The St. Thomas Aquinas Scholars Honors Program will implement a higher GPA requirement in fall 2011.

Honors students will now be required to maintain a 3.6 GPA each semester, instead of a 3.5, said Stephen Laumakis, director of the Aquinas Scholars Honors Program.

“I wanted scholars to be guaranteed if they graduate as a scholar, they’d at least get the Latin honor cum laude,” Laumakis said. “I’m aware that just because you have a high GPA doesn’t mean you’re a great student, but there’s at least some type of correlation.”

In addition to the higher GPA requirement, new honors courses will be offered next fall. Marketing 300 will be the first honors business course offered and in the spring, the business department will offer financial management 321 for honors students.

More than 25 percent of honors students are business majors, Laumakis said.

The student board, after attending the national honors conference two years ago, decided to create a point system that encourages students to participate in events on campus. Starting with this year’s freshman class, students must earn five points each semester. Events include anything from going to a Twins baseball game to having pizza with a professor.

“We decided to implement it last semester because we were offering events and nobody was attending,” said Aylie Meisner, president of the Aquinas Scholars’ Student Board. “And overall we’ve had a ton of positive feedback, which allows us to do more new activities.”

Laumakis said it’s not good enough from the student point of view to just be in the honors program and take the classes, and students should be involved on campus.

History of honors program

When the program was founded in 1980-1981, the Education Policy Committee wrote a document that said, “the goal of the program is to provide superior students with a greater opportunity than usual intellectual challenge, and allow them specific opportunities to integrate subject matter from different disciplines.”

The average GPA was 2.78 and to be in the honors program you needed a 3.3, roughly more than a half a point difference, Laumakis said.

As of spring 2010, the average GPA at St. Thomas was 3.18, and honors students must maintain a 3.5 GPA.

“In other words, the average student is creeping up, so they’re all qualified to be honors students, and that’s why I needed to get a little separation,” he said. “That was my justification for moving 3.5 to 3.6.”

About 15 years into the program the goal of the program changed, he said.

“My view of this is the program went from being for our best students to just students who had a certain kind of attitude, mainly they were motivated and intellectually curious,” Laumakis said.

Laumakis added that he is trying to turn the program back to the old model and by slowly raising the GPA, he believes qualified students will apply for the program.

“We’re trying to make being an honors student more prestigious, and raising the GPA will do that,” Meisner said. “To be an honors student you have to have integrity, be committed to excellence, [be] hardworking and want to be a well-rounded student.”

No effect on high school seniors

Laumakis said there won’t be any change in the high school GPA requirements, because he doesn’t want to affect the admissions office’s numbers. Admissions claims being able to invite students to join the program helps them with their numbers, he said.

“I think the logic of my position is those who are invited to apply should be higher up, but that squishes the potential pool for them,” he said. “They have told me that many students think about going to St. Thomas because of the honors program.”

Currently, honors students take a minimum of four honors sections and three honors seminars.

Meisner said by being involved in the honors student board since she was a freshman, she has become passionate about everything. Her favorite parts of the program are the seminars because of the fun discussions, or the freshman retreat.

“We have a great group of freshmen this year, and it has been really cool watching them grow as the year has gone on,” she said. “Everyone is more excited about the programs changes.”

Laumakis said it will take some time to achieve all his goals for the program.

“It’s like trying to turn the Titanic,” he said. “You can’t turn the Titanic on a dime, you have to slowly try to turn the thing.”

Ashley Stewart can be reached at stew1177@stthomas.edu.