Dean of the Honors College, Montana State University
Richard Badenhausen is Professor and Dean of the Honors College at Montana State University. Home to almost 2,000 undergraduates, the honors college is notable for its interdisciplinary curriculum, place-based learning experiences, and preparation of students for high-level research.
Badenhausen is a Past President of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC), the largest and oldest membership organization devoted to honors education. He is also a two-time member of the NCHC Board of Directors, an editorial board member of HIP: Honors in Practice, and a member of the organization’s Publications Board. In 2022, he co-chaired the task force that rewrote the national honors education standards for the first time in thirty years, resulting in the “Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education.”
In 2011, Badenhausen was named an NCHC Fellow; and in 2016 he received NCHC’s Sam Schuman Award for Excellence at a Four-Year Institution, which is awarded to one national honors leader annually. He has published over a dozen essays on issues related to honors education and is the editor of Honors Colleges in the 21st Century (2023), which brings together the work of 56 authors representing 45 different institutions. Badenhausen regularly visits other universities to evaluate their honors programs and honors colleges as a consultant or program reviewer.
Previous roles include Founding Dean of the Honors College at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, where he also held the Kim T. Adamson Endowed Chair and served for fourteen months as interim provost. At Westminster, he was the recipient of the Gore Excellence in Teaching award and a two-time winner of the Manford A. Shaw Publication Prize for scholarly work. Before moving to Westminster, Badenhausen ran the honors program at Marshall University.
Over the past 25 years, Badenhausen has published widely on the work of T. S. Eliot and modernist literature, including T. S. Eliot and the Art of Collaboration (Cambridge University Press). He has a B.A. from Colgate University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in British Literature from University of Michigan.
