An engaged community of intellectual risk-takers

At the Patrick Leahy Honors College, students and faculty collaborate to ask and answer questions, produce knowledge, and tackle contemporary challenges. Our students are challenged to mark their own way while participating in a scholarly community that is part of the fabric of the broader UVM experience. Patrick Leahy Honors College students enjoy close academic mentoring, and special opportunities for leadership, community participation, and academic achievement. Honors students are united by their curiosity and drive to learn, and these traits are fostered by college specific programs, courses, and student activities. 

In the first and second year, students tackle contemporary challenges together in small dynamic seminars. In the next two years, students will translate the knowledge they have gained through these seminars into self-defined research projects based on their individual interests. These projects are lasting contributions to human understanding and knowledge, but also help the students grow as scholars and leaders. Patrick Leahy Honors College Scholars leave UVM having developed an interdisciplinary mindset and compassionate leadership skills which will form the foundation of their success and of humanity’s shared progress.

The Patrick Leahy Honors College intentionally brings together students and faculty from different backgrounds and disciplines to create an academic and residential community which values diversity. We want our students to leave this community ready to tackle the world’s biggest questions and problems, and to do so with integrity and ingenuity. In our classrooms, this means learning different perspectives through civil discourse and mutual understanding. Outside of the classroom, students can attend common hour lectures or events put on by our Student Equity Action Committee. 

Living together, learning together

The Patrick Leahy Honors College residence hall, classrooms, advising, and administrative offices are in University Heights on UVM's Athletic Campus. This residence complex provides housing for PLHC students in a wide variety of suite options, as well as single rooms, and students are strongly encouraged to live in the residence. The residential college also includes space for live-in faculty members. 

Our residence halls feature classrooms, where many of our seminars are held. Each building has a large multipurpose room where we host events and lectures. Every floor has lounges where students can gather to study or relax. These opportunities for gathering help to create a strong Patrick Leahy Honors College community.  

Students both live together and take classes together, and this proximity encourages a strong sense of community. The connections students make during their residential experience persist once they move off campus.  

A Sense of Community

One of the most rewarding aspects of enrollment in the Patrick Leahy Honors College is the connections students make with others: fellow students, faculty mentors, visiting scholars and artists, as well as professionals in education, health care, engineering, journalism, politics, and numerous other career fields. These are connections that inspire students to explore new paths -- academic subjects, political causes, community volunteer work, study abroad, graduate school, careers -- that they might not have considered before.

However, PLHC students are not the only ones to benefit from the social and professional connections available through the Patrick Leahy Honors College. Faculty have intentionally designed the college with an "open door." It is a place where everyone on campus can become fully involved in the pursuit of scholarship: through common hour lectures, the offices of undergraduate research and fellowships advising, special seminars, and numerous other events.

The Patrick Leahy Honors College is a place that aims to energize the university's academic life, a place for everyone on campus to share ideas and engage in scholarly debate.

A step ahead in college

Students enrolled in the Patrick Leahy Honors College enjoy a number of benefits in addition to the personal fulfillment that comes from academic achievement.

PLHC students receive priority registration within their class, have close contact with many of the university's talented professors -- both in the classroom and in the many opportunities for undergraduate research -- and may take advantage of the opportunity to compete with the rest of the best and the brightest at colleges and universities nationwide for prestigious scholarships such as the Rhodes, Truman, Marshall, and Goldwater.

An edge in the real world

Patrick Leahy Honors College Scholars graduate from the University of Vermont with skills that open doors to prospective employers and graduate schools alike: creative, critical, and integrative thinking; fluent written and spoken communication; and imaginative and effective problem solving. The Patrick Leahy Honors College promotes active learning where students in seminars and thesis projects determine their own goals and pursue them by applying creative knowledge.

The rigors of the Honors curriculum and the active, creative approach to learning enable students to launch their careers, enter elite graduate programs, travel the world, or serve their communities after they graduate. You’ll find recent PLHC alumni studying medicine, completing a law degrees, finishing doctorates in veterinary medicine, and pursuing the full range of master’s and doctoral studies in the humanities, sciences, engineering, social sciences, and the arts. PLHC students have also entered the workforce and landed positions at Google, Amazon, HBO, Global Foundries, Fuse Marketing, EQUITAS Life Sciences, W. W. Norton & Company, and NextCapital Group, among others. For some PLHC alumni, graduating as a Patrick Leahy Honors College Scholar creates opportunities to give back to a local community or to the broader global society. After graduating many PLHC students travel the country or the world doing postgraduate fellowship work through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the National Institute of Health, Teach for America, or the Peace Corps. Wherever students find themselves after graduation, the Patrick Leahy Honors College opens doors and helps create opportunities for post-UVM success.