A new video highlights the welcoming but challenging atmosphere students find in the Pierre Laclede Honors College at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

The Pierre Laclede Honors College is preparing to celebrate its 30th anniversary at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and a new video highlights the ways it enhances the UMSL experience for its students.

The video includes testimonials from current students and recent graduates trumpeting benefits they’ve received from being part of the honors college community.

“It’s important to be in a space where you know you’re going to be supported and you know you’re going to be comfortable,” liberal studies graduate Michael Dunlap said. “For me, the honors college and UMSL was that space.”

“You get the opportunity to take great classes from really experienced professors, but you also get to participate in a very social and close-knit environment, and that’s really unique to the honors college,” said Nicole Gevers, who earned her degree last spring from the UMSL/Washington University in St. Louis Joint Undergraduate Engineering Program.

The honors college is a certificate program that can be paired with any major without adding extra classes or extending the time required to graduate.

Courses are writing intensive and offered seminar style to engage students in discussion and critical thinking. The student-to-faculty ration is 13-to-1, and there are merit scholarships for all students admitted in good standing to the program.

It also sponsors student organizations that encourage students to become involved at UMSL, and it provides students with internship and independent study opportunities that can benefit them in their future careers.

“The honors college is really about individualizing your education,” Dean Edward Munn Sanchez said. “We structure what we do around the needs that our students have.”

He added: “When you choose the honors college, what you’re choosing is a place that’s really going to create opportunities for you.”