This Week’s College: Cook Honors College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Pennsylvania
Imagine moving into a mansion decorated with sculpture, Arthurian paintings, gilded mirrors on the walls, and antique furniture that you can actually sit on and use. Then imagine it full of curious and insightful people who didn’t all grow up surrounded by wealth and privilege. Add a group of dedicated, excellent educators, a motivated “governess” and a wealthy alumnus (one Robert Cook no less) whose goal is to create an honors college where students who have not had every possible benefit in life, now can. Imagine you live there with your friends. And you take amazingly cool classes there. You make dinner there and eat family style and then see a movie in a room whose walls are covered in reproductions of hand painted wallpaper. And that, that is Cook Honors College at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
It’s not like a regular honors program where you just go ahead and register early, or don’t have to take the distribution requirements, or write a thesis or something and they just slap the honors name on it. Cook Honors College takes the honors label extremely seriously. The core of its programming surrounds a cross-curricular approach to a series of “Great Questions” which foster both critical thinking and self reflection. For example, the first of these units center around the question “What do we know? What do we believe? Therefore what should I do?” while the second seminar’s topic is “What is good? What is evil? Therefore what should I do?” Over time these expand from the individual to society with the last few including “What does it mean to be human?” or “Must the need for the social order conflict with personal liberty?” and “What are the obligations of the educated citizen?” In addition, each semester, students write a major paper that is peer reviewed, an essential skill in our work communities today, and also important to promoting a sense of community and collaboration.
Because CHC is also a part of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, students can go on to major in any subject they want (business and economics are perennial favorites). And while the college is a residential one (you live there with the rest of your fellow honors college folks), it is right on campus, so you can still participate in all the sports, activities, and goings on of IUP so for a student who wants a small school in a big school (12,000 undergrads) this is a neat choice. IUP itself is not a selective school (about 95% of students are admitted) although the Cook Honors College has a separate application process in addition to the Common App. They have a handy dandy quiz to see if you would be at home in the CHC. I bet many of you will feel like you are.
There’s no escaping at CHC. It’s small. And it’s focused. And you will not be able to hide. You are expected to become a scholar here in a community of scholars and it is expected that your participation will bring something valuable to the conversation. Community is the number one thing students say they love about CHC. They love the small classes, how accessible professors are, and that they live, work, and play together. So if you are not into that this is not the school for you. The life of the mind is a think here. People are curious and they want to know more about how everything works. So yes, while they still likely to hop out and catch the Crimson Hawks play football, they are just as likely to be sitting around and reading the New York Review of Books.
Pros:
Imagine moving into a mansion decorated with sculpture, Arthurian paintings, gilded mirrors on the walls, and antique furniture that you can actually sit on and use. Then imagine it full of curious and insightful people who didn’t all grow up surrounded by wealth and privilege. Add a group of dedicated, excellent educators, a motivated “governess” and a wealthy alumnus (one Robert Cook no less) whose goal is to create an honors college where students who have not had every possible benefit in life, now can. Imagine you live there with your friends. And you take amazingly cool classes there. You make dinner there and eat family style and then see a movie in a room whose walls are covered in reproductions of hand painted wallpaper. And that, that is Cook Honors College at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
It’s not like a regular honors program where you just go ahead and register early, or don’t have to take the distribution requirements, or write a thesis or something and they just slap the honors name on it. Cook Honors College takes the honors label extremely seriously. The core of its programming surrounds a cross-curricular approach to a series of “Great Questions” which foster both critical thinking and self reflection. For example, the first of these units center around the question “What do we know? What do we believe? Therefore what should I do?” while the second seminar’s topic is “What is good? What is evil? Therefore what should I do?” Over time these expand from the individual to society with the last few including “What does it mean to be human?” or “Must the need for the social order conflict with personal liberty?” and “What are the obligations of the educated citizen?” In addition, each semester, students write a major paper that is peer reviewed, an essential skill in our work communities today, and also important to promoting a sense of community and collaboration.
Because CHC is also a part of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, students can go on to major in any subject they want (business and economics are perennial favorites). And while the college is a residential one (you live there with the rest of your fellow honors college folks), it is right on campus, so you can still participate in all the sports, activities, and goings on of IUP so for a student who wants a small school in a big school (12,000 undergrads) this is a neat choice. IUP itself is not a selective school (about 95% of students are admitted) although the Cook Honors College has a separate application process in addition to the Common App. They have a handy dandy quiz to see if you would be at home in the CHC. I bet many of you will feel like you are.
There’s no escaping at CHC. It’s small. And it’s focused. And you will not be able to hide. You are expected to become a scholar here in a community of scholars and it is expected that your participation will bring something valuable to the conversation. Community is the number one thing students say they love about CHC. They love the small classes, how accessible professors are, and that they live, work, and play together. So if you are not into that this is not the school for you. The life of the mind is a think here. People are curious and they want to know more about how everything works. So yes, while they still likely to hop out and catch the Crimson Hawks play football, they are just as likely to be sitting around and reading the New York Review of Books.
Pros:
- It’s kind of like living in Mrs. Frankweiler’s house in From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler
- You get completely spoiled and they brag about how they spoil you there
- You will come out with phenomenal communications skills
- It’s impossible to leave this program and not have thought through the puzzles of life
- It’s not for whiners – this is a place for serious work
- It’s not for people who see things in black and white, this is a one million shades of gray kind of school
- It’s not for people who have super set opinions on things and don’t want to change them
- Security is a big thing here (you live in a tricked out mansion) so if you’re totally scatterbrained it’s going to be an issue