Honors Contracts
Honors contracts provide you with the opportunity to earn honors credit in a course from your degree plan.
An honors contract is an agreement between you and a professor on a mutually-designated project that raises an upper-division course (3000 to 4000 level) from regular to honors credit. A graduate course (5000 level) is automatically accepted as honors credit without a contract.
Contracts are initiated by you, the student, and must involve the completion of an additional and meaningful project beyond that of the regular requirements of the course.
Eligibility for Contracts
1. You must be a Reaud Honors College student in good standing (not on probation).
2. You may earn a maximum of six hours of honors credit through the honors contract option, unless the honors dean determines a compelling reason allows an exception.
For your contract, you may accomplish your meaningful project in many ways, including (but not limited to) the following:
- Investigate an area of the discipline not covered in depth in the regular course.
- Investigate how your major area(s) of interest connect with this discipline.
- Apply the information/expertise learned in the course in a creative way.
- Participate in an appropriate and relevant faculty-initiated research project.
- Devise and carry out a clearly delimited original research project.
- Monitor and analyze "current events" associated with the course topic.
- Perform a literature survey in a collateral area of the course topic.
Your project should take the form closest to what might be expected of you on the job: analytical report, presentation, multimedia campaign, construction project or other product appropriate to the course material.
A Good Contract Should...
- Be undertaken in a course of significant interest to you
- Be of mutual interest to both you and your instructor
- Engage your higher cognitive abilities of analysis, synthesis, evaluation and creation
- Involve a project or activity that deepens and advances your understanding of the subject matter and results in an experience that advances your academic and professional aspirations
- Open up the possibility of engaging in further undergraduate research or creative activity beyond the scope of the course
- Result in a presentation at a regional or national conference within one's discipline, an undergraduate research conference or a regional or national Honors conference
- Be appropriate to the number of credit hours earned in the course
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEMESTER...
If you would like to take advantage of this opportunity, you should complete the honors contract form, which both you and the professor sign and date. You must submit the completed and signed form to the Reaud Honors College by the 12th class day. Contracts submitted after the 12th class day will not be accepted. The contract is recorded by the business manager of the college. You may withdraw from a contract no later than the official last day to drop/withdraw without academic penalty by notifying both the Reaud Honors College and the professor. Such a withdrawal will be recorded.
EARN AT LEAST A "B" AND FULFILL HONORS COURSEWORK...
You must earn at least a “B” in the regular coursework in order to obtain honors credit. Generally, fulfillment of the terms of the contract determines only whether you earn honors credit for the course and does not impact the final course grade. You must submit the work agreed upon in the contract to the professor by the established deadline. If the contract has been completed satisfactorily, the college will inform the registrar and the particular course will be marked as "honors credit" on your transcript. If the contract was not completed, you will not receive honors credit and will be disqualified from entering into further petitions or contracts, unless the honors dean determines that there is a compelling reason to allow you to do so.