Eckardt Scholars

The Eckardt Scholars Program is a highly selective and unique honors program in the College of Arts and Sciences. The program emphasizes deep intellectual curiosity, interdisciplinary exploration, independent work, and close mentoring relationships between the very highest achieving students and faculty at Lehigh. Students in the program are exempt from the College of Arts & Sciences distribution requirements and work with their major advisor and the program director to create a personalized curriculum that best suits their academic interests and ambitions. 

This flexibility leads students to innovate on the traditional academic experience, allowing them to develop into future leaders through unique opportunities to pursue their passions and curiosities, often with the support of Eckardt funding to pursue research, internships, and other forms of experiential learning. The program includes participation in two Eckardt Scholar Seminars and completion of a large capstone project in the form of a thesis, artistic creation, or other cumulative project during the senior year. Although exempt from CAS distribution requirements, students complete the requisite number of credits for their degrees and all correlative requirements for their departmental or interdisciplinary majors.