Big changes coming to NGU’s honors program
Emma Ogren, Assistant Editor
Graphic by Emma Ogren
North Greenville University’s honors program is going to have a different look, starting in the fall semester of 2026.
Kayla Black, director of NGU’s honors program, explained why there was a need for change within the program.
“Currently in honors, it feels like a student has to do an all or nothing,” she said. “They either have to complete the entirety of the honors curriculum or they just choose to not participate because they brought in a lot of hours or they’re going to graduate early.”
The current iteration of the honors program requires the same amount of work that a minor does: 18 hours. Often, it is not possible to put this much time into a program such as honors if students already come in with credits.
This is a situation that the honors program has been monitoring since summer 2025. According to EdTech magazine, about 34% of college students enter school with credits already. This typically helps them save on school and graduate earlier. However, it doesn’t give students time to participate in everything college has to offer, like honors.
To address this problem, honors is introducing a tier affiliation system. This way, students don’t have to be “fully in,” but they can still participate in the program.
If you take nine hours of honors classes, you will be in the “honors scholar” tier. If it’s 12 hours, you will be in “honors fellow.” The full 18 hour course load will then correlate to “honors scholar graduate.”
“Students can feel like they can navigate the program now, participating in part of the curriculum or the entirety of the curriculum, depending on how long that they’re going to be here,” Black said.
The second change coming to the honors program is the reintroduction of selected topics.
These are special classes that are offered only to students in the honors program. They cover a variety of subjects from English to political science to psychology.
“They’re kind of fun,” Black explained. “It’s ideas and courses that probably wouldn’t be in the catalog, but because it’s selected topics, we can create and fashion these courses that are really unique and hopefully create a course that’s unlike any other.”
Historically, honors would hold seminars where professors would come in and lecture on a special topic, but they moved away from that about two years ago.
About the loss of the seminars, however, Black said, “we realized that we felt like we lost a lot of creativity in that.”
Currently, they have a few selected topics classes lined up. In the fall 2026 semester, a political theology class will be offered and is going to be taught by Nicholas Higgins. This class is one of the few that will be offered to students outside of the honors program, as political science will also be encouraged to take it.
In the spring of 2027, the special topics class will be a deep dive on C.S. Lewis and his works.
Currently, there are 104 students in honors, but there is a hope that the number will grow with these changes.
