Honors and Senior Experience

All students contemplating graduation must complete a Senior Experience as a condition of their graduation. This Senior Experience may be submitted for Honors in Independent Study, provided the following criteria for Cum Laude Honors are met. Individual Departments determine whether or not an Honors project may serve as the Senior Experience.

Cum Laude -- Honors with distinction

To achieve honors, the project must fulfill ALL of the following criteria:

  1. Each of the three components of the project (the work, the written exposition, and the oral examination) demonstrates a substantial knowledge of, and facility with, previous work, underlying principles, and central concepts or theories in areas relevant to the project.
  2. The paper must clearly show that the student has established an original thesis or hypothesis, an original interpretation or analysis, a substantial and original synthesis or innovative pedagogical exposition of a sophisticated body of established work, or created a new work of art. In other words, the student must demonstrate that the project does not merely replicate, review, paraphrase, or compile previous work by others.
  3. The paper appropriately frames the original material in the project within the context of established work or relevant traditions in the discipline, provides documentation (e.g., bibliographical citations, tables and figures, illustrations) appropriate to the discipline, contains few and relatively minor grammatical or typographical flaws, is clear, well-organized, and stylistically sound.
  4. The work itself is of very high quality. The project has been carried out competently, diligently, independently, and in a manner that fulfills the basic standards of the discipline.
In addition to fulfilling the above criteria, each student submitting an Honors Project must successfully pass an oral examination.

Special Instructions for Projects in the arts

The above criteria are used in evaluating all Honors in Independent Study projects with the exception of the brief paper written for a project in the arts. While the paper for a project in the arts must be clearly organized and well written, contain appropriate documentation when needed, and display a high quality of thought and presentation,   it is considered to be supplementary to the work itself. In the arts, the criteria listed above should be used primarily to evaluate the project itself and the subsequent oral examination.

Supplementary Guidelines for Projects in the Arts

  1. Keep in mind that honors in independent study are university awards.
  2. A project in the arts may be undertaken in any discipline (e.g., biology, physics, history, etc.)
  3. Evaluation of the project will focus on the project rather than the paper. The paper, however, should be well-written and free of error, and its content should be accurate, meaningful, and appropriate to the project.
  4. The supplementary paper should be at least six to ten pages in length. (A longer paper may be submitted, of course, but again the focus will remain on the project.)
  5. A bibliography may or may not be necessary, depending on the content of the paper.
  6. If a project in the arts consists of a performance, some sort of audio-visual documentation (DVD, CD, photographs, etc.) must be included with the final project for archival purposes.  A performance program should also be submitted.
  7. If the project is an art exhibition, an exhibition catalog must be submitted with the final project.  Some sort of visual description (photographs, DVD, etc.) should also be included for archival purposes.
  8. If the project is web based, arrangements must be made to create an archive copy.