News, Top Story, Administration

Letter From Dean Outlines Rationale for Ending CSOM Honors Program

Dean of the Carroll School of Management Andy Boynton officially announced in an email to faculty and staff on Thursday that the CSOM Honors Program will end with the Class of 2021. All current students in the program will be able to graduate with Honors, although the program will be phased out over the next three years.

Ethan Sullivan, the director of the program and associate dean of CSOM, told students in the program on Monday night that it would be ending.

Boynton explained in his email that the Honors Program began in 1958 as a student initiative to offer honors-level courses to exemplary students. At the time, there was “wide variance” among the academic abilities of the students in CSOM, thus creating an incentive to attract top students to the school.

Now, all of the students in CSOM are “exemplary,” and the focus of the program needs to be on making beneficial decisions for the entire group, he said.

He noted that this was not a decision that he took lightly.

“As an alumnus of our Honors Program, I was privileged to be part of that vibrant learning community, class of ‘78, and I formed lasting friendships with both fellow students and professors,” he said. “So, while it is sad to see the end of the Honors Program, I am very excited about the overall trajectory of the Carroll School.”

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December 7, 2017