We could be one of those colleges that promise to help you reach your full potential and be the best you can be, but we see that as low-hanging fruit.
We’re a place where you can become who you were meant to be. You’re already driven, bold, and exceptional — that’s why you’re looking for an honors education in the first place. You’re looking for a different way of learning, a customized curriculum, a community of friends, and professors who know not just your name but also your dreams, talents, and favorite pizza toppings.
We want to give you opportunities you’ve never had and experiences you can’t get anywhere else. We want to help you open doors that you didn’t even know existed. We want to feed the fire of your curiosity, your passion, and your motivation. And then we want to step back and watch you set your world on fire.
Our Mantra
We recognize that our students already have a fire burning within them. A passion for something. Expanding thought, solving problems, exploring human experience. We see within our students the light of the future. Our job is to ignite that fire by exposing it to the thoughts, experiences and possibilities that will help it to burn bright. Some colleges call this reaching your full potential or being the best you can be. But we call it something different, because we’re something different. We’re the Honors College in which students from anywhere can find the support and sense of belonging they need to become who they were truly meant to be.
Set Your World on Fire
Our Shared Values
The BOLD values that guide us set us apart — and set our students apart as they turn their great potential into an even bolder future.
Belonging
We’re a community. A home for learning. A group of diverse-minded individuals. But more than that, we’re friends. We share a kinship connected by a thirst for knowledge, a passion for excellence, and the security that comes from knowing we have each other’s backs.
Openness
We are curious. Inquisitive. Valuing diversity and open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new challenges. Our love of the undiscovered creates an environment where all are welcome to share, contribute, and make a difference. We embrace individuality, yet come together as one. And when we do, amazing things happen.
Leading
As citizens of a society and members of a global community, we gladly take on the responsibility of contributing our knowledge, ideas, and service to the greater good. In a world of taking, we give. In a world of conformity, we innovate. New discoveries. New inventions. New thoughts. We ask, “What’s next?” And then we lead the way.
Daring
Our students aren’t afraid to try something different or explore the limits of what’s possible. They take intellectual risks because they know we support them and their endeavors. We aren’t the high wire — we’re the net, where students gain the confidence to walk across the chasm to see what’s on the other side.Our Community
The strength of our College is our community — a tight-knit group of students, scholars, and advisers who are, above all, really great people. We live together, learn together, and serve as a home base for exploration and discovery. (We also value alone time, because recharging is crucial.) What we share — curiosity, motivation, a kind of creativity that other people don’t always get — brings us together. Our diversity — of thought, culture, interest, and ethnicity — makes us interesting. What we create — friendships, supportive networks, the occasional misguided science project — is what’s really important.
Are you up to the challenge of supporting a friend through a tough thesis, or living with a student who keeps bringing home questionable biomedical samples? That’s what being a part of the UAB Honors College community is really about.
Our Diversity and Inclusion Statement
In the UAB Honors College, our guiding values – Belonging, Exploring, Leading, and Daring – underscore our commitment to an Honors community that values diversity and inclusiveness, and where we support each other. Each student, staff, faculty, alumni, and visitor will be treated with respect and find encouragement, support, and opportunity to set your world on fire, regardless of different races, cultures, ethnicities, national origins, sex, sexual orientations, gender identities, ages, ability status, socioeconomic status, political opinions, or religious affiliations. With a passion for inclusive excellence, we ask questions, seek answers, pursue knowledge, take intellectual risks, and strive to serve others, and make a difference in ways that lead to a more just and caring world that embraces our differences as well as our commonalities and enables everyone to ignite their inner flame and blaze the way to their full potential.
*For more information on UAB’s Diversity and Inclusion policy, visit uab.edu/dei.*
The Benefits of Honors
For all of the real work involved in a UAB Honors education, the rewards are huge. But they’re more than just a deeper way of thinking and the tools for life-changing discoveries. UAB Honors College students have access to benefits, creature comforts, and opportunities available only to individuals who are up to the challenge.
- Small class sizes
- Personalized, customized curriculum
- Innovative honors seminars looking at unique topics
- Opportunities for hands-on service learning, undergraduate research, and study abroad as early as your freshman year
- Honors-specific academic advising
- Special speakers series, discussion groups, and activities just for honors students
- Priority course registration
- Honors-only floors in the freshman residence halls