Pitt-Greensburg Honors Program Changes

Pitt-Greensburg provides several opportunities across campus for students that wish to enhance their academic experience, including honors societies and organizations, but one of the newest is the Frederick Honors College. 

Initially titled the Honors Program, Pitt-Greensburg offers opportunities to further enrich students’ college experience, and overall to acknowledge academic talents within the university.

Dr. Sheila Confer, one of the four founding members of the Honors Program, works alongside her fellow faculty members as the more logistical part of the team.

“We wanted to create the honors program as an opportunity for our highest achieving students to get the most out of their education,” Dr. Confer said. “We have a lot of students who are intellectually curious and want to learn more and do more, and we wanted to provide a structure to do that.”

The four faculty including Confer, Dr. John Prellwitz, Dr. William Pamerlau, and Dr. Franklin Wilson, have been in communication with the University of Pittsburgh in hopes to merge the Honors Program at Pitt-Greensburg and the Frederick Honors College at Oakland. The official merge of the two programs is set to launch in August 2024, where students will share opportunities from both campuses.

“We are in the process of implementing the change, so there’s a large steering committee made up of folks from our campus and from the Oakland campus that are working on various subcommittees to address each of the different kinds of logistical things that need to happen, because this is huge,” Dr. Confer said.

There are similar requirements from the initial Honors Program, alongside additional enrichment activities outside of the classroom to maintain membership. Dr. John Prellwitz, a member of the steering committee, acts as a liaison between Pitt-Greensburg and the University of Pittsburgh during this process. 

“We have requirements to sustain an active membership in the program. A student has to explore enrichment activities that will be more geared towards outside of the classroom. A student also has to look to make some of their classes honors oriented, but there’s a lot of different ways they can satisfy requirements,” Dr. Prellwitz said. “We’re actively meeting with a number of representatives that work with the honors college in Pittsburgh, so what we’ll do is we’ll have a blending of those as we progress.”

“Right now, our honors students are required to do four experiences, and at least two of them have to be a course,” Dr. Confer said. “Then, the outside of the classroom part, what we used to call an enrichment activity that will be satisfied through the outside of the classroom curriculum that we are calling our GEM (Greensburg Experience More) OCC (Outside of Classroom Curriculum).”

Though the Honors College is newer to the Pitt-Greensburg campus, several students have been able to catapult the program prior to the merger with The University of Pittsburgh. 

“We’ve had students do a number of activities on campus. I worked with a student who is now finishing her second year at Pitt Law School, and part of her work was instrumental to developing the Pre-Law Society here,” Dr. Prellwitz said. Students have also participated in study abroad, music groups, the Inside Washington seminar, and summer internship program hosted by The Washington Center in Washington. 

“We’re excited to allow our students, faculty, and staff to have access to the resources of the Frederick Honors College,” Dr. Prellwitz said. “We will be the first extension of the Honors College outside of the Pittsburgh campus, and that will, ideally, give our students a better opportunity for scholarships and resources directly from Oakland.”

For more information regarding the application process and Honors College, students can visit the Pitt-Greensburg website at greensburg.pitt.edu/academics/honors. Students can reach out directly to any of the four faculty members, Dr. Confer, Dr. Prellwitz, Dr. Pamerlau, or Dr. Wilson, but are encouraged to send questions to upghonors@pitt.edu.