As an HFA, one of your central jobs is to connect Honors students in your program with potential faculty advisors.

Sometimes this works smoothly and with little effort on your part. You reach out to a junior in the spring-semester, and find out that she has been working in a laboratory for one year, has a good relationship with the PI of that laboratory, and an initial plan for a thesis project. Or you touch base in fall with a senior, and he reports that he has already been in conversation with a faculty mentor about turning a choreography project into a thesis in time for the spring semester deadlines. YAHOO!

Other times, students need your help. Some example situations?

Students have time to succeed, but only a vague and ill-formed idea or almost no idea at all, and no plan. The first step here - does this student truly want to complete the thesis? If so, you could help the student focus their thinking in a direction you can match with a proven thesis advisor. Why a proven advisor? Students like this may need a bit more hand-holding, especially as they begin their projects, and proven advisors can call on more experiences to help these students. You could also connect the student to one or two proven advisors who can get them to a manageable project without your involvement.

Students have a clear and viable idea that doesn't fit with anyone in your department. This might be a reason to expand your mentor pool by partnering with someone outside your unit. Often, HFAs know of a viable mentor outside their unit already, and you can also call on Associate Deans Pasupathi and Parker for more assistance. The University offers a "find-a-researcher" tool that can be a starting point for helping the student search. Then, help the student to craft a brief paragraph description of their idea, and a formal and respectful email to the prospective mentor from the student (though cc'ing you, ideally). Your role is to help the student identify potential mentors, but they should take responsibility for reaching out to the person.

Your can also nudge the student's idea towards something that can be mentored from the usual pool of HFAs. Remind students that their thesis project is a project, not a lifetime commitment, and doing a project that is 'next to' rather than directly within their interests isn't the end of their research dreams.

Students have no adequate idea or plan and very limited time. When this happens, one option is to simply say no. No student is guaranteed the degree, and students who arrive at the close of their undergraduate career having ignored the need to prepare for the thesis may need to let go of the goal.

Depending on your program and the student's unique situation, you may choose to try to accommodate the student by finding a mentor and helping shape a project - but feasibility and timing need to be front and center. These accommodations work best when students are highly committed, and the project is building on existing work they or their advisor have already completed (i.e., no new data collection or new creative project to be done), or is a more literature-review paper type of project in a well-defined area (note that not all programs allow this latter type of thesis).

Finally, a last set of situations involves serious issues between the student and a mentor that are compromising the likelihood of success. We address this topic in more detail here. However, if this arises early enough, helping the student to switch projects and advisors is worth trying. Doing so will be more successful if whatever aspects of the problem were within the students' control are openly considered and discussed.