“The Audit Team unanimously salutes the Pierre Laclede Honors College for creating and maintaining a small liberal arts college atmosphere within a large urban university.” From the 2002 Academic Audit report by University of Missouri faculty from the campuses at Columbia, Kansas City, and Rolla.
Founded in 1989, PLHC has outgrown its first home and is now housed on South Campus in the magnificent Provincial House, just a short walk from the UMSL South Metro Station. Many of its more than 500 students are residents in the college building or in the new university residences nearby. The College expects to grow to a total student enrollment of 650 by 2008-2009. The Honors faculty is drawn primarily from the traditional disciplines in the arts and sciences, and includes some of the university’s most eminent scholars.
The Pierre Laclede Honors College program includes:
| • | Academic and residential scholarships awarded on admission and renewable for all Honors students in good standing, including both freshmen and transfers. | |
| • | Instruction entirely in small discussion seminars and one-on-one independent study (faculty-student ratio is 1:13). | |
| • | A challenging, engaging honors curriculum which, whatever students’ majors, meets graduation requirements in General Education, global awareness, cultural diversity, and American government and includes opportunities for research and internships. | |
| • | Individual courses taught by experienced instructors, among the university’s best, who volunteer to teach in the Honors College. | |
| • | A writing program which begins with students’ admissions essays and continues through a senior-year capstone where faculty also help students in their applications for graduate schools, professional programs, and first jobs. | |
| • | A student body of diverse origins and many interests which welcomes newcomers who want to act as producers rather than consumers of their own education. |
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.
Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring;
for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability,
is in the judgment and disposition of business.
Francis Bacon, ”Of Studies”, Essays, 1601.