the honors option
Description || Procedures || Guidelines || Examples
Honors College members are expected to enrich their education by receiving Honors credit in at least eight courses while at MSU. The Honors Option is a way in which an Honors College student who is enrolled in a non-Honors course can, with the agreement and help of the instructor, earn Honors credit in that course. (The other two ways of earning Honors credit are to take an Honors course or section and to take a graduate-level course).
The following describes Honors Option procedures and provides what the Honors College feels are especially good examples of Honors Options that have been done in the past.
General Description
H-Options are an important enrichment opportunity for Honors College members and other academically talented students at MSU. They enable students, with the consent and guidance of faculty, to undertake Honors-caliber study and to receive Honors credit in those non-Honors courses for which the offering of H-Options has been authorized by the department and the Honors College. Students need to be interested in some particular aspect of the subject matter and to be committed to more extensive or more advanced work than is required of regular students in the course. Because supervising faculty must commit additional time and energy to this endeavor, in many cases the topics selected should be of special interest to the professor as well as the student.
A variety of activities may be used to satisfy the H-Option. Frequently, an H-Option will involve the writing of an extra paper or a longer version of a paper required of all students. In some cases, students have designed Web pages or done and reported on laboratory or field work not required of the regular students in the course. In instances when several students in a class request an H-Option, some instructors arrange for an additional class meeting time for those students.
Faculty who wish to advertise the possibility of H-Options or the work expectations to earn Honors credit in their non-Honors classes should consider listing their classes in the Honors College's annual Bulletin of Course Descriptions. In that way, Honors College students will know that H-Options are possible and perhaps encouraged in that class, which may attract new students to the course.
Procedures
- The student asks the instructor whether he or she would be willing to oversee an Honors Option.
- Before agreeing to do an H-Option, faculty should check whether their course has been authorized for H-Options by their department and by the Honors College. A list of courses authorized for H-Options is available online at http://ntweb11.ais.msu.edu/H-Options/H-OptionAuth.html. Please note as well that some departments require a student to earn a grade of at least a 3.0 or 3.5 in the course before they will grant Honors credit for an Honors Option.
- If the course is authorized for H-Options and the instructor agrees to supervise one in response to the student's request, then the instructor, after discussion with the student, specifies what the student will need to do to complete satisfactorily the project. (Sometimes in a large course quite a few students will ask for Honors Options and it is often possible to devise a group project that they can do collaboratively). An optional Honors Option Agreement form is available from the Honors College for this purpose.
- At the end of the term, the instructor files an online Administrative Action Form for each student who has satisfactorily completed the H-Option. These forms are separate and distinct from the regular end-of-term grade lists and require the approval of the instructor, the chairperson of the department, the Assistant Dean of the College offering the course, and the Dean of the Honors College. Instructors can access these forms through the Instructor Systems menu at the Registrar's Office website: http://www.reg.msu.edu/Forms/AAForms/AAMenu.asp.
University policy is that Honors Options must be supervised by a member of the MSU faculty. If a student who is in a course taught by someone other than a faculty member (such as a graduate teaching assistant) wishes to do an Honors Option, it is often possible to find a faculty member with direct administrative responsibility for the course (the course coordinator or unit chairperson, say) who is willing to oversee the H-Option. Honors College defers to units regarding procedures for faculty supervision of Honors Options in such circumstances.
Students or faculty having questions concerning Honors Options are invited to call the Honors College at 355-2326.
Guidelines
The All-University Guidelines relating to Honors Options were adopted by the University Committee on Honors Programs. Individual units may choose to establish more detailed unit-specific guidelines.
Examples of Honors Options
Often faculty who are approached by an Honors College student asking for an Honors Option have little or no idea of the sort of project that might suitably serve the purpose. Also, there are times when Honors Options have been given that seem to be pedestrian and not really worthy of the students' efforts or of H-credit. With that in mind, we list below some examples of inventive, enriching Honors Options offered in the past, grouped by type.
Research Papers
ANP 220: Student did intensive readings on issues pertaining to 1) history of feminist anthropology; 2) different genres of feminist ethnography. The student met with the instructor on a weekly basis to discuss the readings and she did a final paper.
CJ 110: Student wrote a case study/research paper of the dispute between Gov. Pataki (NY) and the Bronx (NY) District Attorney over seeking the death penalty in a case involving the murder of a NY policeman.
EC 302: Student conducted an in-depth analysis of the macroeconomic effects of the currently pending tobacco legislation. Applying the theoretical techniques developed in class, the student examined both partial and general equilibrium effects of the legislation on the macroeconomy over both the short and long runs. The student then used his analysis to critically evaluate the economic analysis of this legislation found in the national press.
LBS 119: Sphere packing problems in infinite rectangular space.
PES 216 (KIN 216): Student completed a library research project on the anatomy and physiology of Alzheimer's disease. In the course of the project, she learned to use the Medline index to medical research journals. She also met with the instructor several times to plan and revise her approach to the project, submitted an initial draft for comments, and produced a final revised paper.
PLS 361: Student wrote an extra paper on Congress refusing to grant Fast-Track Authority to the President.
PSY 101: Student wrote a term paper that reviewed the scientific literature on melatonin and jet lag, reviewed two articles on this topic that appeared in the lay press, and then critiqued how the science was portrayed by the press to the public.
SOC 215: Student conducted a study of racial segregation in the dorms at MSU. She designed the study, observed in the dorms, sampled respondents and conducted interviews. She tabulated data from her observations and wrote a paper on the research and her findings.
ZOL 384: Student completed a field study looking at Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica) post-breeding activity and habitat selection, and submitted a written paper describing the results of her field work.
Research
ANS 314: Three students completed H-Option projects in a research lab. Each student individually attended 7 two-hour sessions with the professor where she learned how a molecular genetics lab functions. The students observed and gained some hands-on experience with specific techniques used in molecular genetics research.
CSS 490: Study required the reading of several designated texts and references selected by the faculty adviser and others located by the student in order to become familiar with the key assertions of organic practitioners regarding soil quality. The student then formulated and tested a hypothesis regarding possible effects of organic crop management on nitrogen mineralization capacity. A poster was prepared and formally presented, and a final report written for publication. The work was at a level of a beginning graduate student.
LIN 291: Data collection, transcription, and analysis comparing woman-woman conversation to woman-man conversation. MUS 465: Student observed an individual child in the context of an early childhood music class for 45 minutes per week for the entire semester. She kept detailed ethnographic notes. At the end of the semester, she organized her observations in light of a model of early childhood music learning and discussed them at length with the instructor.
Projects
ASC 232 (CSD 232): Students worked with a man with cerebral palsy who cannot walk or speak. He uses a wheelchair-portable computer-based communication system with synthetic voice output. The students phoneticized two Bob Dylan songs in their entirety and encoded duration and pitch for every syllable. They then prepared two computer files, one for each song, and helped the man load the two files into his wheelchair-portable computer. Finally they prepared a digitized form of the songs and prepared a CD and appropriate labels.
ENG 342: The student took the textbook and subject materials (study of Popular Culture in the US from 1954-64) and expanded it beyond those years as a follow-through interpretation of the Era's influence on the 1960's and 1970's, extending the roots of Popular Arts. His work included extensive research, interpretation, and a formal term paper.
Teaching & Education
LBS 490E: Students made a preliminary design of a college-level course on a topic related to our course, including naming the course, giving a course description (content and style), listing a minimum of 5 course topics and explaining/elaborating each. They then listed a minimum of 5 readings and stated for each why they were chosen. They designed two sample comprehensive final exam questions for the course and for each they gave the question, the logic behind the question (teaching or evaluative objectives), and the parameters for answering the questions.
MC 270: Team-taught (with two others) an H-Option seminar on the politics of the relationship between men and women. They read Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Machiavelli's Mandragola, and Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (and watched the Branagh film of the latter). Each student made two presentations.
SPN 320: The student worked with a Spanish monolingual tutee in an elementary school. She wrote a report on the experience from the pedagogical and linguistic point of view.
TE 401: Student analyzed the understanding of students as revealed in their answers to conceptual questions asked in CEM 141 and developed ideas about patterns that are significant for high school and college chemistry teaching.
Special Class Sessions
MC 387: Students participated in an Honors Seminar linked with MC 387 which met 8 times to discuss Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, and William Rubenstein, The Myth of Rescue. Seminar participants traveled to U of M in early April to hear Goldhagen speak about his book.
Faculty Supervisors
ANP 220: S. Bhaskaran
ANS 314: C. Ernst
ASC 232: J. B. Eulenberg
CJ 110: D. Payne
CSS 490: R. Harwood
EC 302: R. Pecchenino
ENG 342: J. Cash
LBS 119: R. Hamelink
LBS 490E: A. D. Dreger
LIN 291: J. S. Falk
MC 270: R. Zinman
MC 387: K. Waltzer
MUS 465: C. Taggart
PES 216: J. M. Foley
PLS 361: E. Duchosne
PSY 101: C. Sisk
SOC 215: C. Broman
SPN 320: A. Martinez-Arbelaiz
TE 401: C. W. Anderson
ZOL 384: J. H. Harding
