UD President Patrick Harker speaks at the Honors Program ceremony.

Honors Program

UD Honors Program honors students for exceptional academic achievements

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4:06 p.m., May 26, 2012--The University of Delaware Honors Program held its annual honors breakfast on Friday, May 25, in the Trabant University Center, celebrating the academic excellence of UD's highest achieving students.

An audience of several hundred students, family and friends joined UD faculty, staff and administrators to recognize 41 students receiving the honors degree with distinction and 187 students receiving the honors degree at the University's 163rd Commencement on Saturday.

Campus Stories

From graduates, faculty

As it neared time for the processional to open the University of Delaware Commencement ceremonies, graduating students and faculty members shared their feelings about what the event means to them.

Doctoral hooding

It was a day of triumph, cheers and collective relief as more than 160 students from 21 nations participated in the University of Delaware's Doctoral Hooding Convocation held Friday morning on The Green.

Honors degree recipients satisfy all the coursework and grade point average requirements of the Honors Program. Honors degree with distinction recipients meet honors requirements and also complete and defend an honors thesis.

Michael Arnold, Honors Program director and professor of economics, welcomed honorees and their guests to the breakfast as part of a range of Commencement weekend activities.

University President Patrick Harker congratulated the honors graduates, saying their outstanding achievement makes them part of the "5 percent" -- "the 5 percent who have gone above and beyond what was expected, testing yourselves and raising the bar; the 5 percent who decided they had more to give, more to prove, more to achieve than the average student."

For Honors Program students the journey to graduation was not an easy one, Harker said. It required "intense study, a lot of late nights in the lab or the library (and) maybe some panic attacks along the way."

But with the difficulties, he said, came opportunities -- to travel around the world, to gain access "to the best minds and the latest scholarship," and to be part of the close community of "fellow scholars."

Harker thanked the parents for encouraging in their students "initiative, independence and drive," and he thanked the faculty for providing "guidance and wise counsel."

Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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