Welcome from the Director
Welcome to the John Martinson Honors Program. Whether you are a new student exploring honors education for the first time, a current member of our honors community, or an alumnus of our program re-living your SIUE experience, we are excited to share our approach to education with you.
Throughout our website, you’ll learn a lot about how we approach learning and growth. But let's first share with you the values that inspire us. Our program is built on two key principles: reverence and liberation. You might notice some tension between these ideas; that’s intentional, because where there is tension between ideas we often see the most growth and engagement! In simpler terms:
- Reverence: We admire, celebrate and study the amazing things that have been created and achieved across the history of the world.
- Liberation: We encourage you avoid simple answers, and instead guide you to think critically and question things about yourselves and our society that are often taken for granted.
Together, these principles help us grow into well-rounded individuals who appreciate the achievements of others while challenging our own assumptions. Our goal is to help you become a thoughtful, empowered person poised to make a positive impact on the world.
Here's what you can expect:
- Deep and Thoughtful Inquiry: Engage in honors courses where students and faculty of diverse backgrounds come together to study the past, the world, and themselves, by examining enduring questions and pressing issues.
- Real-World Problem Solving: Gain the skills to tackle important challenges, connecting what you learn in honors courses to your major, co-curricular activities, community service projects, and future career.
- Leadership Through Service: Use the knowledge you've gained to serve others in your home, school, and community. By embracing service and humility, you'll elevate your humanity and make a positive impact beyond our campus
Our mission is to graduate compassionate, empathic, creative, and active members of society committed to the common good. You'll be part of a diverse community that values making meaningful connections with people and their ideas. We welcome all students who are eager to challenge themselves, cultivate their curiosity, and make a positive impact on the world.
Our community is a welcoming, affirming, and ever-changing place, filled with current students, our graduates, and our faculty and staff—all of whom want students to have and celebrate the honors experience at SIUE. We invite everyone to explore more and see if this type of education is right for you.
Sincerely,
Eric W. Ruckh, PhD
Director, John Martinson Honors Program
The Mission of Honors at SIUE
The John Martinson Honors Program at SIUE creates, for a diverse body of high-achieving and motivated students, an inclusive community of inquiry, reflection, self-development, and experimentation. We encourage students to take risks and help them learn from and harness their failures through an innovative, integrative curriculum composed of seminar-style classes that provide students opportunities to: explore big questions, fostering the spirit of inquiry; examine connections between diverse times, places, cultures, and forms of knowledge; take ownership of and responsibilities for pressing, contemporary problems by learning how to bring multiple perspectives to bear; become leaders comfortable confronting, discussing, and creatively responding to unsettling questions, and; practice service, reflection, and contemplation. The program instills and develops an atmosphere of collegiality, respect for difference, comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity, life-long curiosity, and humility.
Our Vision for Honors
We aspire to be an honors program that: fully engages high-achieving students with an integrated and innovative set of curricular and co-curricular experiences, nurturing inquiry and excellence; is recognized nationally for its excellence and its innovative curriculum; that serves as a laboratory for pedagogy on our own campus, and; that lays the foundations for a public Honors College at SIUE.
