To find honors courses on LionPATH, you should do an advanced search by clicking “Additional Search Criteria,” choosing “Honors Course” from the course attribute drop-down menu, and unchecking "Show only open classes."

Honors classes are all section 098 or 099 courses; they may or may not carry an “H” in their titles.

As honors students, your records are coded so only you can enroll in honors sections; add/drop slips are no longer required. However, you must register for the 098 or 099 sections, or you will not receive honors credit. The correct—HONORS—course numbers are listed below.

Questions? Contact Dr. Rotunno at [email protected].

Click here for Penn State Altoona Honors Curriculum Policies

Spring 2023 Honors Offerings

CAS 138T: Rhetoric and Civic Life II (GWS) (Dr. Laura Rotunno)

Section 99: MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. | Course Number: 18114
In English 137H, you contextualized, analyzed, even TED-talk-erized. In CAS 138T—a REQUIREMENT FOR ALL 2022 INCOMING HONORS FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS—you get to argue and advocate for ideas and actions in which you believe. You get to further find and exercise your voice (or voices). You’ll tell others what you believe in. You’ll enter deliberations about pressing issues with your classmates, and you’ll take those deliberations public to share and advocate for worthwhile ideas. You’ll work to inspire actions in others and undertake some revisions of your work to evaluate and then showcase the accomplishments of your first year at Penn State Altoona. You have the ideas. This class is going to help you get those ideas out to the right audiences, the “right” way. (Prerequisite ENGL 137H)

EARTH 101: Natural Disasters (GN) (Dr. Tim Dolney)

MWF 9:05–9:55 a.m. | Course Number: 27745
This course is a study of natural disasters, their physical causes, effects on humans and societies, and solutions to reduce their occurrences. Natural disasters are a product of natural hazards: earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, heatwaves, near-earth objects, and blizzards, among others. Thus, we will focus on the scientific aspects of natural hazards and their role in disaster formation. Mitigation for disasters and responses to disasters will also be studied across economically developing nations and developed nations. The social characteristics of the population are equally important as the scientific aspects of natural hazards in understanding natural disasters. Case histories related to notable natural disasters events will also be discussed. These include the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the 2004 Asian Tsunami, the 2011 Japanese earthquake, and tsunami, among others. The popular media will be used as a learning tool to understand the causes, consequences, and public perceptions of natural disasters. This will entail reviewing excerpted segments of “disaster films” as a starting point for analysis.

Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes

The goal of this course is to conduct a full-scale analysis of natural disasters in terms of their causes, consequences, response, mitigation strategy (future areas of research), and the role of the media in portraying natural disaster events. In the end, students will:

  • gain an understanding of the geographic distribution of natural hazards
  • gain an understanding of the geologic and atmospheric processes responsible for natural hazards
  • gain an understanding of the social characteristics related to natural disaster formation
  • gain an understanding of the areas susceptible to natural hazards and their frequency
  • gain an understanding of practical ways to mitigate the effects of natural hazards in areas where they are likely to occur

In the end, it is my hope that when students hear about natural disasters in the news they will understand what caused the natural disaster to occur (scientific aspects) and how the population of that area may be affected (social aspects).

The below are not “official” honors courses but courses in which an honors option has already been designed and thus is ready for students. Students who enroll in any of these courses must fill out an online honors option form at the beginning of the semester.

ENGL 225N / WMNST 225N: Sexuality and Modern Visual Culture: Sex Sells ... So What, Exactly, Are We Buying? (GA/GH) (Drs. Laura Rotunno & Doug Page)

MWF 9:05–9:55 a.m. | Course Number 19117/19118
Our world bombards us with images, and we contribute to that barrage each time we post a picture. This class will engage you in vital discussions about those images as well as those that came before us and continue to shape what we see and create today. At its core, this class will be driven by our discussion of visual presentations that use “sex” to “sell” us a story; that story might be about what family is or should be, about what political activism looks like, about how a society thinks about love, beauty, hate, even its future hopes or its present fears. To spur those discussions, we’ll offer you readings by and about artists and their subjects—both fictional and real—and a rich, diverse historical background in visual representations that reflect how Western society, from the mid-19th-century to today, has viewed itself through the lens of sexuality, which always intersects with race, gender, gender identity, and class. For example, the terms “feminist” and “homosexual” were invented by the Victorians and reflect profound shifts in conceptions of identity. Another 19th-century invention was the idea of the literary and artistic “avant-garde” as a minority contingent with politically and/or aesthetically advanced views. These ideas of minority culture were deeply enmeshed with one another and still have effects on our world today. Discussions of these ideas then, hopefully, can help us all navigate the flood of images that today’s media presents as well as the self-images we cast into the world. This course can be used as a prerequisite for a 1-credit study abroad (to LONDON!) opportunity that will occur—circumstances allowing—in late May 2023.

HIST 66: Survey of British History (GH, IL) (Dr. Doug Page)

MWF 11:15 a.m.–12:05 p.m. | Course Number 27354
British History is a lot more than the story of white people with accents. As noted historian Simon Schama argues, "To collude in the minimization of British history on the grounds of its imagined irrelevance to our rebranded national future, or from a suspicion that it does no more than recycle patriotic pieties unsuited to a global marketplace, would be an act of appallingly self-inflicted collective memory loss." History 066 will ensure that you don't become one of those minimizers.

This course will take you from the beginnings of settlement, to the bloody rebellion against Roman rule, to the game-changing battle of Hastings, to the terrifying rampage of Jack the Ripper, to the rediscovery of Britain in the post-colonial world. The objectives of this course are that you 1) develop an understanding of the major political, cultural, and intellectual developments of the British Isles and its peoples from ancient times to the present; (2) examine the causes and consequences of imperial rise and fall; (3) analyze objects that represent historically significant episodes within British History; and (4) critically evaluate Britain's influence on other nations and cultures, including that of the United States. This course can be used as a prerequisite for a 1-credit study abroad (to LONDON!) opportunity that will occur—circumstances allowing—in late May 2023.

PHIL 133N: Ethics of Climate Change (GH/GN) (Dr. Brian Onishi)

T/TH 10:35–11:50 a.m. | Course Number 18137
This course will cover the science, policy, and ethics of climate change. We will discuss aspects of climate change from both a scientific perspective, which includes chemistry, earth systems, ecology, and geology, and from a humanities perspective, which includes the ethical dimensions of climate change, religious and humanistic theories of human flourishing, deontological and teleological theories of ethics, and analysis of specific choices addressed by international negotiators. A major part of the course is a climate negotiation game that considers a wide range of ideas introduced throughout class, and creates ethical dilemmas about eco-terrorism, extreme weather, changes in economic structures, and developments by fossil fuel companies. The game also integrates much of the reading done in the class, allowing students to fully engage the text in an immersive experience. In short, this course will give students the tools to understand the basic science of climate change and its ethical implications. Students will come away with a better sense of the moral dimensions of this phenomenon and the implications for human civilization and for the biosphere.

COMM 110: Media and Democracy (GH) (Dr. Kevin Moist)

T/TH 10:35–11:50 a.m. | Course Number 6982
This course is about the relationship between media (especially news) and politics in the context of the United States’ democratic system of government. As the only private enterprise guaranteed in the US Constitution, the press plays an essential role in terms of informing the public, keeping a “watchdog” eye on those in power, and sharing fundamental cultural values. However, in an era of online “fake news,” extreme political partisanship, and ever-growing corporate conglomerate control of media, the status of the American press has rarely been more precarious. Beyond a general pro-democracy orientation, COMM 110H takes a non-ideological approach to the topics and issues raised by the current situation, though committed partisans of any stripe are likely to encounter at least some information that challenges their prior assumptions.

Fall 2022 Honors Offerings

ENGL 137H (GWS) Rhetoric and Civic Life I (Dr. Laura Rotunno)

MWF 10:10-11:00 a.m. | Course Number: 18856

This course English 137H is an equivalent of ENGL 015 and 030; CAS 138T (the required spring course) is an equivalent of CAS 100. Incoming first-year honors students must take this course and CAS 138T in the spring.

How do others and how can you use words, images, your literal voice, and even videos to inform, persuade, and move other people in striking ways? Those are some of the key questions we will explore in this course. To answer we will engage with texts from current artists and writers who move us to think about ourselves, our place in the world, how that place is changing, and what we want our world to be. That thinking will lead you to write, speak, and create in different forms and from different viewpoints, striving to use words and images accurately and powerfully. This class promises to challenge you to put your communication skills—reading, writing, and speaking—to use to become one who can use his/her words as “Words of Change,” the subtitle of this course. Questions? Contact Dr. Rotunno at [email protected].

EARTH 101 (GN) Natural Disasters (Dr. Tim Dolney)

MWF 9:05–9:55 a.m. | Course Number: 28814

This course is a study of natural disasters, their physical causes, effects on humans and societies, and solutions to reduce their occurrences. Natural disasters are a product of natural hazards: earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, heatwaves, near-earth objects, and blizzards, among others. Thus, we will focus on the scientific aspects of natural hazards and their role in disaster formation. Mitigation for disasters and responses to disasters will also be studied across economically developing nations and developed nations. The social characteristics of the population are equally important as the scientific aspects of natural hazards in understanding natural disasters. Case histories related to notable natural disasters events will also be discussed. These include the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the 2004 Asian Tsunami, the 2011 Japanese earthquake, and tsunami, among others. The popular media will be used as a learning tool to understand the causes, consequences, and public perceptions of natural disasters. This will entail reviewing excerpted segments of “disaster films” as a starting point for analysis.

Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes

The goal of this course is to conduct a full-scale analysis of natural disasters in terms of their causes, consequences, response, mitigation strategy (future areas of research), and the role of the media in portraying natural disaster events. In the end, students will:

  • gain an understanding of the geographic distribution of natural hazards
  • gain an understanding of the geologic and atmospheric processes responsible for natural hazards
  • gain an understanding of the social characteristics related to natural disaster formation
  • gain an understanding of the areas susceptible to natural hazards and their frequency
  • gain an understanding of practical ways to mitigate the effects of natural hazards in areas where they are likely to occur

In the end, it is my hope that when students hear about natural disasters in the news they will understand what caused the natural disaster to occur (scientific aspects) and how the population of that area may be affected (social aspects).

PSYCH 100H (GS) Introduction to Psychology (Dr. Lindsey Lilienthal)

TTH 10:35–11:50 a.m. | Course Number: 28802

All day long, you experience countless sensations, emotions, and thoughts, and you engage in countless different behaviors. You may have never really given this much thought – why these things happen, or even how they happen – but psychologists do, and you will too as part of this course. Psychology can be formally defined as the study of the mind and behavior, and this class focuses on the many factors that influence our minds and behavior (the why and how), including our biological and sensory systems, our past experiences, our personalities, our responses to other people and the world around us, and any abnormalities in these things that we experience. My goal is to provide you with a general survey of these factors, along with their central concepts, related research, and guiding theories. Although this class will involve a lot of lecture, it will not be passive – class time will also involve activities, discussions, iClicker questions, and demonstrations. By the end of this course, you should understand how psychologists scientifically approach the questions in which they are interested, what has been discovered using that approach, and how all of this applies to you.

The below is not an “official” honors course, but a course in which an honors option has already been designed and thus is ready for students. Students who enroll in the course will need to fill out an online honors option form at the beginning of the semester.

HIST 103 (GH; IL) The History of Madness (Dr. Douglas Page)

MWF 1:25–2:15 p.m. | Course Number 15639

This course is an introduction to the history of "madness," examining and evaluating the ideas that have shaped perceptions of madness, insanity, and mental illness over the centuries. Students will become acquainted with the ways in which human biology, culture, society, and politics have reciprocally shaped one another in history.

HIST 124 (GH) History of Western Medicine (Dr. John Eicher)

TTH 1:35–2:50 p.m. | Course Number: 19850

What is illness? What is medicine? Why and how does our understanding of these seemingly basic and intuitive concepts change across time? In the book Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History, editors Charles E. Rosenberg and Janet Golden state that, ““disease is an elusive entity. It is not simply a less than optimum physiological state ... disease is at once a biological event, a generation-specific repertoire of verbal constructs reflecting medicine’s intellectual and institutional history, [and] an occasion of and potential legitimation for public policy.” As you may guess, both illness and its treatment(s) have no timeless or objective reality. Rather, they are reflections of a society’s subjective ideas of a “normal” human mind and body, its notions of “good” and “bad” health, and a platform to make claims about culture, politics, religion, society, labor, gender, the economy, and the environment. The societies we focus on in this course fall under the broad designating of “Western Civilization” (in other words, Europe and the Americas). We will examine major developments in this region’s understanding of health, illness, medicine, and medical practice from ancient times to the present. The global impact of the West on the rest of the world in the last 500 makes a nuanced, historical understanding of Western medicine essential to any student of history or the health sciences. Yet Western history is by no means the only path to understanding illness and medicine, and following the guidelines of Western science is not necessarily the best path to living a healthy life. It is one path to understanding illness and medicine among many, though its record over the past 100 years has proven increasingly reliable at identifying, describing, and combatting the microbes and conditions that cause humans to feel physical or mental dis-ease. Using a wide range of materials—primary sources, history books, novels, images, and documentaries—this course expands students’ knowledge about the history of Western medicine and nuances students’ perspectives on its changing assumptions and practices.

Spring 2022 Honors Offerings

CAS 138T (GWS) Rhetoric and Civic Life II (Dr. Laura Rotunno)

Section 99: MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. | Course Number: 19434

In English 137H, you contextualized, analyzed, even TED-talk-erized. In CAS 138T—a REQUIREMENT FOR ALL 2021 INCOMING HONORS FRESHMAN—you get to argue and advocate for ideas and actions in which you believe. You get to further find and exercise your voice (or voices). You’ll tell others what you believe in. You’ll enter deliberations about pressing issues with your classmates, and you’ll take those deliberations public to share and advocate for worthwhile ideas. You’ll work to inspire actions in others and undertake some revisions of your work to evaluate and then showcase the accomplishments of your first year at Penn State Altoona. You have the ideas. This class is going to help you get those ideas out to the right audiences, the “right” way. (prerequisite ENGL 137H)

EARTH 101 (GN) Natural Disasters (Dr. Tim Dolney)

Section 99: MWF 9:05–9:55 a.m. | Course Number: 28554

This course is a study of natural disasters, their physical causes, effects on humans and societies, and solutions to reduce their occurrences. Natural disasters are a product of natural hazards: earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, heatwaves, near-earth objects, and blizzards, among others. Thus, we will focus on the scientific aspects of natural hazards and their role in disaster formation. Mitigation for disasters and responses to disasters will also be studied across economically developing nations and developed nations. The social characteristics of the population are equally important as the scientific aspects of natural hazards in understanding natural disasters. Case histories related to notable natural disasters events will also be discussed. These include the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the 2004 Asian Tsunami, the 2011 Japanese earthquake, and tsunami, among others.

The popular media will be used as a learning tool to understand the causes, consequences, and public perceptions of natural disasters. This will entail reviewing excerpted segments of “disaster films” as a starting point for analysis.

Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes

The goal of this course is to conduct a full-scale analysis of natural disasters in terms of their causes, consequences, response, mitigation strategy (future areas of research), and the role of the media in portraying natural disaster events. In the end, students will:

  • gain an understanding of the geographic distribution of natural hazards
  • gain an understanding of the geologic and atmospheric processes responsible for natural hazards
  • gain an understanding of the social characteristics related to natural disaster formation
  • gain an understanding of the areas susceptible to natural hazards and their frequency
  • gain an understanding of practical ways to mitigate the effects of natural hazards in areas where they are likely to occur

In the end, it is my hope that when students hear about natural disasters in the news they will understand what caused the natural disaster to occur (scientific aspects) and how the population of that area may be affected (social aspects).

ENGL 139 (GH, US) African American Literature (Dr. Megan Simpson)

Section 99: TuTh 1:35–2:50 p.m. | Course Number: 28650

What is a “talking book”? What is it that’s “African” in African American literature? What makes it uniquely “American”? What characteristics define this literary tradition, and how have its innovations enlarged the scope and achievement of American letters as a whole? Explore these and other questions as we survey major writers and works in the African American literary tradition. We’ll consider a broad range of oral and written forms, including folk tales, spirituals, rap lyrics, sermons, slave narratives, plays, poems, and fiction. Authors we’ll study include Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Yusef Komunyakaa, and more! (A Gen Ed—Humanities course, and a United States Cultures course.)

The below is not an “official” honors course, but a course in which an honors option has already been designed and thus is ready for students. Students who enroll in either course will need to talk with the instructors and fill out an online honors option form at the beginning of the semester.

ENGL 223N (GH, GA [interdomain]) Shakespeare: Page, Stage, and Screen (Dr Jeff Stoyanoff)

Section 001: MWF 1:25 - 2:15 p.m. | Course Number 25581

Come on an adventure through time—Shakespeare on stage (the OG experience), Shakespeare as text (the 19th and early 20th centuries), and Shakespeare as film (the mid-twentieth century to today). This course seeks to rekindle the visual and aural Shakespeare experience --- how can we re-experience Shakespeare as theatre while still attending to the intricacies of the text as text? And then what of film—perhaps the most popular medium of our time? What changes are made in adaptation? What limitations does one medium present that another remedies? Of course, there are other changes that occur in adaptation irrespective of medium, such as those attending to a production’s cultural context (e.g., political landscapes) and/or Shakespeare’s cultural context (e.g., all male actors). For example, how do we get from The Taming of the Shrew to 10 Things I Hate About You with its distinctively late-1990s aesthetics and tone? Or how does the 1995 film adaptation of Richard III set in the 1930s revise and reframe its source in productive ways? Throughout this course, we will ask questions of all versions of the plays from a number of perspectives, but we will especially engage issues of gender, race, and sexuality.

ENGL/WMNST 225N (GA, GH [interdomain]) Sexuality and Modern Visual Culture: Sex Sells ... So What, Exactly, Are We Buying? (Drs. Laura Rotunno & Doug Page)

Section 001: MWF 9:05 – 9:55 am | Course Number: 28684 (for ENGL 225N) 28685 (for WMNST 225N)

Our world bombards us with images, and we contribute to that barrage each time we post a picture. This class will engage you in vital discussions about those images as well as those that came before us and continue to shape what we see and create today. At its core, this class will be driven by our discussion of visual presentations that use “sex” to “sell” us a story; that story might be about what family is or should be, about what political activism looks like, about how a society thinks about love, beauty, hate, even its future hopes or its present fears. To spur those discussions, we’ll offer you a rich, diverse historical background in visual representations that reflect how Western society, from the mid-19th-century to today, has viewed itself through the lens of sexuality, which always intersects with race, gender, gender identity, and class. For example, the terms “feminist” and “homosexual” were invented by the Victorians and reflect profound shifts in conceptions of identity. Another 19th-century invention was the idea of the literary and artistic “avant-garde” as a minority contingent with politically and/or aesthetically advanced views. These ideas of minority culture were deeply enmeshed with one another and still have effects on our world today. Discussions of these ideas then, hopefully, can help us all navigate the flood of images that today’s media presents as well as the self-images we cast into the world.

**Important Note: this course can be used as a prerequisite for a 1-credit study abroad (to LONDON!) opportunity that would occur—circumstances allowing—in late May 2022.

Fall 2021 Honors Offerings

ENGL 137H (GWS) Rhetoric and Civic Life I (Dr. Laura Rotunno)

MWF 10:10 -11 am | Course Number: 19647

This course English 137H is an equivalent of ENGL 015 and 030; CAS 138T (the required spring course) is an equivalent of CAS 100.

Incoming first-year honors students must take this course and CAS 138T in the spring. How do others and how can you use words, images, your literal voice, and even videos to inform, persuade, and move other people in striking ways? Those are some of the key questions we will explore in this course. To answer we will engage with texts from current artists and writers who move us to think about ourselves, our place in the world, how that place is changing, and what we want our world to be. That thinking will lead you to write, speak, and create in different forms and from different viewpoints, striving to use words and images accurately and powerfully. This class promises to challenge you to put your communication skills—reading, writing, and speaking—to use to become one who can use his/her words as “Words of Change,” the subtitle of this course. Questions? Contact Dr. Rotunno at [email protected].

PHIL 103H (GH) Ethics (Dr. Brian Onishi)

Days T/TH 9:05 – 10:20 am | Course Number: 28330

This course has two major goals: To provide an understanding of ethical theories (including consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, and care ethics) and to establish how we apply those theories to specific instances in our lives. Ethical problems manifest in the context of social problems like race, politics, and even the food we eat. While we will spend significant time reading “classic” philosophical and ethical texts, we will also explore ethical application through stories and narratives. Thinking about ethics through narrative offers an opportunity to engage in complex scenarios with empathy and understanding. Sometimes this happens through the eyes of characters that have similar experiences to us. Most of the time, however, narrative provides a peek into the lives of characters quite different from us. It is this difference that makes narrative such a powerful ethical tool. We all live out our own stories and figuring out what those stories should look like and how we can contribute to the good life is an important part of our ethical lives. To accomplish these goals students will read philosophical and fictional texts to gain a basic understanding of concepts such as agency, autonomy, and moral responsibility, while also reflecting on the foundations, scope, and limits of moral reasoning: Are ethical norms universal, particular, or culturally relative? How is the moral life of the individual related to political life? Are there moral solutions to social problems or vice versa? Questions? Contact Dr. Onishi at [email protected].

The below are not “official” honors courses, but courses in which an honors option has already been designed and thus is ready for students. Students who enroll in either course will need to fill out an online honors option form at the beginning of the semester.

PL SC 1 (GS) Introduction to American National Government (Dr. Nicholas Pyeatt)

Days MWF 10:10 – 11 OR 11:15 – 12:05| Course Number: Section 1 19266 OR Section 2 19267

  • Does free speech have any limits and, if so, what are they?
  • Why does a country as big as the United States only have two political parties?
  • Is the Electoral College democratic and why does the United States use it?

In this course, we will address questions such as these and more. It is designed as an introduction to the principal features of American political life. The breadth of the course is very wide, but we will focus throughout on the history and evolution of the American political system, the expansion of rights and liberties, and the role of political parties and elections.

The overall goals of the course are threefold: 1) offer students a basic understanding of the key institutions and processes of American political life; 2) present students with a foundation for future political science classes; and 3) provide students with the resources necessary to be active and informed citizens. Questions? Contact Dr. Pyeatt at [email protected].

SC 142N/ ENGL 142N (GH & GN/INTERDOMAIN) Science in Literature (Dr. Esther Siegfried and Dr. Laura Rotunno)

Days MWF 9:05 – 9:55 am | Course Number: 25011

Approach great fiction and thought-provoking readings about current science as well as past thoughts! Join Drs. Rotunno and Siegfried for this interdomain course (GH & GN), entitled Science in Literature, that will explore scientific questions such as: how do we define “human”? What are the personal, political, and social responsibilities of a scientist? Should we use clones? Is your identity dictated by your genes? What can we learn from those termed “neurodivergent” or those born with “mutations,” and what exactly do we mean by those terms? Will Artificial Intelligence lead us to learn more about ourselves? And the big question, underlying the course itself: what can science and art learn from each other? (Does not fulfill inter-domain requirement for English majors but can count as English elective at any level. Cross-listed with SC 142N.) Questions? Contact Dr. Rotunno at [email protected].