Courses for the Curious

The Spencer Honors House, once the Second Presbyterian Church—Martin Luther King Jr. once preached from its pulpit—and later the UAB Ballet House, is now home to the University Honors Program.

In 26 years, UAB’s University Honors Program hasn’t repeated itself once. Designed to cultivate intellectually curious students, it scraps traditional curricula in favor of thematically organized arts and sciences courses—such as 2008’s “Anatomy of Desire,” with instructors from the departments of art and art history, literature, economics, cognitive science, and psychology. Themes change each year, with special seminars, independent research projects, and service activities complementing the coursework.

The success of the Honors Program inspired the development of other enhanced learning opportunities that collectively form the UAB Honors Academy: the Early Medical Professional Schools Acceptance Program, the Science and Technology Honors Program, the Global and Community Leadership Honors Program, and the new Experiential Learning Scholars Program, which merges classroom study with extracurricular experiences in the field and around the world.