated as closely as possible with existing degree requirements. That being said, we do have some requirements.
To graduate “with Honors” as an incoming student, you must:
Actively participate in the Engineering Honors Program. This includes at least one year in residence in Andrews Hall and regular attendance at required EHP events throughout your undergraduate career (approximately 4 per year, including fall & spring banquets and cultural events).
Complete EHON 1151: Critical Encounters the Fall of your first year.
Maintain a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.3. (Students who have participated in the program all four years, but who do not meet this requirement by their graduation, will still be eligible to wear an EHP medal at graduation; however, they will not receive the honors designation on their diploma.)
Complete either a Graduation Profile or Senior Honors Thesis
Graduating with Honors
The College of Engineering bestows two different types of honors designations upon its graduates (one based on GPA and one recognizing successful completion of EHP). Students in EHP may earn both types.
Latinate Honors
The classic honors designations awarded solely on GPA, meaning all engineering students are eligible to earn them:
English “With Honors”
The designation on the diploma, awarded for successful completion of EHP will read “with honors.”