History

Origin

The Business Honors Program (BHP) was established in the Mendoza College of Business in the Fall of 2021 under the leadership of Dean Martijn Cremers. The BHP is the first undergraduate honors program offered by the College in its over 100 year history.

Today

The BHP is primarily a three-year program. Most students begin in their sophomore years, and engage in courses, required programming, and optional programming throughout their sophomore, junior, and senior years. As originally designed, the goal is to have approximately 60 students per cohort, or 180 students total across the BHP’s three years. The BHP graduated its first seniors in Spring 2024.

In fall of 2024, the BHP admitted an inaugural cohort of 17 freshmen students. These students will join the sophomore cohort as they begin their second years in the program.

Goals

The BHP is a comprehensive formational community that has three central goals:

1. To recognize and challenge the College’s highest-achieving students by offering an enhancement to their studies.

2. To encourage students to explore virtue and moral purpose in business, including from a Catholic perspective.

3. To encourage a mutually supportive community oriented toward excellence and service.

While Honors programs at other universities typically admit students based on academic achievement alone, the BHP looks not only at GPAs and other indicators of academic achievement but also seeks students committed to finding and implementing a moral purpose in their business education and future professional careers. We look for students willing to make a personal commitment to “Grow the Good in Business.”

The BHP reflects its home within not just a top teaching and research university but also a Catholic university. Students are of course not required to be Catholic or to be of any faith at all, but they are expected to consider Catholic perspectives on a variety of topics and to engage thoughtfully with Catholic social teaching.