Alumni will be flooding the campus this weekend to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Honors Tutorial College.
Ohio University established an Honors Program and Awards Committee in 1959 to supervise and set rules for honors courses offered by various academic departments, according to the HTC website.
Based on this committee, Professor Ellery Golos created a proposal to create a tutorial system at OU. This tutorial system was based on the Oxford and Cambridge system used in Great Britain. It requires students to study one-on-one with their professors and mold their education to their own academic interests.
The proposal was approved May 9, 1972 and the Honors Tutorial College was born. Admission to the school is more competitive to that of the university itself. Prospective students are required to apply earlier in the year, submit two letters of recommendation, and have an interview with the director of studies.
It is the only college in the United States that is both degree granting and based on the Oxford and Cambridge system, said Jeremy Webster, dean of HTC.
“Our mission on campus has grown,” Webster said. “We are now looking to help all OU students.”
Originally open to only juniors and seniors, there are now about 240 students enrolled in the tutorial college, starting as early as their freshman years.
Hannah Abrahamson, a freshman studying Spanish, chose to enroll in HTC after studying in Costa Rica as a high-school junior. Currently, along with learning the language, her studies focus on comparing the Brazilian conquests to the Spanish conquest.
“I don’t know anywhere else I could to this as a freshman,” she said, adding that her experience as a tutorial student has not been unlike that of a regular OU student.
bl171210@ohiou.edu
