David C. Frederick Honors College to open at Greensburg campus in fall semester

The David C. Frederick Honors College is expanding to Pitt’s campus in Greensburg.

The new branch of the honors college was developed at Greensburg in partnership with the Pittsburgh campus and will launch at the beginning of the fall semester. This expands on the honors program that the faculty at Pitt-Greensburg first developed in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Frank Wilson, the assistant vice president for academic affairs and a sociology and public policy professor at Pitt-Greensburg helped to develop the honors program and the honors college. Wilson previously served for 18 years as the director of the Academic Village, a program that laid the foundation for the honors program.

Wilson said the Academic Village will include designated honors housing and that the space, where a number of speakers and events are hosted, could become central to the Outside the Classroom Curriculum (OCC).

“I think this is a very logical next step for the Academic Village,” Wilson said. “Its role will become renewed as a hub of this out of the classroom kind of stuff that has academic substance to it.”

Nicola Foote, dean of the David C. Frederick Honors College, said the creation of an honors college at Greensburg was a “very big personal priority.”

“It felt like there was an enormous opportunity for us to partner, share resources and build something even more powerful for honors students at each campus,” Foote said. “I see this collaboration as beneficial, both for students at Greensburg who are now going to have access to a wider range of honors opportunities, but also for students here at the Pittsburgh campus, because they’re going to have access to different courses.”

Foote said that they are currently developing hybrid classrooms to “facilitate team teaching across campuses” in real-time. She also said they are working on a bus system between the campuses, which are approximately 45 minutes apart.

Foote said that a memorandum of understanding was signed during the spring of 2023 affirming their commitment to expanding the Frederick Honors College to Greensburg, with a number of working groups beginning to convene during fall 2023. The working groups focused on planning different aspects of the new honors college like implementing OCC and how to align admissions policies.

Robert Gregerson, president of Pitt-Greensburg, said the smaller size of the Greensburg campus would affect the implementation of the honors college.

“The scope of the honors program on our campus as part of the overall honors college is going to be smaller, it’s going to be more intimate,” Gregerson said. “It’s going to reflect who we are as an institution.”

Wilson said honors courses would primarily be delivered as “honors option courses,” meaning there would be an honors section of a regular class.

“We were not big enough to be having a whole slew of standalone only honors courses, and when we do that, we want it to be particularly special.”

Before the official expansion of the Frederick Honors College to Greensburg’s campus, applications to the Brackenridge Fellowship were opened up to Greensburg students as well as scholarship opportunities. 

“Access to these named scholarships is something that is being advanced through our participation in the Frederick Honors College and then some research opportunities,” Gregerson said.

Sophomore history major Trenton Wood is a part of the current honors program and will be in the honors college at Greensburg in the fall. Wood said he is “looking forward to increased access to resources and opportunities.”

“Oakland has a variety of resources at their disposal and the greater access that this offers Pitt-Greensburg is wonderful,” Wood said. “Additionally, the expansion of the program to include the BPhil and other honors degrees will really open up the regional institution to have more student research opportunities.”

Wilson said he sees “a real opportunity for this to be a win, win, win” for students and faculty in both Pittsburgh and Greensburg.

“There’s going to be a lot of creative stuff coming from students and faculty out of this mix, and that can only be good for the university as a whole,” Wilson said.