Honors Contracts

An honors contract is an agreement between a student and a faculty member that the student will do an enriched version of a non-honors course and thus be eligible to have that course count as 3 credits toward Baccalaureate Honors requirements.

Honors students may request permission to complete up to TWO courses by means of honors contracts (with exceptions for more than 2 contracts to be made solely at the discretion of the BHP Director). The contract option is restricted sophomores, juniors, and seniors (exceptions only at the discretion of the Director). Contracts are typically completed in courses that are in the student's major or minor field. Contracts can only be completed in courses at the 200-level or above, with a few exceptions that must be approved ahead of time by the BHP Director.

Formal contracts (linked below) must be signed by all parties and submitted to the BHP director by the end of the second week of the semester in which the contracted work will be undertaken. 

Approval must be granted by the faculty member sponsoring the contract as well as by the Honors Director. Proposals must include a copy of both the course syllabus that the faculty member would normally distribute to students, and the revised syllabus for the honors student. 

The revised syllabus can be a list of enhanced or additional assignments for the honors student, and must include a specific description of how the revisions bring the course up to standards for honors courses. Enhanced/ additional assignments must include a research component and a written component. It is also recommended that they include an oral component. 

• For the research component: At least one of the honors assignments MUST require a review of primary (or, if applicable, secondary) sources (minimum of 5-8 sources).
• For the written component: This can include longer papers, additional smaller assignments beyond what the rest of the students in the class have to do, and/ or discussion posts. (The written component should total a minimum of 8-12 pages of extra writing across assignments.)
• For the oral component (highly recommended): It is recommended that the student deliver a short oral presentation of the honors work, either in class or individually to the professor. It is not expected that this oral component would be on a different topic – it could, for example, be a presentation of material covered in an extra research paper that only the honors student has to complete. 
• The revised syllabus should also list specific deadlines for the honors assignments.

See the document below for a fuller description of contract requirements and for the formal contract that must be signed and submitted to the Honors Director.

Download Honors Contract (.docx)

Upon completion of the course, the final product(s) -paper(s), laboratory report, short presentation(s), etc. -must be approved by the sponsoring faculty member. The work must be at the level of a B or higher, and the student must earn a grade of a B+ or higher in the course in order to gain honors credit for the contract. The professor of the course will then respond to the Honors Director's evaluation request with a recommendation to grant honors credit if the contract has been fulfilled and the grade minimums have been met.