The Honors degree requires three elective courses.

These can include HON designated courses within your home department. Such courses aim at providing more rigor, challenge, depth, and/or interdisciplinarity than would be the case for courses without the designation. HON courses offer another arena where you can shape the experience of students in your program.

HON courses can be online, hybrid, or in-person. They can be stand-alone courses, or can have a "meets-with" structure, in which they entail a shared lecture section with students taking a non-HON designated version of a course, but require additional work and activities.

HON courses should be reserved for honors students in a program first, but remaining spaces can be made available to any student who wishes to experience more challenge, regardless of whether they are in the Honors college.

For approval, HON designated courses should entail:

Small size: Maximum enrollments of 30 students in the HON section.

Faculty contact: While courses can be offered in any format, there should be substantial contact with the faculty instructor within any HON designated course.

Co-curricular/out of classroom activity: Ideally, an HON designated course provides some route by which students get out of the classroom in meaningful ways.

Proposing an HON designation

HON designations for departmental courses are reviewed and approved by the Dean in consultation with the Honors Policy Board (HPB). The HPB meets once in the Fall and once in the Spring semester, and HON designations can go into effect the following semester. For more information, contact Associate Dean Pasupathi.

Proposals should include a complete syllabus and an accompanying memo including the rationale for how the course promotes success for Honors students in your major, and an explanation of how the course contributes to Honors Bachelor’s degree Learning Outcomes.