Davidson Honors College

2027 Spring Honors Course Offerings

Year 1

HONR 120: Intro to Honors

Required for incoming, first-year students

HONR 121L: Ways of Knowing 

HONR 122E: Ways of Knowing ll

Ways of Knowing is the DHC’s signature seminar, which is taught every semester and is required.

Years 1-4

HONR 394: Interdisciplinary Colloquia Courses

Honors Electives: HONR Prefix

Students must apply to become a Learning Assistant prior to registering for HONR 294.

Please email josh.herring@umontana.edu with any questions

Honors Electives: Honors Departmental Offerings

Honors Experiential Learning

Options include fieldwork, internship, National Student Exchange, serving as a Learning Assistant, Student Teaching (for Education majors) supervised research, and/or study abroad. Apply using the Honors Experiential Learning Opportunity Approval Form. This form should be completed by you with support and approval from your mentor and will include a description of the proposed project. The completed form should be submitted no later than the end of the third week of the semester (different deadlines for summer sessions). If you have questions, please email or schedule an appointment with your Honors advisor.

HONR 495.80 can be applied toward the experiential learning requirement, as an honors elective, or capstone project.

Honors Experiential Learning: Wild Rockies Field Institute

These courses are part of the Wild Rockies Field Institute’s Fall Semester, off campus-Field Course, “Montana Afoot and Afloat: Human/Land Relations” and only available to students who have been accepted to the program for Fall 2026. More information about WRFI, including application information, can be found on the WRFI website.

General Education Requirement Key

Honors Course Descriptions

HONR 120 Introduction to Honors

This is a one-credit required course that serves as an introduction to the Davidson Honors College student experience. Here we will learn and discuss ‘all things Honors’. The course includes examination of practical, personal, and philosophical elements of an honors education, and emphasizes critical thinking, creativity, service, ethical reflection, networking and community building. Instruction will include lecture, guest speakers, discussion and group work. Required for incoming, first-year students

HONR 121 Ways of Knowing

Ways of Knowing is the DHC’s signature seminar. Offered autumn and spring. A critical assessment of various views of the divine, nature, society and the self, as seen through some of the most influential texts from the Western, Eastern, and Indigenous traditions. Required for incoming, first-year students

HONR 291.80 Personal & Professional Development

In our Personal & Professional seminar we’ll be covering all the things you need to know and do to apply for jobs, scholarships, and generally prepare yourself to reach all those amazing academic and career goals you have. What’s especially great about this course is that you’ll not only have our support, but you will also build a peer-network that you’ll be able to work within the fall semester and beyond.

HONR 294.80 Intro to Honors Learning Assistant Seminar

The seminar is designed for Davidson Honors College students serving as Learning Assistants (LA) in Introduction to Honors (HONR 120). The purpose of the seminar is to teach students what it means to be a Learning Assistant, how they should mentor and support a group of HONR 120 students and create a place where student can work together to create a positive experience for HONR 120 students. Students will learn active learning strategies, community building techniques, how to ask appropriate questions, and leadership skills. This is a seminar course where students are responsible for readings, in-class discussions, and assignments based on their Learning Assistant field placement. *Students must apply to become a Learning Assistant prior to registering. Please email josh.herring@umontana.edu with any questions

HONR 320E.80 Art of Inquiry: Research & Capstone Seminar

Offered autumn and occasionally spring, Art of Inquiry is a research methods and ethics based course designed to assist undergraduate students with their independent research projects, honors capstone completion, and self-directed scholarship. This seminar focuses on intellectual and creative strategies for completing research in most disciplines, and grounds this scholarship in ethical concerns foundational to academic research. Students will learn and practice a variety of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research methods along with interdisciplinary tenets of ethical inquiry and effective peer review/editing strategies as they craft a scholarly research proposal tailored to their area of interest.

HONR 394.80 Applied Positive Psychology

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the science and application of positive psychology. We will delve into the biopsychosocial foundations of well-being and human flourishing, examining key research findings and evidence-based strategies for application in personal lives, academic pursuits, and professional endeavors. Through an experiential approach, students will gain practical skills to enhance happiness, reduce stress, and promote thriving across the dimensions of human life. By the end of this course, students will have the knowledge and skills to implement these powerful techniques across educational and professional settings.

HONR 394.81 Science and Documentary

Have you thought about using visual media to expand access to your own or others’ science-based research?   This class will deepen your science communication skills by teaching you the basics of documentary production (interviewing, shooting and editing), enhancing your ability to reach audiences both inside and outside of academia.   All students’ science-based productions will be shown at the “We Did It Ourselves Film Festival” at the end of the semester. 

HONR 394.82 Wild Health

In ancient times, the health of people, animals, plants and the environment were believed to be interconnected. Now, we know that they are also interdependent. Our globalized world serves as a multiplier for these dependencies, positives, and negatives, and provides the platform for local issues to become global. Thus, as the environment shifts due to human interaction or climate change, those shifts lead to altered patterns by humans, wildlife populations, ecosystems, and our world.

In this course, we will build upon the paradigm of the One Health Initiative – collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of human health, the health of wildlife populations, and our changing environment. We will focus on the complex and multifaceted interactions between human health and wildlife health at the individual and population levels. As the environment changes, human health and wildlife populations may shift in parallel or interconnect. Concepts of disease, disability, adaptation, compensation, and rehabilitation will be explored as we identify the ways in which wildlife and human health may intersect.

Throughout this course, we will explore new perspectives that will allow students to tackle complex problems in their own fields of study (e.g., wildlife biology/ecology, health professions). The goal of this course is to equip and inspire students to apply interdisciplinary approaches that are needed to tackle the wide range of complex global health challenges of the 21st Century.

HONR 394.83 Love

This course is all about Love – one of the most powerful forces in human life. That, and a topic of much conversation and consternation for college students (and really, for all of us). Is love a timely (or time-less?) issue? Is it relevant for us regardless of whether we’re majoring in Business, Medicine, English or Wildlife Biology? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it is. We will examine the concept and phenomenon of love in its various forms through research, theory, reflection, and practice with considering our personal love ethics and ways in which we might build a culture of love in our communities. Students will collect, analyze and present original data, engage in service, and write a creative non-fiction love story based on love in their lives. Influences and insights from a range of academic disciplines and voices from the campus and community will contribute to and enrich our evolving understanding of this complex, fascinating, multi-faceted topic. Required texts include The Symposium (Plato), Beloved (Morrison), and All About Love (Hooks).

HONR 394.84 Air Studio 

[atmospheric sensing, seeing the invisible, breathing together]

Over the past 4.6 billion years, Earth’s atmosphere was co-created by many entities: volcanoes, oceans, cyanobacteria, plants, and most recently, humans. In this part-studio, part-seminar, visual arts course, we will become sensitive to the air around us and consider what it means to be a co-creator within our atmospheric commons. When the site of our creative research is airborne (in-motion, mutable, planetary), how does this impact our thinking, our making and our visualizations?

 Taking an exploratory and critical approach, we will survey methods of atmospheric sensing across disciplines, learning from climatologists, artists, musicians, and breathing specialists, using analog and digital technologies, from scientific instruments to the human body. Seeing air as a vector for environmental and societal issues, we will pay special attention to the Big Sky State’s atmospheric conditions: its heavy metal smelting, fossil fuel burning, wildfire smoke, weather, and connection to airborne military technologies. Possible field trips include visits to an industrial park, research stations, and museums. In-class demonstrations on visual forms such as sequential drawing, kinetic sculpture, and site-specific performance may be used to assist students expand their studio practice. Over the course of the semester, students will develop an original visual artwork (sculpture, performance, painting series, illustrated text, audio-visual essay, or other visual media) and collaborate as a class to share their experimentations with a broader public. 

This course welcomes students of all disciplines and artistic experience. 

HONR 394.85 Psychology and Identity

This interdisciplinary course will explore the scientific foundations of identity, what it is, how it is formed, and the different types of identity that make up who we are. We will explore how identity is applied, discussed, and manifested in art, literature, psychology, culture, politics, and more. This is a course for anyone interested in better understanding what shapes who we are and how that changes, or doesn’t change over the course of our lives. .

HONR 394.86 World-Building: Creative Arts and Migration

In this course, students will examine creativity as a response to displacement and exile. Through a variety of readings, they will consider how dislocated artists find foundations in the creative arts, despite losing their connections to artistic communities in their home countries. The course will invite speakers from the Missoula community and beyond to think expansively about what constitutes a creative art. Students will create a collaborative project at the culmination of the semester.  

HONR 394.87 What it Means to be Human

In this class we will explore open-ended questions about the human experience. One does not exactly answer such questions so much as wrestle with them in search of a wider and deeper understanding. Our initial hypothesis will be that human beings, whatever else we are, are meaning-seeking beings. Among all the things we do and suffer, among all the relationships we maintain or ruin with one another, we always, also, talk about what we are doing, try to make sense of what we are doing, try to account for the difference between what we are doing and what we think we should be doing. What does this tell us about ourselves?

HONR 394.86 Communicating Science

Why do some scientific ideas reshape society while others mutate into misinformation on their way to your feed? For physicians, diagnosis is often the easy part. The real challenge lies in explaining science in a way a patient understands, believes, and acts on. The underlying science may not change, but the explanation—mechanism, metaphor, reassurance, or story—can determine whether the patient gets better or worse. This seminar examines what happens to scientific knowledge as it moves out of the lab and into the world. Who decides how a dataset becomes a graph, a paper becomes a headline, or a study turns into a viral meme? Information moves between researchers, journalists, artists, and the public, and at every step, choices shape how science is understood. Do the people making those choices bear responsibility?

Students will examine how communicators balance competing incentives—accuracy, economics, emotional impact, and politics—when translating complex ideas for their audiences. Drawing on examples from medicine, astronomy, climate science, and film, the course traces the many paths scientific ideas take as they move through society. Through discussion, case studies, and writing exercises, we will analyze how people frame scientific claims, communicate uncertainty, and navigate the ethical tension between precision and reach. Students may also have the opportunity to visit the instructor’s observatory to explore how astronomical data are translated into images for public communication. Students will emerge from the course better equipped to critically interpret scientific claims, recognize how narratives shape knowledge, and communicate complex ideas responsibly in a world where information competes for attention and trust.

HONR 495.80 QUEST

This course supports students working in the QUEST Program as a capstone experience or honors elective. The QUEST challenge will be “how can you contribute to making housing in Missoula more affordable?" We will dive deep into the issue and explore historic, national, and local perspectives on the issue. In the spring, students will continue an exploration on the topic around the themes of policy, local governance, and professional development. Students will have opportunities to receive scholarships and an internship. This course may satisfy and honors elective or experiential learning requirement. For seniors, QUEST may satisfy the capstone.