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 

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 Spring Semester, off campus-Field Course, "Colorado Plateau: Desert Canyons and Cultures," and only available to students who have been accepted to the program for Spring 2027. 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

CCS 391 ST: Climate Colonialism, Power, and Making Livable Worlds

Counts toward CCS Minor Solutions Category and HONR course credits. 

This course studies what many Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities have identified as the root causes of anthropogenic climate breakdown: colonialism, racial capitalism, imperialism, militarism, and extractivism. In addition to examining power and disproportionate impacts, the course will highlight what Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities are doing to co-create real solutions toward climate and energy justice. Students will collaborate with groups doing work related to the course's focus, guided by a commitment to practicing reciprocity and ethically elevating stories of survival, care, and flourishing.

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. Students enrolled in this course are expected to enroll in HONR 391 - World-Building: Creative Arts and Migration in Paris and Marseille, and will travel on this faculty study abroad to France in May 9-21 2027. This program consists of nine nights in Paris, and two nights in Marseille in the south of France. 

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 394.88 Communicating Climate Concerns

Drawing on each student's climate change interests, class members will work individually and collaboratively to generate, review, and publish blog posts, Op-Eds, public comments, and podcast recordings to communicate climate concerns with multiple audiences. We will discuss barriers to and openings for communicating climate action and justice, while practicing different forms of expression. Class members also will have an opportunity to participate in Climate Advocacy Day at the state Capitol in February to practice what we have been communicating in class and to co-build relationships toward climate action and justice. By the course's conclusion, each student will have a portfolio of their work to share with diverse audiences.

NASX 491.80 Interdisciplinary Indigenous Experience

In this class, students will explore the richness and diversity of contemporary Native American experiences through readings, in-class discussions, and conversations with an array of Indigenous guest speakers who share their unique stories and perspectives. Due to the focus on active listening and engaging with guest speakers, in-person attendance is required for this course.

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.