A Note on Walter Wallace

Like for many of you, the needless murder of Walter Wallace has been difficult to process. As a program, we firmly condemn the countless murders of Black people as a result of racism and systemic oppression. Please know that UHP staff and faculty stand by you through difficult events such as these, and we strongly encourage you to take advantage of the supportive resources available to you as a GW student. We also implore you to continue to educate yourself on issues related to racism and hate, and how to be an advocate for marginalized communities. 

 

GW Resources:

Counseling and Psychology Services 

Multicultural Student Center 

GW Office for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement

GW Bias Incident Reporting

GW’s Office of Advocacy and Support 

(ttps://safety.gwu.edu/oash

Anti-Racist Resources We Are Reading: 

Anti-Oppression LibGuide: Anti-racist resources

Educational and actionable resources

A Detailed List of Anti-Racism Resources: Book, movie recommendations, and more

 

Quick Guide to Spring 2021 Registration

It’s almost time to register! To help prepare, check out these tips and reminders.

Early Registration Date: Friday, November 13th @ 9AM-11:59PM EST

Early registration is for your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th semesters!

Regular Registration Schedule

Undergraduate Students:
Monday

11/16

90 or more credits earned

(use your transcript to find your total credits)

Tuesday

11/17

70 or more credits earned

(use your transcript to find your total credits)

Wednesday

11/18

50 or more credits earned

(use your transcript to find your total credits)

Thursday

11/19

30 or more credits earned

(use your transcript to find your total credits)

Friday

11/20

0 or more credits earned
(use your transcript to find your total credits)

If you’re not sure when you register, you can check your earned credit hours in GWeb using the following path: Student Records & Registration Menu > Student Records Information Menu > Transcripts > View Unofficial Transcripts. Make sure you’re looking at overall hours earned for the accurate total!

Waitlists

The option to add yourself to the waitlist becomes available on November 23rd when general registration opens. More on waitlists here.

Hold Information

Check your record via GWeb regarding holds prior to your scheduled registration time. Any hold on your account will prevent access to registration. You can view any holds on your account by looking at: Student Records & Registration Menu > Student Records Information Menu > View Administrative Holds.

Make sure to check now and again in the days lead up to registration. Check early, and check often! More on holds here.

Upper Level Honors courses

Remember that if an Honors course is cross-listed, you can sign up for any open section. To ensure that the non-Honors section counts as an Honors requirement, please ask a Program Manager to submit a petition in Degree Map.

Fall Registration Advising

All honors students are encouraged to see a Program Manager before registration. Make sure you are prepared with a tentative course schedule using the Spring 2021 Schedule of Classes and Honors course descriptions when they become available. As new course information and revisions become available, we will update the website. Please re-check the information on the Schedule of Classes and the Honors site before you register to ensure that you’re up-to-date!

Unfortunately we won’t be able to meet in person for advising events and meetings, but please feel free to make a virtual appointment with us online: honorsprogram.gwu.edu/make-appointment. In addition to our regular 30 min time slots, we will also have 15 min slots available starting on November 9th until November 20th. 

As always, your peer advisor is a wonderful resource if you have questions about specific courses, professors, or anything you’d like advice on!

Diversity and Inclusion Statement: Updates and an Apology

Dear UHP Students,

Over the last few months, UHP administrators and faculty have heard from members of our community expressing lack of support and alienation during their time in the UHP. We are actively listening to students about their experiences and what we hear motivates us to move more quickly to make necessary changes to ensure that each and every student is well supported and able to thrive and succeed in the UHP and at GW more broadly. We sincerely apologize to all of our students who have experienced alienation in our program, and we fully commit ourselves to doing better moving forward. We recognize these issues as urgent matters of justice that call for immediate action, our earnest care, and ongoing commitment. We are thankful to the many students who have shown great leadership in continuing to call for change and we want our UHP community to understand that addressing these issues will be a top priority in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

As we continue to work to create a more diverse and inclusive UHP, we want to inform you of our immediate, short-term, and long-term goals for our program as a whole. Below you will find an initial roadmap for our work, which includes some of the program’s priorities and will be modified and updated as the UHP Diversity & Inclusion Committee develops additional ideas.     

Immediate Goals (Summer 2020)

  • Implementation of a self-governed Diversity & Inclusion Committee 
  • Participation in #GWInSolidarity by faculty and staff
  • Anti-bias training for peer advisors (followed by continued discussion)
  • Ongoing curriculum discussion amongst the core faculty
  • Begin to work on improving student awareness of GW’s Bias Incident Response system  

Short Term Goals (2020-2021 Academic Year)

  • Anti-bias training for faculty, staff and students (followed by continued discussions)
  • Improved first-year and general community building
  • Working with Admissions to more clearly define our admissions criteria and to improve advertising of the UHP to students applying to GW (including an improved UHP website)
  • UHP website page dedicated to reporting on ongoing Diversity and Inclusion initiatives
  • Ongoing curriculum updates to first-year courses
  • Ongoing discussions between UHP students, administration and faculty to improve diversity, inclusion and belonging with the goal of building trust in our UHP community

Long Term Goals

  • Sustaining a welcoming community through programming, yearly anti-bias training, and continued collaborative D&I discussions
  • Recruiting and retaining a more diverse student body and faculty
  • More variety in UHP upper-level course offerings

We also want to share with you that during the summer, we held our first UHP Diversity & Inclusion Committee meetings. Our conversations were open, honest, and productive. The group is developing a non-hierarchical organization so that students, faculty, and staff have an equal voice in raising concerns, discussing issues, and making recommendations to the program. The faculty and administration who participated in these initial conversations are particularly grateful for the candor of our student participants, and we welcome any additional students who would like to become members of the committee at any time (simply complete this brief form). We will keep the UHP community as a whole updated on the progress of the committee through a minimum of one report per semester (which will be posted on our blog and announced through the weekly Honors NewsFlash).  

In solidarity,
The UHP Administration & Faculty

Reminders about Pass / No Pass

GW recently changed its policy to allow 5 days after you receive your final grades to change to a P/NP grade mode. This also includes honors courses. If you would like to change your honors course grade mode to P/NP, please submit a grade mode change form to uhp@gwu.edu up to five days after you receive your final grade. 

Please note that some P/NP courses may move to a Degree Map block called “Not Counted.” This means that normally the course must have a letter grade to fulfill the requirement. If this happens, please do not worry. The registrar’s office must manually change all of these; they will get to it! We will also be monitoring honors courses to make sure any are corrected as quickly as possible.  

As always, let us know if you have any questions!

Philosophy → UHP → Philosophy

Calling all budding philosophers! In case you didn’t know, Origins & Evolution of Modern Thought fulfills Philosophy major/minor requirements: 

  • HONR 1015 counts for PHIL 2111 (History of Ancient Philosophy
  • HONR 1016 counts for a Philosophy elective, for both the major and minor. 

Also, this is a friendly reminder that if your SEAS program requires you to take PHIL 2135 (Ethics in Business and the Professions), that counts as one of your Arts & Humanities requirements. 

Check in with Ben or Brianna to learn more!