The Kathwari Honors Program at Western Connecticut State University was founded to foster and nurture academic and civic excellence among outstanding students in all four WCSU schools. The Program consists of highly interactive and interdisciplinary classes and is built on the fundamental assumption that knowledge is an open set of questions and ideas to be explored, rather than a closed set of facts to be memorized. WestConn’s Kathwari Honors Program is arguably one of the more innovative programs in the country. It is designed to expose students to fundamental modes of inquiry found in various academic fields, and to illustrate the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to exploring a topic or issue.

In April 2015, the Kathwari Honors Program received a $1 million donation from Mr. & Mrs. Farooq Kathwari (which endowed the Program), formally changed the name to the Kathwari Honors Program at WCSU and celebrated the renaming of Alumni Hall as the Irfan Kathwari Honors House.

Kathwari Honors students have not only graduated in less than four years but have become Fulbright Scholars and received offers to the world’s leading graduate schools (i.e., Northwestern University’s Kellogg School and Emory University’s School of Law) and employers (i.e., The Hartford and EY -- formerly known as Ernst & Young).

“The program has two pathways: a complete program open to first-year students and first-semester sophomores, and an associate program option available to juniors and seniors.”