Honors Contracts
The primary method of earning honors credit in upper-division courses is to complete an honors contract. Students can transform any upper-division course (3000-level or above) into an honors course by developing a project in consultation with a faculty member.
All honors contracts enrich the quality of a student's educational experience rather than simply increase their workload.
What An Honors Contract Is
- An opportunity for undergraduate research
- A chance to delve deeper into the your area of interest
- A chance to do in-depth learning with a mentor
- A way to extend the student-professor relationship
- Preparation for graduate-level work
What An Honors Contract Is Not
- Graded assignments
- Busy work
- A longer paper
- Extra homework problems
- Extra reading assignments
- Part of the expected workload of the class
Possible Contract Ideas
- Working as a research assistant
- Analyzing original or primary sources related to course materials
- Additional reading, discussion, and synthesis on a topic of mutual interest to the student and instructor
- Completing a literature review or writing a policy paper
- Synthesizing cross-disciplinary concepts related to course materials.
- Designing teaching tools or adapting course material for use in pre-college or lower division classes (especially appropriate for future teachers)
Conference Travel Assistance
Contracts are a great opportunity to participate in a research project with a professor. If you should find yourself completing a contract with research you feel is a candidate for regional or national conferences, please let us know. We highly encourage Honors College students to participate in conference opportunities, and as such offer travel assistance to regional and national conferences.
Contract Library
Check out the Contract Library for examples of contracts completed by other honors students.