About the Fulbright College Honors Program

During the Fall semester of 1954, Arts and Sciences Dean D.G. Nichols appointed a faculty committee to consider how our College might offer additional educational opportunities for “superior scholars.” Events moved quickly, and the first students entered the newly formed honors program in the Fall of 1955. By May 1956, two students were graduated from what would become the Fulbright College Honors Program, and since that time, our program has taken its place as one of the oldest and most distinguished honors programs in the country.

Building on its early reputation for academic rigor, the Fulbright College Honors Program has continued to develop an innovative curriculum that provides our students with the extra attention and preparation required to succeed in the rapidly changing world that awaits them upon graduation. From the NEH-funded Honors Humanities Project, which offers students a broad grounding in humanities and the arts, to the tightly focused, small-group learning experiences of the honors colloquia, students who complete their degrees with honors are regularly admitted to the most prestigious professional and graduate schools both in our country and abroad.

Our growth and commitment to excellence was accelerated exponentially in April of 2002 when the University of Arkansas received over $100 million from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation to establish a university-wide Honors College. Not only did the gift attract talented students from around the country, but it also provided study-abroad funding that, when combined with our own program’s Sturgis Study Abroad Scholarships, allowed us to send more students abroad than we had ever dreamed—a dream entirely in keeping with one of the lifelong passions of our namesake, Senator J. William Fulbright.

So, whether our students’ goals include world-travel and language acquisition or a place in a campus laboratory whose research is having world-wide implications (or both!), the Fulbright College Honors Program will develop and sharpen their passions into the professional package that will allow them to take the next step in their careers.

Dr. Kirstin Erickson

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Director of the Fulbright College Honors Program