Southern Miss Honors College

According to this week's Honors events forecast, we are expecting a week full of excitement, community, and new beginnings!🌤️ We are thrilled to welcome you to campus in a few days!

Learn more about our Honors Faculty before the school year starts! We are so excited to see you back on campus. 🦅

If you haven't already, check out the 50th Anniversary edition of The Medallion, featuring current student accomplishments, alumni stories, and memorable pictures of scholars over the years.🏅 You can find the digital version through the link in our bio!

With the Fall '26 semester right around the corner, we're reminiscing about meeting our incoming scholars at Orientation this summer. ☀️ We cannot wait to welcome you at Convocation and Honors H2O in a few weeks!

Congratulations to our very own Honors Scholar, Connor Whitecotton, for his two poems published in the Spring 2026 issue of The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of Arts & Letters in the South. The Honors College is so proud of our students’ commitment to their passions, both in and out of the classroom. 🎉

Time for another installment of the Honors Faculty Spotlight! Check out two more of our incredible colloquium professors for Fall 2026.

Take a look at the Honors College faculty for the 2026 - 2027 school year! 🤩 We are so excited for our scholars to meet these incredible professors.

Keep an eye out for weekly spotlights! 🤭

Happy birthday, Honors College! 🎉 Today, we are looking back at our anniversary weekend where we celebrated 50 years of excellence. The success of the Honors College would not be possible without the dedicated scholars, faculty, team, and alumni who have endlessly supported our mission.

Find the donation link in our bio to give a gift to the Honors College on its special day!

Say cheese, graduates! 📸 Although commencement season is over, we are still cheering you on and celebrating your big achievement!

Congratulations to our most recent class of Honors College Alumni!

Honors College students don't just read books and discuss big ideas; they learn by going outside the classroom, by putting their ideas into action and their values into practice. This semester, students in Dr. Joseph Peterson's Honors Seminar, "Incarceration in Mississippi," spent time researching the history of incarceration firsthand in USM's Special Collections, and traveled to the Mississippi State Penitentiary (at Parchman), visiting and conversing with residents in a seminary class there as well as with residents on “Death Row.”

Supported by USM's Center for Community Engagement, students also volunteered at Big House Books in Jackson, reading correspondence and filling book orders for incarcerated readers; and volunteered at Interlude House (a sober-living community for women in recovery), helping to raise money, plant flowers, and perform other maintenance. Some students even volunteered to go behind bars and work as “peer facilitators” in classes run by the Mississippi Prison Arts and Education Project, completing some of the same assignments and earning the same certificates alongside incarcerated scholars.