Edgar Fellows Honors Program

History and Mission

Since its founding nearly 30 years ago, Geneseo’s College Honors Program has enriched the undergraduate education of a select number of especially dedicated and accomplished students. The program seeks to enhance habits of critical thought and expression—skills equally vital to success in one’s career, one’s private life and one’s participation as a citizen in public life.

Named for its founder and longtime director, William J. Edgar, the Edgar Fellows Program offers specially designed seminar courses, research opportunities, close collaboration with program advisers and rich co-curricular activities.

Geneseo sign

Sturges Hall

Election to the Program

Edgar Fellows are notified of admission to the honors program in early February. They receive an $8,000 total scholarship. To receive and maintain this award, you must be enrolled as a full-time student (minimum of 12-credits), in good academic standing, earn a minimum 3.0 GPA each semester, and maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.4.

Edgar Fellows receive a $1,000 per semester scholarship for non-tuition purposes renewable for up to eight semesters.

Dante House

All new students who join Geneseo as an Edgar Fellow are housed in Dante House, one of Geneseo’s Residential College Houses. Students assigned to Dante House are guaranteed not to live in a triple room. Programming within Dante House focuses on global service and citizenship. For more information, visit the Dante House page.

The Capstone Experience

The culminating experience for Edgar Fellows is the year-long Capstone Project. It may be a traditional honors thesis, but it can also be a project of the student’s own design—artistic, experimental, service. Students work throughout the year with a faculty mentor of the student’s choosing.

Recent Capstone Experiences:

  • Modeling HPC Vaccination
  • Hearing Saul through David
  • Global Mamas: Gender Empowerment in Ghana
  • Materiality in Accounting
  • Yemen: Power, Discourse, and War
  • Women in Jazz

Trading room

Students in bio lab

Student Outcomes

(Over the most recent five-year period.)

Phi Beta Kappa

Approximately 67% of Edgar Fellows have been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, America’s oldest and most widely recognized collegiate honor society. Fewer than ten percent of America’s colleges and universities have a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Average GPA

The average GPA of students in the Edgar Fellows Honors Program is 3.77.

Graduation Honors

Summa Cum Laude: 70%
Magna Cum Laude: 21.8%
Cum Laude: 15.3%
Total Edgar Fellows graduating with honors: 93.5%

Edgar Fellows Honors Requirements

Students who join the Edgar Fellows Honors Program as incoming first-year students will complete 22 credits of special HONR courses during their time at Geneseo. Many of these courses will allow students to satisfy portions of Geneseo’s General Education requirements in unique ways. Class sizes are very small and faculty are selected to teach in the Program on the basis of a proven track record of excellence in the classroom. For information on program requirements visit the Edgar Fellows Honors Courses page.

Recent Course Examples

HONR 202: This Information Will Kill You: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Fake News
HONR 203: Parents vs. Zombies
HONR 204: Listening to Japanese Cinema
HONR 205: Discovering the Universe
HONR 206: Tyranny