Our Mission, Values & Priorities
OUR MISSION
The mission of Kilachand Honors College is to offer a challenging interdisciplinary liberal arts education grounded in critical and creative thinking and problem-solving related to important local, global, social, and geopolitical challenges. Kilachand’s integrated, four-year curriculum is augmented by an extensive series of co-curricular events and culminates in a substantial work of empirical or scholarly research, creativity, or invention by the close of the senior year. All of these endeavors occur within a supportive and diverse living-learning community that offers educational experiences similar to those of a small liberal arts college but with the resources and intellectual depth of a major urban research university.
OUR VALUES
Knowledge
Knowledge: Active, applied learning through research, experience, and classroom dialogue
We collaborate in and outside the classroom to explore how knowledge can be created, contested, and used to shape fresh ways of understanding and intervening in the world. Drawing on our diverse disciplines from across BU, we challenge each other to learn outside our comfort zones through research, experiential learning, and creative coursework.
Humanity
Humanity: A shared search for equity and justice
We direct each of our courses, events, assignments, and creative endeavors toward equity and justice in their many forms, both locally and globally. We embrace the process of constant conversation needed to shape our individual and collective efforts for change.
Community
Community: Living and learning together
Within our intimate, intellectually diverse group of students, faculty, and staff, we provide one another with respect, support, and fresh perspectives. creating a sense of belonging as we pursue knowledge in the service of humanity. Through our living-learning community, co-curriculars, Keystone Program, and social events, we create a sense of belonging as we pursue knowledge in the service of humanity.
OUR PRIORITIES
Enhance Community Building
Priority 1
Enhance community building and foster connections.
Goal 1
We will, in collaboration with the student body, identify and implement community building events specific to the sophomore through senior classes, building on the success of such endeavors with our first-year students.
Goal 2
We will pilot new initiatives to foster community and belonging.
Increase Access & Equity of KHC Requirements
Priority 2
Commit to increased access and equity of the Kilachand Honors College curricular and co-curricular requirements.
Goal 1
We will engage in a curriculum review to explore opportunities to streamline the KHC curriculum to enable students from all majors to complete Kilachand requirements and major requirements.
Goal 2
We will assess the feasibility of a revised curricular sequence to enable students to graduate from Boston University early with a Kilachand Honors College designation.
Goal 3
We will offer co-curricular events over a range of days and times to accommodate students’ varying schedules.
Bolster Co-Curricular & Experiential Learning
Priority 3
Bolster processes to support co-curricular and experiential learning to enable interdisciplinary exploration and prioritize connections with local and global communities
Goal 1
We will identify and build a meaningful collaborative connection with one or more local community organization that is addressing the kinds of global challenges students discuss in their Kilachand Honors College courses.
Goal 2
We will identify and reduce barriers to students’ participation in the Kilachand summer internship program (KIP*).
*KIP is designed to support students interning with organizations focused on justice work (e.g., social, environmental, etc.)
Goal 3
We will ensure our co-curricular program encompasses a broad range of interdisciplinary representation and formats, with a focus on increasing the number of events with novel formats.