Director's Welcome

I would like to welcome you to the Honors Program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. We are a living and learning community of dedicated students, attentive advisors and engaged professors. Built upon the strong foundation of UMKC as a world-class research university, the Honors Program provides an engaging and close-knit community serving the intellectual and social needs of our outstanding honors students. 

As a member of the Honors Program, you will pursue an intensive honors curriculum within the stimulating intellectual environment of an urban research university. While you will be part of a small community of talented and highly motivated students, all of whom excel in academics, you will also be part of the UMKC student body of more than 15,000 from diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds. 

Students in the Honors Program are dedicated to excellence in all of their pursuits. Honors Program students are enrolled in every academic major offered at UMKC, and a surprisingly large number of our students are pursuing double majors. Through their participation in small, seminar-style honors courses and their engagement in undergraduate research, our students become active investigators in the quest for new knowledge. Honors students have presented their research at national conferences and earned scholarships to the world’s most elite graduate and professional schools. Our students are truly exceptional in their aspirations and their achievements. 

I encourage every student in the Honors Program to become conversant with the great ideas that have shaped the historical development of world civilization. I would like to become personally acquainted with every member of the Honors Program, and I am always glad to meet with individual students for advice and friendly conversation about books, ideas and current events. 

Please feel free to contact me, or any member of the Honors Program staff, if you have questions or need more information about the Honors Program. It is always a pleasure for me to meet prospective honors students. I look forward to meeting you in person! 

Sincerely yours, 

Gayle Levy 
Director, UMKC Honors Program
Chair, World Languages and Foreign Cultures
Associate Professor of French