Honors Contract Instructions

An honors contract is a mechanism for adding an honors dimension to a course or section that is not already an honors course. The contract is an agreement between the individual student and the professor in the class for which honors credit is desired. This agreement identifies a project that the student will complete under the faculty member's supervision.

Instructions for Contract Courses

Find a mentor who is qualified to work with Honors Contracts
1. Who may supervise an honors contract? Honors contracts may be undertaken in courses taught by persons holding clinical track, tenured or tenure-track faculty appointments. Graduate students and teaching assistants are not allowed to oversee contracts.
2. Upon recommendation by a department head and with approval of the Dean of the Honors College, visiting or adjunct faculty at the rank of visiting, or adjunct, and other persons holding terminal degrees appropriate to the discipline may supervise honors contracts.
3. Petitions for exception to this policy may be considered by the University Honors Council and University Student Honors Council only in those cases, verified by the student’s honors advisor, in which it is not possible for the student to maintain active participant status in the Honors College by other means.
Meet with the mentor and agree upon the work that you will do for the contract

After you find a professor to work with, discuss your contract project and project due date with him/her/them.

Fill out the Honors contract form found here and submit it to the Honors College by the end of the second week of classes for the spring or fall term (ASAP for the summer session - end of first week at the latest).

A full project description (including number of pages, if writing a paper) and due date are required in order to fill out the contract form.

(see here for information for instructors).
After you submit your honors contract form

Once you fill out and submit the contract form, your professor will receive an email asking for his/her/their approval. Once that is received, the contract will be emailed to the honors director of your professor’s college for final approval.

If you have a non-tenured professor overseeing your contract (such as an adjunct or visiting professor, or someone holding a terminal degree in his/her respective field), the professor’s department head will also receive an email asking for approval.

You should receive an email after every step of the approval process (automatically generated by the system we use for contracts). If your contract is rejected at any stage in the approval process, it is your responsibility to talk to your professor and make corrections, then submit a revised contract. You and/or your professor will be notified regarding which corrections need to be made.

Although the honors contract does not affect the student's grade in the course, in order to receive honors credit for the course the student must earn a grade of "A" or "B" in the course in addition to completing the contract project in a satisfactory manner. Up to 9 hours of honors contract credit may be used to fulfill the requirements for the General Honors Award (up to 12 hours, if necessary, with permission of the Honors College Dean). Honors contracts are frequently used to meet a portion of the Departmental or College Honors Award requirements.

Honors contracts need to be approved by the College Honors Director of the instructor's (not the student's) college. For the list of College Honors Directors, click here.

Ready to submit? The Honors contract form is available here. Contracts must be filed with The Honors College by the end of the second week of the semester.

RECORDING HONORS CONTRACT CREDIT ON YOUR TRANSCRIPT

Certification of final status of the honors contract will be completed by the faculty member when course grades are submitted electronically.