Mission
Modeling a commitment to liberal arts and cross-disciplinary education, the Honors College celebrates outstanding students and encourages them to strive for a high level of academic excellence.  We prepare students to become forces for positive change in the co-curricular life of the campus and the broader community through scholarship, service, teamwork and leadership. We motivate students to develop character and value life-long learning.
Philosophy Leadership Development Through Community Investment   We believe that an honors education should instill in students the desire to be active, contributing members of their societies. Our aim is summarized best in our motto: "To be honorable is to serve." The Honors College at West Chester University achieves this theme of leadership development through service by providing an exciting environment for academically gifted and highly motivated students to interact in a learning community of peers, faculty, administrators, and staff that will challenge and enrich the students' college experience.
Grounded in the liberal arts tradition, the Honors College seeks cross-disciplinary connections to develop students' natural intellectual abilities and challenge them to employ those gifts on behalf of the larger community. At West Chester University, honors is more than a matter of strong grades. Honors implies a decision to use the gift of knowledge to be an active problem solver in both the campus community and in the world. To that end, the honors program seeks to build character and foster a commitment to lifelong learning that prepares leaders for the 21st century. A core of nine sequenced courses will familiarize you, as a student, with defining and addressing challenges facing today's communities. Additionally, you will select a minimum of two 300/400-level special topics seminars that rotate each semester. The culminating experience, a three-credit capstone project, provides you with the opportunity to identify, investigate, and address creatively an issue in a community business, nonprofit agency, or research laboratory. Honors is a supplement to, not a substitute for, an academic major. The honors core, plus one additional science or mathematics course, fulfills the University's general education requirements for honors students.