Mission Statement
University of Pittsburgh
University Honors College
The University Honors College (UHC) was established by trustees in 1986 and dedicated on Founder's Day 1987. The mission is to assist the larger University as it seeks to meet the special academic and co-curricular needs of Pitt’s most able, motivated, innovative, and inquisitive students.
Designed by key faculty and validated by the University Senate as a good-of-the-order initiative with expectations for high-level leadership support, UHC is undergraduate in focus and University-wide in scope. It is animated by a vision of quality that emphasizes student attainment. This vision is implemented by a non-membership organizational structure and a non-territorial attainment-over-turf administrative structure. These dual characteristics function for qualified students as an educational delivery system offering distinctive opportunities for individual achievement both on and off the campus. The college seeks to provide academic challenge, inspire intellectual effort, foster independence of mind, and generate abiding educational relationships with professional scholars on the faculty. Simultaneously, it seeks to establish for students and faculty an inspiring reverence and lasting enthusiasm for the life of the mind through fulfilling participation in a culture of academic aspiration, reflection, and self-discovery.
The honors college rests upon the cherished bedrock of fundamental principles. Two in number, the first is well known, profoundly American, central to the public interest: equality of educational opportunity. The second is vital to a healthy society and identifies institutional justice with the promotion of attainment. This emphasis is the provenance for the signature honors college conception of quality: In all endeavors, the measure of quality is attainment, either relative ("be all you can be") or absolute ("be as good as anyone can be").
A bona fide university establishes intellectual attainment as its foremost value. Consequently, UHC structures are designed to nurture cognitive achievement, intellectual adventure, and self-discovery for undergraduates. These structures emphasize (1) course work to engage students intellectually following in-depth treatments of basic and applied disciplines by committed faculty, (2) personalized advising and mentoring to stress a combination of scope and disciplinary concentration as the essential elements of distinctive undergraduate studies, (3) academic community to sustain informal intellectual and social interaction among peers and faculty across disciplines in relatively small settings of human dimension, (4) independent scholarship to take advantage of the comprehensive resources available only in a major university through supportive research collaboration with professional scholars on the faculty, and (5) the option of a special research-based University-wide degree (Bachelor of Philosophy in disciplines) to provide incentives and deserving recognition for high levels of completed formal scholarship.
If the measure of quality in individual endeavors is attainment, then the measure of quality in institutions is a capacity to transform individual talent into attainment. To that end, the honors college invests human, material, and financial resources in individuals over programs. The visible promotion of attainment establishes an ambience for human possibility that animates any worthy organization. A university that aspires to be major without qualification regards attainment by undergraduates as an indicator of educational quality much as attainment by faculty is regarded as an indicator of professional quality. In top-tier universities, efforts to foster the highest possible attainment deserve exceptional attention at all levels including undergraduate. The college solicits participants of ability, curiosity, drive, independence, imagination, and philanthropic disposition. These individuals will be inspired by the achievement of others, will seek achievement for themselves, and will ultimately be moved to responsible civic advocacy following participation in a deliberative community of kindred spirits.
Associated with the UHC investment in individual attainment is an ancillary mission: to assist the University in attracting additional students of diverse background, curiosity, and academic promise. These students, through their striving, intellectual fortitude, and achievement in academic and co-curricular arenas, benefit from exceptional faculty mentors while contributing themselves to an educational environment deserving of public confidence and private support.
Updated July 2009