Purdue Honors College Named Among Nation’s Top Honors Colleges

The Honors College is now entering its ninth year of providing transformative education to students.  This past year has been a year of tremendous recognition, in prestigious scholarships, faculty teaching awards, and student leadership awards.  Purdue as an institution is focused on empowering our students to pursue academic excellence, of which the Honors College is a proud part.  Now, the Purdue Honors College is also being recognized nationally.

College Transitions, an admissions consulting provider with an active research agenda in higher education, recently named the Purdue Honors College among a list of the top 20 honors colleges in the nation.  The announcement states, “In the best-case scenario, you can enjoy all the benefits of a large university (research opportunities, athletics, and a diverse student body) while still benefiting from an intimate, rigorous, and individualized experience usually reserved for elite liberal arts colleges.”

“National accolades like these are reflective of what we already know to be true on campus – that the Purdue Honors College provides a supportive community invested in helping each student to pursue their educational goals,” said Rhonda Phillips, dean of the Honors College.  “Students collaborate alongside us in creating and maintaining this community, a process which empowers them to be lifelong learners and thinkers across boundaries.  That’s a value proposition that goes beyond a standard educational experience.”

These benefits have been especially apparent this academic year.  Our students have been awarded prestigious scholarships like Goldwater, Churchill, and Fulbright. In spring 2021, Honors College students were awarded the G.A. Ross Award, the Martin C. Jischke Outstanding International Student of the Year award, the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, and two recipients for the Charles O. McGaughey Leadership Award.  Honors College faculty have been awarded through the Murphy Award, the Exceptional Early Career Award, and the Teaching Academy. 

These accomplishments are made possible in large part due to the Purdue Honors College’s supportive community of scholars. As Purdue’s only residential academic college, we provide a community where students of all majors live and study together, working across disciplinary boundaries and appreciating multiple perspectives to solve problems and become tomorrow’s leaders.

For further reading on the Honors College’s mission, and ways that we are continuing to provide transformative education for our students, you can go to https://honors.purdue.edu/community/news/.