Departmental Honors

Departmental honors and honors in interdisciplinary major programs are awarded for outstanding performance in writing a senior thesis or in conducting senior research. Departments that have honors programs offer a sequence of two courses titled "Thesis" or "Honors Thesis."

Students who hope to become candidates for departmental honors must register for the courses in Thesis during the senior year. Discussions about pursuing honors should be held with faculty well in advance of the senior year. Work in these courses will be supervised by a faculty member and will be graded in the usual way.

Candidates for honors must normally have and maintain cumulative grade point averages of 3.00 overall and averages of 3.20 in the honors department(s) and must fulfill such other requirements as may be established by the department with the approval of the Academic Progress Committee. If a faculty member believes a student to be capable of pursuing honors designation but the student's GPA falls below the college or departmental required minimum GPA, he/she may submit two letters of recommendation supporting the project to be approved by the Academic Progress Committee by April 1st of the student's junior year.  One of those letters must be from the proposed thesis adviser and the other from the Department Head/Program Chair.  Smaller programs may ask their advisory committee members to write a letter on the student's behalf.

Students who wish to do honors work in departments other than the major department must separately petition the Committee for permission to do so. Such students must have taken at least six courses, exclusive of Thesis, in the honors department, four of which must be at or above the sophomore (200) level.

The transcripts of students who receive honors bear the legend Honors in (department or program name) with Thesis.