We invite interested faculty and instructors to propose an Honors course. Please submit a brief draft proposal for a course that draws from your academic or research interests.The Honors curriculum committee will review all draft proposals and notify instructors of our decision. Proposals are reviewed when an academic year has availablity for new courses.
- Academically Challenging: Courses must be appropriately demanding for sophomores, keeping in mind that students in the class may be from any college or school and may not be presupposed to have taken particular courses. Instructors may choose to introduce foundational material at the beginning of the course, however.
- Research-Focused: Seminars should introduce students to aspects of the conduct of research within disciplines or interdisciplinary clusters. These seminars aren’t viewed as “methods” courses but should allow students to acquire tools that will allow them to develop the skills and dispositions that will help them become more active and engaged students, eventually capable of conducting their own independent research (the sophomore seminars are thus an important part of the students’ general preparation for their senior-year Honors Thesis). For example, courses may introduce students to ways to read a scientific article, conduct primary scholarly research, annotate a bibliography, conduct field research, design an experiment, write an abstract, and so on.
- Interactive: Courses will be seminars (and not small versions of lecture courses), with a great deal of interaction among students and the instructor.
- Writing Intensive: In most cases, seminars should emphasize excellence in written communication and expression. Courses emphasizing numeracy and quantitative skills, oral communication, or information technology, are also encouraged.
- Creative: Courses that engage students in creative thinking and projects are invited.
- Innovative: Courses involving service learning and other forms of non-traditional learning are also invited.
- Engage Diversity and/or Shared Competency requirements: Courses that might satisfy IDEA requirements and/or the shared competencies requirement are welcome.