It is an honor when strong academic students choose to enhance their college experience. The Honors Program provides superior learning opportunities that will challenge young scholars to reach new levels of academic excellence. The Program is designed to meet the unique educational needs of individuals who are academically talented and highly motivated.

The following are Tools for your Honors Tool Kit that will equip you as you acquire the skills and attitudes for intellectual development, cultural enrichment, and leadership development.

• PowerPoint Guidelines

• City As Text

• Partners in the Park

Partners in the Parks is an experiential learning program sponsored by Southern Utah University in cooperation with the National Collegiate Honors Council and the U.S. National Park Service.It hosts projects at national parks across the country offering unique opportunities for collegiate honors students and faculty to visit areas of the American landscape noted for their beauty, significance and lasting value.

Here is one student's reflection:

Acadia National Park, Maine - August 2009

by Juste Gatari

One would wonder what could bring people from different parts of this country that had never met before to find themselves bound in one spirit in just a period of one week. Well, purpose could be a good reason, so the purpose that brought us to Acadia National Park this summer of 2009, was nothing else than wonder--questions that we ask ourselves in our daily life when we question our nature, our surroundings, Life in general. It’s obvious that we seek answers in the nature itself as well. And that’s all man’s institutions are all after; questioning Nature. So it was quite a remarkable experience to find interdisciplinary personalities meet on a particular subject, which is our environment, and find how we all have common questionings no matter how diversified we are in this world. 

Black Canyon, Colorado - August 2009

by Pavel Goriacko

This trip was a very enriching experience; I feel like similar trips should be a part of every person's education. Having never been out West before, my eyes were opened to a new kind of geography, climate, nature, and lifestyle.  I am glad that I got to experience the West for the first time this way. I could have just went to a major city and stayed in a hotel room for a week. Instead, I lived in close contact with nature around the Black Canyon. This helped me not only understand but experience how geography and climate affect lifestyle and culture of people in the region.

The dry climate and high mountain altitude were a complete different environment than the one I’m used to, having lived all my life at sea-level with a good amount of rainfall. The climate primarily made me realize the importance of water, which all my life I took for granted. Of course, as I later learned, water is one of the most important issues facing the West right now. The program included extensive discussions about the role of water in the West, which ranged from building dams to water rights to native vegetation (growing native sagebrush instead of green grass on lawns). This opened my eyes up to a major problem affecting the territory that takes up about half of The United States. I knew that we’re facing problems such as global warming and pollution, which relate to our increasing demand for natural resources, but I was completely oblivious to water issues. Recently, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “In Arid West, Thirsty Lawns Get Cut from Plans,” which related to designing new lawns in Colorado that would conserve water usage. I felt great being able to fully understand the issues presented in the article, which I would be completely oblivious to before the trip. I felt like my knowledge of the world has expanded thanks to the trip.

Another thing that I learned on this trip is the importance of national parks and their role in American culture. It feels great to be exposed to this amazing resource available to the public which so few people take advantage of. In fact, this inspired me to visit other national parks, because they're among the most beautiful and culturally enriching sites in America. Furthermore, they come with a lot of history that even goes back to before they were allocated to public use as national parks. Near the Black Canyon, we visited an archaeological site where they were excavating traces of winter homes of the Ute Native Americans. I realized that these parks carry the history of America in them that has been preserved from human exploitation. Overall, this was a program that brought me tremendous enlightenment and inspired me to visit the other national parks, all of which I would never get to without having this opportunity presented to me by Partners in the Parks. 

A Reflection on my Trip to Black Canyon
By Justine Bach

During my Partners in the Parks trip to Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado, I learned and experienced many new things.  Aside from spending time in a place I’ve never visited before, the trip was a great educational experience.
We had many different lectures and workshops with Honors professors and with Park Rangers from the National Park.  We did writing exercises to put us more in touch with our senses, took hikes at the canyon rim, and had a great poetry workshop.  We learned the incredible story of Torrence and Fellows, who were the first two people to fully explore the Black Canyon.  At the end of our trip we even had a performance by a Cowboy poet. We were taken out of our element and brought to a place we had never been; we slept on the ground and cooked every meal together in small groups.  At night, I remember being amazed at hearing coyotes howling. 
The most interesting thing I learned was the displacement of Native Americans by European Americans when the National Parks were being established.  Though the National Parks are an important conservation effort, and an important part of American culture, while they were being established many Native Americans were driven out of the land they had lived on in order to make it into park property.  Overall, I learned a lot from this experience that I would not have learned from a regular classroom setting.