Students & Professors Speak on IHON

In the fall of 2019, students were asked what they thought about IHON. Here’s how they answered:

IHON has given me an outlet to explore and connect many topics I wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to as a STEM student and it has really rounded and improved my way of thinking.

So far I have loved IHON. Each semester that I have taken an IHON class it has been my favorite class.

I absolutely love the IHON class structure and the interdisciplinary approach. There’s no one in IHON that’s there to BS.

It has made me a deeper thinker as well as an individual who can take multiple lenses to my other classes.

Since the IHON program covers all my Gen Eds in fewer credit hours than it would if I were NOT in the IHON program, it gave me a few spaces in my schedule to take courses outside my major and the IHON program to learn in fields that I am interested in, but have no desire to major in!

The discussion-based atmosphere of IHON has really helped me feel like I am part of a community at PLU that cares about each other and everyone’s ideas.

I love IHON so much and am grateful for the relationships I have formed within it.

The IHON program to me is what Higher Lutheran Education is and lives out the PLU mission statement.

IHON professors were asked “What are your priorities in an IHON class?” Here’s how they answered:

Fostering the joy of intellectual community.

Stimulating intellectual curiosity and openness.

Promoting open-ended ‘inquiry’ — the kind of inquiry which leads not to answers but new questions.

Encouraging each student to make their own connections between ideas, texts, and across cultures, so that they can build their own sense of inheritance, meaning, and belonging.

Approaching the study of world histories, cultures, ideas, and artistic expressions by cultivating close and attentive reading of a variety of primary texts, and grappling with their language, arguments, forms of representation, and ambiguities.