Myrlie Evers-Williams Honors Program Curriculum

The Myrlie Evers-Williams Honors Program at Alcorn State University has a celebrated history of excellence, bringing together students and faculty with exceptional intellectual commitment and ability in an atmosphere that stimulates scholarship, leadership, and creativity. As an interdisciplinary, liberal arts program rooted in Alcorn’s historic mission, the Myrlie Evers-Williams Honors Program cultivates intellectually curious and socially conscious scholars for a lifetime of justice advocacy and servant leadership. Thus, the Myrlie Evers-Williams Honors Program offers academically motivated students a diverse interdisciplinary curriculum that has an intense focus on research, service, and experiential learning through a community of faculty, staff, and students at Alcorn State University and within the state, nation, and world.

Students may enter into the Program as new freshmen with an ACT score of 24 or at the end of any semester with a grade point average of 3.0 or better. Participants entering after the first semester of the freshman year are selected on the basis of cumulative average plus the recommendations of two faculty members. The required average for second semester freshmen, sophomores and juniors is 3.0 or better; seniors must have achieved an average of 3.25 or better. In the freshman year, students are grouped into special honors sections of general education courses. In the sophomore year, students enroll in a colloquium designed to encourage and develop lively communication growing out of enriched reading experiences. Sophomore students may also enroll in special honors sections of multi-section courses, which are offered in response to student interest and when departmental personnel resources permit.

At the upper level, there is an interdisciplinary honors seminar for juniors, which widens the student’s outlook and at the same time provides an opportunity for research in a field of special interest. The senior honors student engages in a program of study related to a single major field that offers the possibility for: (a) guided research, (b) a seminar, (c) independent study or (d) a project.

A student who has completed a minimum of 24 hours of honors course work, and who has maintained a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.25 in honors and overall, may graduate with the designation of a Myrlie Evers-Williams Honors Scholar. In addition to the above requirements, the recipient of this distinction must be enrolled in a minimum of six hours of honors course work during at least three of the four undergraduate years.