Criteria for Honors courses:
- UHP Honors Courses should include many, if not all, of the following criteria.
- UHP Honors Courses should have a broad interdisciplinary appeal, if possible.
- Some UHP Honors Courses may be discipline specific.
- UHP Honors Courses should be in a seminar format, with a high degree of interaction between faculty and honors students. Courses may contain group or individual student presentations, and small group or class discussion.
- Existing courses may be modified into honors courses utilizing the criteria listed.
- Courses should demonstrably stretch student intellects.
- UHP Honors Courses should develop student proficiency and fluency in oral and written expression as well as critical thinking/analysis. To the extent possible, students should synthesize ideas and build conceptual frameworks. Those goals may be reached by thoughtful and organized discussion of assigned reading, student presentation of material, and frequent writing assignments.
- UHP Honors Courses should incorporate critical components of a particular discipline, and students should be made aware of that discipline-specific methodology and how it relates to any broadly defined intellectual exercise.
- Connections of the UHP Honors Course materials to other disciplines, to "real world" applications, or to service-learning projects are encouraged, but not exclusively necessary.
- The UHP Honors Program encourages creativity and intellectual curiosity in students, particularly when they may pursue their own undergraduate research projects. Therefore, if possible, faculty should incorporate their own research or creative activity (either published/exhibited or in progress) into UHP Honors Courses.
- Faculty should "teach their passion" and demonstrate their love of teaching, mentoring, and nurturing gifted students.
- Courses will be assessed using standard class evaluations for seminar courses, in addition to optional questions to be developed specifically for honors. Course assessments will be used to evaluate program success.
An honors contract is a mechanism for adding an honors dimension to a course or section which is not already an honors course. The contract is an agreement between the individual student and the professor in the class for which honors credit is desired. This agreement identifies a project that the student will complete under the faculty member's supervision. Although the honors contract does not affect the student's grade in the course, in order to receive honors credit for the course the student must earn a grade of "A" or "B" in the course in addition to completing the contract project in a satisfactory manner. Up to 9 hours of honors contract credit may be used to fulfill the requirements for the General Honors Award (up to 12 hours, if necessary, with permission of the University Honors Program Director).
Honors contract forms are available in The University Honors Program office. Contracts must be filed with University Honors Program office by the end of the third week of the semester.
