The home where ambition and curiosity have flourished

For more than 40 years, the University Honors Program has been a path for smart, motivated students to take challenging courses, conduct research and contribute to a community of similarly driven faculty and peers. Alumni number more than 39,000.

They’re not the only ones who benefit, says Ola Ahlqvist, executive director of the Honors and Scholars Center. “The honors program has led the way in things that have become mainstream and a natural part of the student experience at Ohio State,” he says. “We are a test bed in understanding how Ohio State can do things in the best way possible for our students and then scale it to the entire university.”

For example, when the program was created in 1985, students were among the first to conduct undergraduate research and to study abroad. Later, they helped pioneer the creation of e-portfolios, a digital collection of student work. Now many Ohio State students explore those three initiatives, Ahlqvist says.

Last school year, about 5,000 students were in the honors program, based in the Kuhn Honors and Scholars House. The goal is to help high-achievers focus their ambitions and curiosity through an advanced curriculum, smaller classes (about 25 students), residence hall living with other honors students, and research at the university and beyond.

Ian Fairfield, a biochemistry senior in the program, worked on cancer research in Cleveland, an experience that led him in a new direction. He’d planned to become a medical researcher but discovered he enjoyed the public outreach part of his job. Now he wants to create health care policy and will attend Moritz College of Law in the fall.

Fairfield says he improved leadership skills by working as a peer mentor and wants to come back next year to speak with students. His timing is perfect, Ahlqvist says. “We’ve relaunched our alumni society and want to get as many alumni involved as possible.”

Looking to the future, the program plans to grow course offerings and promote its scholarships. Those include the expanded Stamps Eminence Scholarship Program and the new President’s Ohio Scholarship Program, for perfect scorers on the SAT or ACT. Both provide a full ride with enrichment funding.

Alumni memories

When Ben Campbell ’96 and Jenna DeCarlo ’17, ’19 MA joined the honors program, they wanted to take challenging classes. But more than that, they hoped to find a community that would support them. Both came from small towns and wondered how they’d navigate the sprawling Ohio State campus. They didn’t realize the honors program would make their worlds both larger and smaller in the best possible ways.

Their lives expanded as they explored new interests and discovered career paths they wouldn’t have considered otherwise. At the same time, they found a tight-knit community of peers, staff and faculty who made Ohio State feel like home. Here are their stories.

From ‘See me’ to PhD

In 1992, Ben Campbell arrived in Columbus from Ontario, Ohio, population 4,000. “I wanted help in making this giant place smaller,” he says. “I knew that when I took honors classes, I’d have smaller classes with outstanding professors, and I would have friends in the class, too.”

With honors classes capped at 30 students, Campbell got to know his professors and fellow students well. And his mathematics analysis class, in particular, taught him new ways of thinking. “It sharpened my critical thinking skills and my ability to solve hard problems that transferred to many different aspects of my life.” 

What he remembers most is an encounter in his microeconomics class that led to “a life-changing conversation” determining his future. 

After a difficult midterm exam, Campbell’s heart sank when his professor returned his paper with a note in red ink: “See me.”   

At their meeting, his professor informed him that Campbell had misread a question and instead had answered a much harder one. “He told me, ‘You should get a PhD in economics.’  At that point, I was a math major, and I had no idea what was next for me.  That conversation determined the rest of my life.”  

Boosted by his professor’s confidence in him, Campbell went on to earn his PhD in economics and is a professor at the Max M. Fisher College of Business. “I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to come back home and be a professor at a place that is so deeply part of who I am.”  

The impact of the honors program went beyond finding a profession he loves, Campbell says. He made close friends and learned leadership skills through his part-time job, where he did supervised 12 honors students. “We got into deep discussions and laughed a lot,” he says. He’d found a way to make the “giant place” smaller.

The research she didn’t see coming

For DeCarlo, the opportunity to do undergraduate research was one of the highlights of her experience in the honors program. But she could hardly have guessed that her research would lead directly to the career she now enjoys as a speech language pathologist, and that years later, she’d be applying that research in her daily work with children. 

When DeCarlo left her hometown of Nitro, West Virginia, she didn’t even know undergraduates could participate in research. She hadn’t yet chosen a major. What she did know was that she wanted to fully embrace the honors program, so she moved into Taylor Hall, one of three learning communities for honors students.

“The environment was very supportive,” she says. “People kept their doors open and felt comfortable asking each other for homework help. The attitude was, ‘We’re all here to support each other. We all want to do well.’”

By sophomore year, DeCarlo had decided to major in speech language pathology. But what specialty should she choose? An honors adviser suggested she explore her interests through research.  

DeCarlo landed a job in Ohio State’s Language, Assistive Technology and Autism Lab, where she studied technologies that help nonspeaking children communicate. Her passion for the work led her to complete an honors thesis under the direction of Associate Professor Allison Bean, the lab’s director. Her research was published in the Journal of Speech Language Pathology. 

That experience helped DeCarlo get accepted into a master’s program and laid the foundation for her career as a speech pathologist. She works at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. “I specialize in kids who don’t talk and need assistive technology to communicate. My honors research directly applies to my clinical work today.”

While in the honors program, DeCarlo says she found rewarding connections outside the classroom. She served as an honors ambassador for three years, hosting events and helping new students learn the ropes. Her enthusiasm continues today as a board member of the Honors & Scholars Alumni Society. “It’s a fun way to give back to a program that gave me so much, and it’s connected me with honors alumni I wouldn’t have met otherwise because our careers are in such different places.”