Honors Opportunities

• Honors Reading Groups
• The Honors Option
• Senior Thesis

Honors Reading Groups

An honors reading group is a great way to get people together to discuss great books and intriguing ideas. Moreover, you can even get honors credit (0-1 credit) for having a group. So keep in mind that four discussion groups, if you take each for one credit, can count for one of the honors courses you will need for “all college honors” (you can take the course for 0 credit if a credit would cost you an overload fee for the term).

The first thing to do is to identify some people for the group. Ideally, groups should contain 4-8 members. If you have fewer than four people or more than eight, discussions will be substantially different (not necessarily bad, but there will be some special obstacles). The next thing to do is to figure out some book or books that you would like to read and discuss. You should figure on spending somewhere between 12-15 hours discussing your book or books during the semester. So when thinking about a book or books, consider how much discussion time you are likely to want to spend on a particular work. If you take on too much, your discussions are likely to be more superficial. On the other hand, if you do not choose enough for the whole semester, you run the risk of running out of intellectual stamina for the work. Perhaps most important, consider the kind of book or books you want to read. They should be weighty in some significant sense. They should provoke and inspire good, deep thinking about important matters.

Once you have the people and the book(s), find yourself a professor who is willing to share your company and discuss the book(s). Remember that any professor who agrees to do this with you is doing this as something extra, so be sensitive to the fact that this should be interesting for her or him too (professors have lots and lots of things to do - classroom teaching only scratches the surface, so you need to convince the professor to share her/his precious time).

Once you have the people, the books, and the professor (and of course, it can work without necessarily going in the order I described), send Dr. White an E-mail naming 1) the book or books to be read, 2) the professor who has agreed to work with you, 3) the names of the students involved, 4) whether each student has chosen 1 or 0 credits 5) how many semesters each student has completed in honors including the current semester.  The deadline for getting this information via E-mail to Dr. White will be end of September (Fall term) or middle February (Spring term). From the registrar's point of view, you will be signed up for either Honors 270 "Directed Reading" (if most of the people have 12-15 honors credits under their belt) or Honors 370 "Directed Reading" (if most have more than 15 honors credits). 

The Honors Option

Honors Option Application Form

The application form must indicate that you have the approval of the supervising faculty member and returned via e-mail by the date specified. The director of the Honors Program will then go through each application and approve those which follow the established guidelines for honors option credit. Both you and the professor will receive word of this approval or rejection within two weeks of the established deadline for submission.

General Guidelines for Honors Option Credit

1. For courses in the humanities and social sciences there should be at least ten pages of graded written work in addition to the written work assigned for the course. The form of this writing (research, critical essay etc.) will depend on the course, but it should be based on substantial secondary reading beyond the reading assigned for the course.
2. For courses in the sciences the honors option proposal should include a significant laboratory or research inquiry which is beyond the normal scope of the course. In most cases the results of the inquiry should be written in appropriate science reporting format.
3. For courses in the fine arts the honors option proposal should include either written work as above, or a substantial piece of artistic expression, evaluated by the instructor, which is beyond the normal requirements of the course.

At the completion of the course, the honors director will forward a request for evaluation for honors option credit to the instructor. It is the instructor's prerogative either to accept or reject the granting of honors option credit. No grades are given. In no case will the work done (or not done) for honors option credit affect the regular course grade.

Senior Thesis

The Senior Thesis involves close work with a faculty advisor from the student's major department in conducting research, writing a thesis or executing a creative project, often in an area closely related to the advisor's own research or creative work.  The student completes most of the requirements in the fall of the senior year.  By early March the student submits a final draft of written work to the departmental defense committee.  A public defense is held in April of the senior year.    Students receiving a grade of A or H are eligible for departmental distinction within their major.   Prerequisite for the thesis is HONR 396 (Thesis Proposal) for 0 or 1 credit taken during the Spring term of the student's junior year.