Co-curricular Experiences

General Guidelines

Many forms of campus participation have value, and we encourage UHP students to involve themselves in such activities. However, in the UHP curriculum we emphasize experiences that are close complements to academic and scholarly development. Eligible experiences should require you to intentionally reference and integrate knowledge from your curriculum in an applied fashion and involve active accountability through supervision, mentorship, instruction, etc.

Thus, eligible co-curricular experiences do not include routine participation or leadership in campus clubs or “student life” activities.

Record experiences by completing the Co-Curricular Experience form in Canvas.
Complete the form upon completion of the experience.
One kind of experience may be repeated. For example, a student might satisfy the "Experience" requirement through three seasons of debate team participation, three undergraduate research experiences, etc.
An experience already required by your declared major may only be counted if an additional enrichment and/or intellectual product is approved.
Don't know if something will count? Think it should, but it seems to fall outside our list? Please consult with the UHP staff as soon as possible.

Undergraduate Research

Undergraduate research is intrinsically valuable, requiring students to integrate information from a variety of sources in order to formulate both questions and strategies for answering those questions. It also exposes students to skills and techniques that they might employ in their professional futures.

If you are earning academic credit for undergraduate research involvement, we would prefer that be applied under the "Courses" requirement and will count those credits automatically (you don't fill out a contract of any kind in that instance).

If you choose to participate in research but will not enroll for academic credits for that experience (or will enroll, but for a zero-credit option) you should create a co-curricular experience contract to document your involvement for the UHP.

We want each requirement area to be filled by distinct experiences, so a single experience cannot be counted in both the "Courses" and "Experiences" categories. In addition, research involvement devoted to the completion of the Honors Project may not also be applied in another requirement area. However, two distinct timeframes of research experience, even if they are working in the same lab, can be applied in different areas.

Students may satisfy an “Experience” requirement by completing a defined undergraduate research project. You can also satisfy one of the three “Experience” requirements by participating in an ongoing project for a full semester or summer (100 hours minumum). When you fill out the form, make sure and communicate the duration of your involvement along with a substantive description of what you did.

Three distinct research projects, or three distinct semesters of undergraduate research experience, may be used to satisfy all three “Experience” requirements. Research experiences for academic credit can satisfy "Experience" requirements, if other Honors courses have already satisfied your "Courses" requirement.

Instructional/Tutoring Experiences

The act of helping other students learn requires a level of synthesis that builds a greater understanding of and appreciation for the subject at hand while simultaneously developing a number of presentational, and analytical skills.

Several types of university employment related to teaching and instruction may be counted in the “Experience” category:

Teaching Assistants (for any for-credit class). This includes Learning Assistants for CAT Communities, LEAD 212 Class Leaders and CAPD Peer Educators.
Writing Center Peer Tutors
Tutors employed by an official university unit. To list a few examples: Educational Supportive Services, Scholars Assisting Scholars, Chemistry Help Room, and K-State Athletics
Work as private tutor. In this instance, the work must be verifiable and substantial, both in terms of hours worked and sustained engagement with the subject matter (at least 100 hours total). If the number of hours per week is small, you may count a longer term of participation in order to establish a meaningful experience.

International Experiences

Internationalization is an overarching goal of Kansas State University and a potentially invaluable addition to the breadth of perspective and range of competencies that students can apply to all aspects of their education.

Study Abroad

Any international experience that bears academic credit may count, so long as credit is awarded by K-State or accepted as transfer credit once successfully completed. Students completing two semesters abroad, or a semester and a summer abroad, will be considered as satisfying two experiences, even if both terms take place in the same host country. Note that a study abroad experience may serve as the experiential basis for an Honors Project (with prior approval) but that a study abroad experience may not satisfy one of the three “Experience” requirements if it is used as the basis for an Honors Project.

Service Abroad

International Service Teams participation through the Staley School of Leadership may count as an eligible experience. External opportunities also exist for international service. Those may be contracted provided that they clearly connect to your academic and professional focus and can be responsibly verified.

Internships

Internships demand that students apply knowledge from their curriculums in a real-world setting, so much so that many employers will only consider interns who have completed some portion of their undergraduate education and/or certain courses. Thus, internships are an important complement to and application of what a student learns in the classroom. The range of potential internships makes generalization difficult. However, we can establish some general parameters.

Our definition of internships includes professionally relevant work experiences, paid or unpaid, whether or not you are formally assigned the title of "intern" as you do that work.
Students should be able to articulate the relevance of the work experience to their academic studies and to their aspirations.
Eligible internships should entail at least 100 total hours of activity regardless of the timeframe (summer/semester/year).
We do not count "shadowing" experiences as internships.

An internship may serve as the experiential basis for an Honors Project (with prior approval) but an internship may not satisfy one of the three “Experience” requirements if it is used as the basis for the Honors Project.

Academic Competition Teams

Kansas State University has many academic competition teams that require the integrative application of what students have learned in multiple classroom settings. A full season of participation on a competition team will count as a co-curricular experience under three conditions:

Team participation requires meaningful preparation and/or practice prior to the competition, at least equivalent to the time expended for a demanding one-credit hour course. We intend to exclude competitions that require little advance preparation.
Team sponsors/coaches will verify full and meaningful participation throughout the season.
Participation should include at least one tournament or multi-institution event. In some kinds of competitions, “full participation” may require more than one event.

Participation on NCAA or intramural sports teams, or related activities such as marching band or cheerleading, cannot satisfy this requirement.

Additional Courses

While we hope that students will view the “Experience” requirement as encouragement to seek out involvement and build their resumes, we also want to affirm the value of cultivating intellectual curiosity through the pursuit of additional Honors coursework.

Thus, students may also choose to satisfy one or more of the three “Experience” requirements with additional Honors courses (any course that would count in our "Courses" requirement area) once the "Courses" requirement has been fully satisfied.