Arvind and Chandan Nandlal Kilachand Honors College

The mission of the Kilachand Honors College is to offer a challenging liberal arts education grounded in exploration, discovery, and the real-world application of knowledge. Kilachand provides an integrated, four-year curriculum that includes experiential and team learning opportunities. Kilachand coursework is augmented by an extensive series of co-curricular opportunities, including visits to cultural institutions, arts events, and discussions with leading scientists, artists, and professionals. In their last year, Kilachand students complete a Keystone Project involving research, scholarship, and/or creativity, and they share the outcomes of their work in a celebratory Symposium. All of these endeavors occur within a supportive living-learning community that offers students educational experiences similar to those of a small liberal arts college with the resources and intellectual depth of a major urban research university.

The Kilachand curriculum has unique features:

First, it attempts to integrate the arts, sciences, and professions and to lower the barriers between pure and applied knowledge while avoiding an instrumental, utilitarian approach.

Second, the curriculum explores the commonalities and differences of various disciplines’ ways of knowing by looking at specific problems in a wide range of fields.

Third, the curriculum tries to connect teaching with research and creative activity by introducing students to their professors’ work and gradually preparing them to do research and partake in creative activity on their own.

Finally, the curriculum pays close attention to ethical, aesthetic, and social issues in order to foster self-development and citizenship.