Thurgood Marshall College Honors Program

The Thurgood Marshall College Honors Program is designed to address one of the greatest responsibilities and challenges of public higher education: the education of students of exceptionally high academic achievement. The program provides the organization and the environment within which students are encouraged to pursue individual excellence.

Honors activities and events are designed to introduce Thurgood Marshall students to the excitement of pioneering research and innovative scholarship in all disciplines at UC San Diego and to create opportunities for discussion on public issues with locally and nationally known figures. These opportunities occur through quarterly honors seminars (TMC 20) open to TMC honors students as well as various events hosted by the TMC Honors Program and Honors Council.

Eligibility

To be eligible to participate in the TMC Honors Program, students must meet the following criteria:

Complete a minimum of 12 graded units
Achieve a UC cumulative GPA of 3.8 or higher

Currently, application to the program is not required as students who meet these criteria are automatically notified of their eligibility. Once in the program, students retain their TMC Honors status by maintaining a minimum cumulative UC GPA at 3.5 or higher and are monitored quarterly.

Honors Seminars

Winter 2026

TMC 20, Thursday 4:00PM - 4:50PM | COA (Coalition) 217

Instructor: Dr. Leslie Carver, Provost of Marshall College and Faculty Member, Department of Psychology

In this class, students will read research papers written by UC San Diego faculty and/or research staff, and accompanying press articles about the research. Researchers from a range of disciplines (e.g. psychology, atmospheric sciences, medicine, chemistry, fluid mechanics) will participate. Faculty members will attend class during the week that their paper is discussed.

Objectives for this course include:

Students will interact in a small group setting with researchers from UC San Diego whose work has been reported in the popular press
Students will gain skill in reading empirical research articles
Students will learn to critically assess how popular press reports relate to actual scientific reports
Student will learn how research is gathered and reported

Please note: TMC 20 is a 1-unit seminar graded as P/NP. For newly offered seminars each term, please refer to the Schedule of Classes or WebReg.

University and Department Honors

In addition to membership in the TMC Honors Program, students may also qualify for participation in various campus-wide honors programs as well as eligibility for honors awards at graduation. Please see Honors Distinction for additional information.