Dig deeper into your interests by taking Frederick Honors College courses, which are both more challenging and more interesting. In these courses, you will engage in the material with richer analysis, cutting-edge tools, and through the lens of culture and society. Frederick Honors College faculty fellows, specialists from across the University, design and teach our courses with the intellectual needs of our students in mind.
Enrolling in Honors courses
Use PeopleSoft/Campus Experience (CX) to find the list of all Honors courses being offered. On the Class Search page, select Frederick Honors Course in the Course Attribute pull-down menu to get the list.
If you do not meet the enrollment requirements for an Honors course, you must contact the professor teaching the course to obtain their permission to enroll in it. When you email the professor, explain why you're interested in taking the course and offer details about any skills/experiences you will bring to the course.
If the professor is willing to waive the enrollment requirements to allow you to enroll in the course, the professor can direct you to someone in their department who can issue you a permission number, or the professor can send an email message to David Hornyak (hornyak@pitt.edu) with the following information:
- The course department and number (e.g., HIST 1234)
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your PeopleSoft ID number
You will be emailed a permission number in return.
Honors Course Enhancement Contracts
Honors course enhancement contracts allow David C. Frederick Honors College students the opportunity to earn course credit for Honors Degree or Honors Distinction program requirements in an undergraduate course that does not already fulfill an FHC requirement.
Examples of courses approved for FHC requirements that cannot have a course enhancement include:
- Courses with the Frederick Honors Course attribute
- Courses with the High Impact Attribute Values of Undergraduate Research, Undergraduate Internship, and Capstone Course
- Courses with the Civic Learning and Civic Learning + Engagement attributes
- Courses used to fulfill honors-approved certificates/programs
- Courses that have an honors version of it available (e.g., introductory biology, chemistry, physics, etc.)
Additionally, undergraduate courses with the writing intensive course (w-course) attribute cannot have an honors course enhancement contract associated with them.
Instructors are not obligated to agree to a request from a student to create an honors course enhancement contract for their class.
The experience and subsequent product(s) must engage the student beyond a more passive requirement, such as adding one additional paper for the class, although a paper may be one component of the deliverable.
Instructors and students are encouraged to be creative in their approach by considering:
- Presentations
- Individual research projects or assistance with instructor research
- Using innovative technologies
- Producing creative works
- Community engagement or service-learning projects
- Preparing and presenting class lectures or designing and testing lab projects
- Reflecting on intellectual development opportunities related to the course, such as visiting museums, galleries, archives, or attending guest lectures or seminars
An honors course enhancement may be designed for an individual student, or several students may work together under one contract.
A contract form (PDF) is submitted to David Hornyak no later than the end of the add/drop period of the semester in which the course is being taught. The contract form includes details of how the course enhancement provides greater depth to the course and a description of the deliverable product(s). The contract form is signed by the student and the course instructor. If several students are working on the same enhancement project together, separate contract forms must be completed for each student, although the details about the enhancement project can be the same for all students involved.
At the end of the semester, David Hornyak will provide the instructor with an evaluation form through Qualtrics to assess the student’s performance and success in meeting the requirements of the contract. The evaluation is due when course grades are submitted.
The evaluation of the honors course enhancement contract is separate from the grading for the course. Failure to complete the contract’s requirements will have no impact on the grade the student receives for the course.
If the student successfully completes the requirements of the honors course enhancement contract, they will be given credit for an honors course requirement as part of the Honors Degree or Honors Distinction.
For questions or assistance in developing an honors course enhancement contract, students and instructors are encouraged to discuss possible ideas with the Frederick Honors College by contacting Assistant Dean David Hornyak at hornyak@pitt.edu.
GSPIA courses for Frederick Honors students: 2025 spring term
Are you interested in public service and learning how our world works? Do you want to challenge yourself by taking a graduate-level course? Any Honors College student is welcome to cross-register and take a course from the Graduate School of Public & International Affairs.
To request a permission code that will allow you to register, please email rkidney@pitt.edu and specify which course you would like to take. You will receive a reply within 2-3 business days.
- PIA 0102 Global Challenges, Global Solutions: Introduction to Global Policy
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Professor So Jin Lee, Tuesdays and Thursdays 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
The course aims to explore challenges that extend beyond national borders. In the first part, students will learn about the governance context, identifying key actors, international institutions, and power dynamics shaping global decisions. The second part will cover various global challenges, fostering foundational knowledge and engaging students in policy debates around these challenges. Through readings, discussions, and expert lectures, students will gain a deep understanding of global policy issues and exposure to analytical tools. The course will encourage students to scrutinize international efforts, design and propose innovative solutions, and develop skills to actively contribute to complex global challenges. Emphasis will be on practical application through activities like crafting policy memos, utilizing data, and connecting with field practitioners. Substantive content will include international affairs topics such as security and development (broadly conceived). After introducing students to these frameworks, they will spend time examining a variety of global policy issues from both the domestic and international perspective. The course will feature regular guest lectures from practitioners in the fields of international development and security, including those selected from GSPIA alums. This will give students a very clear link to potential career paths.
- PIA 1103 International Business & Politics
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Professor Siyao Li, Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 4:15 p.m.
This course examines how businesses strategize, evolve, and adapt in a globalized world. Why and how do multinational firms lobby on cross-national policy issues? How do international businesses navigate sanctions against Russia and China? What are firms' strategies to take advantage of industrial policy in the United States? This course will focus on both firm level organizational structures as well as state level political institutions and multilateral governance frameworks to understand these types of questions. We will start with a historical survey of the role of multinational firms in international politics, then discuss the role of international business interests in current day regulations of international trade, international finance, foreign direct investment, and digital flows. No prerequisites are required for the course.
- PIA 1107 Global Perspectives on Labor Migration: Economics, Politics and Policy
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Professor Andrea Pena Vasquez, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30 to 3:45 p.m.
This course explores labor migration through economic, political, and policy lenses in a global perspective. Students will examine the drivers of migration, its social, economic, and political consequences, as well as the national and international policies governing these flows. Topics will include the labor market impacts of immigration, remittances and their effects on economic development, bilateral labor agreements, guest worker schemes, residency and citizenship by investment programs, and the political backlash to migration, among others. Students will critically examine existing theories of migration, evaluate policy approaches related to labor migration in the U.S. and abroad, and practice the "soft skills" of collaboration and public speaking.
- PIA 2096 Capstone: Statistics for Public Policy
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Professor Jeremy Weber, Tuesdays 9 a.m. to noon
Through the Statistics for Policy Capstone students will serve clients with an empirical policy question or challenge. Students will participate in all aspects of developing a statistical brief and presentation for a client, starting with understanding the client’s context and need, identifying and developing appropriate data, and selecting, interpretating and presenting statistics in ways that make sense given the context and client.
- PIA 2096 Capstone: Nonprofit Clinic
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Professors Anne Marie Toccket & Jacob Seltman, Mondays 3 to 6 p.m.
The Nonprofit Clinic capstone seminar gives you the opportunity to serve as a management consultant to a nonprofit organization in the Pittsburgh region. You will work either alone or in teams of two people to provide professional-quality consultation to your nonprofit client, helping the client address the challenge or opportunity that they presented to us in the proposal they submitted to the Nonprofit Clinic in November. In addition, you will learn about the consulting profession, and you will practice many of the diagnostic, analytical, and interpersonal skills that are essential in a professional work environment
- PIA 2096 Capstone: Project Design & Evaluation: Workshop on Development
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Professor Muge Finkel, Mondays 9 a.m. to noon
This skills-based capstone on Project Design and Evaluation: Workshop on Development is designed for students who are interested in working on policy and programmatic issues impacting local, national and international development agendas. In an effort to addressing those issues, the capstone utilizes the foundational steps of project design, starting with the identification of a main problem, moving to planning of implementation, to monitoring and evaluation, and it concludes with a session on impact evaluation assessment design.
The capstone is conducted in a workshop manner in order to give advanced students a hands-on experience and an opportunity to develop their project ideas into implementable, deliverable and presentable professional outputs. Only requirements are a specific and real-life issue/problem, curiosity for solutions, and careful and active engagement with materials presented. Each class meeting proceeds in two parts: a substantive lecture and discussion based on assigned materials, and workshop on individual projects.
From the moment the problem is identified until it is solved, every project goes through a series of design phases known as the project cycle. Each phase in the project cycle is crucial and needs to be fully completed and perfected before moving onto the next phase. Mimicking that real professional experience, the capstone is organized around the phases of the project cycle. At the completion of the semester, participants will become both fully versed in Project Cycle Management (PCM is the results-based decision-making tool used widely in development focused organizations at all levels) and will have had opportunity to apply PCM tools to their own project ideas. They will have a complete project proposal that can be submitted for fundraising purposes and can be used for a graduation portfolio showcasing their applied training to prospective employers.
- PIA 2096 Capstone: Managing the Military
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Professor Ryan Grauer, Thursdays 9 a.m. to noon
This research-oriented capstone introduces students to the myriad ways in which the “civil-military problematique” permeates governance of and attempts to maintain stability in states in the contemporary world and gives them the opportunity to apply what they have learned in GSPIA to better understand how democracies, in particular, manage the portion of their population that has been trained and equipped to use force to change political outcomes.
The civil-military problematique is that states must have a military institution that is simultaneously strong enough to protect the political community from enemies and obedient enough not to pose a threat itself to that political community. Achieving such an outcome requires proper definition of what counts as military and what counts as civilian, how much say civilians should have over military operational matters, and how much influence the military should have on civilian policy decisions. The range of issues that speak to such matters is virtually limitless, spanning from topics like food deserts that impact military recruitment to the environmental impact of basing policies to veteran endorsements of political candidates to civilian definition of rules of engagement and selection of operational targets. There is little policy in modern democratic states that is not relevant to the problematique in some fashion. Accordingly, this capstone is appropriate for all GSPIA students, regardless of program or major.
By the end of the semester, students will have, either individually or in groups, produced a substantial research product on a policy-relevant question related to the problematique and, in the process, deepened their appreciation and understanding of the challenges of managing the military.
