Overview

The CSB and SJU Honors Scholars for Community and Collaborative Leadership Program provides a supportive intellectual community for a self-motivated and diverse group of students to take risks by participating in a challenging, integrative, and interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum. Honors Scholars put their liberal arts learning into action by collaborating with each other and community partners on projects that contribute to the common good of the community. 

Honors students are likely to become leaders in their workplaces, local governments, places of worship and volunteer organizations. This program is designed to help students step into those roles with a strong, values-based skillset. Developed from the Social Change Model of Leadership and using the Benedictine values as their backdrop, the learning goals promote inclusivity, respect for differing viewpoints and the importance of working toward the common good.

The world needs critical thinkers, strategists and agents of action. The program’s interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum enables students to test and develop their skills at all three. They’ll integrate coursework and leadership skills in collaborative student-driven experiential learning projects that empower them to identify opportunities and challenges, develop proposals and design strategies for change that support the common good of their communities.

The Honors Scholars offers students the opportunity to be part of a unique learning community of academically motivated peers. Because students move through the program with their cohort, they develop close relationships with scholars from a wide variety of intellectual interests. In their last two years, students work together to develop and implement a community-based project that showcases their collaborative leadership skills.