Requirements for Graduation in the Honors Program

The Honors Program in our College is structured rather flexibly. This can work to your advantage as a student, but it can also make it somewhat difficult for you to figure out just what's required in the program. Try reading this description. If this explanation isn't clear, contact Dean Rodgers (my e-mail address is given below).

Let's start with the bare-bones essentials.

The required elements to graduate in the Honors Program in the College of Arts and Sciences are:

  • Two Honors Seminars (all carry the number 399--for instance, MC 399 or CHM 399).
  • One Honors Colloquium (always numbered DAS 450).
  • A Senior Honors Thesis.

Simple, isn't it?

Of course, we hope you will take more honors courses than this, but these are the minimum requirements. Generally these three courses (two seminars and one colloquium) and the Senior Honors Thesis are taken and completed in the Sophomore, Junior and Senior years.

Now here come the complications and variations. If you enter the program as a Freshman, you must take Introduction to the Honors Program--a one-hour orientation course (DAS 110)--but you can be excused from taking this course if you have a course conflict. If you do not have two semesters of college credit in English composition, you should take Honors English I (ENGL 110--fall semesters only) and Honors English II (ENGL 125 -- spring semesters only). Under appropriate circumstances (for instance, if you enter our Honors Program after you have already had two semesters of English composition--at K-State or elsewhere) we can work our way around your not having taken Honors English here.

Beyond the courses that are actually required to graduate in the Honors Program, we strongly encourage you to take other courses that we offer for honors students. These we call honors sections of regular courses. For instance, Honors Introduction to the Humanities (offered through the English, History, Philosophy and Modern Language departments in the fall of each year and carrying the course number 297 in those departments) is a great course that only honors students can take. Is taking it required to graduate in our Honors Program? No. But taking it is a great experience. It is approved as University General Education (UGE) credit. It can meet distribution requirements as an elective course in the College. It could also serve as a writing-intensive course to cover a person's not having taken Honors English in our program (depending upon the individual circumstances).

Honors sections of regular courses are offered each semester and, in fact, we hope to offer more of these in the future than we have been able to do in the past. For instance, for the Fall 1999 semester, Short Story (ENGL 320), the most popular course in our English Department, is being offered in an honors section for the first time. Similarly, Introduction to Geology is being offered in an honors section for the first time. And several other honors sections of regular courses are available to you also.

If honors sections of regular courses are not required for graduation in the Honors Program, why should you take them? Because they represent special opportunities to study with other bright and dedicated students and to do so in a small class, frequently much smaller than the nonhonors sections of the same course. And our honors sections of regular courses can carry UGE credit and satisfy distribution requirements or electives for a degree from our College, so you can satisfy more than one requirement with one great course. Who could ask for a better deal?

Make sense? I hope so. If not, please contact me. Actually, you may contact me even if it does make sense. I'm always happy to hear from you individually.

Larry Rodgers
slwill@k-state.edu