The University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign

Only approximately 125 new students can be admitted to the CHP each year as first-year students.  A few additional students, however, may join the program on an off-cycle basis at the beginning of the sophomore year.  Designated as “Chancellor's Scholars,” CHP students may be enrolled in any undergraduate curriculum.  Those who meet retention requirements continue as Chancellor's Scholars throughout their undergraduate career.  Required CHP coursework is concentrated in the freshman and sophomore years, when students take intensive and specialized versions of general education courses.  At the junior and senior level, when students are necessarily involved in their majors, they are required to take one advanced CHP seminar.  In short, our emphasis is on fundamental principles and interdisciplinary connections, because the CHP is directed at students who desire an undergraduate education that is broad and general as well as professionally specialized.

It is as important to understand what CHP is not, as to understand what it is.  CHP courses represent additional opportunities for academically gifted and adventurous students; they are not an alternative curriculum.  Basically, they provide an honors-quality way of satisfying general education requirements for graduation and of helping students to discover the interrelations between their own discipline and other disciplines.  Nor does CHP supplant or conflict with departmental honors programs.  In consultation with their departmental academic advisors, Chancellor's Scholars develop their own combination of regular and CHP courses.  Accordingly, most of the courses our students take are regular University offerings.