Honors Program Courses
The Honors Program strives to challenge its students and, with help from esteemed faculty, it's able to combine innovative interdisciplinary topics into one class. SVSU offers these classes only once per year and they take place during each fall semester. The 192, 292 and 392 courses are the only classes that all of the Honors Program students take together. The final course, Honors 492, is an independent project that students complete under the guidance of a faculty adviser.
Some students, including transfer students, may be given special permission by the Honors Program Chair to take fewer than four Honors Program courses. However, an Honors Program Thesis must be completed by all students who wish to graduate from the Honors Program.
Course Outcomes
HON 192: Honors I (3 Credits)
This course will be taken by all incoming Honors Program freshmen in their first semester at SVSU. It will cover seminal texts across the disciplines and enrich students’ academic experience in General Education.
Students will be able to:
- Grasp the ways in which one or more academic disciplines came to develop its methods, assumptions and knowledge base.
- Write at least 5,000 words of formal and informal writing on topics related to the understanding of a discipline, its ideas and concepts, its place in the university and its contribution.
- Read college-level essays from a particular discipline(s) both for content and for a metacognitive understanding of disciplinary discourse(s).
HON 292: Honors II (3 Credits)
This is an interdisciplinary seminar on a topic chosen by the instructor and approved by the Honors Program Chair.
Students will be able to:
- Engage with a topic from two or more disciplinary perspectives.
- Understand how and why the approaches of different disciplines on the topic exist and why they are useful.
- Produce a short research project of at least seven pages, alone or in a group, that looks at a topic and employs basic foundational concepts within a discipline.
- Write at least 7,000 words of both formal and informal writing.
- Produce a poster and be able to talk to people about the display of their research findings.
HON 392: Honors III (3 Credits)
This is an interdisciplinary seminar on a topic chosen by the instructor and approved by the Honors Program Chair. In addition, this course includes a research component that enables a student to prepare for their Honors Program Thesis proposals.
Students will be able to:
- Focus on a project topic that has interdisciplinary appeal.
- Produce a 15 to 20 page research paper, using databases, primary research, scholarly books and articles.
- Demonstrate the ability to create a research agenda by doing such things as writing a proposal, developing a timeline, appropriately broadening or narrowing a topic and etc.
- Engage in class and small group discussions to advance one's understanding of how to manage research projects.
HON 492: Honors Thesis (3 Credits)
This is an independent study in which students prepare for their Honors Program Thesis under the supervision of a faculty mentor.
Students will be able to:
- Write a 30 page paper on a research topic that is at the level of a first-year graduate student.
- Give a 45 minute presentation to an audience of students, faculty and administrators followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers at the level of a first-year graduate student.
CONTACT US.
Dr. Elizabeth Rich,
Honors Program Chair
Science East 164
rich@svsu.edu
(989) 964-4317
Programs of Distinction
Wickes Hall 230H
bjthoma1@svsu.edu
(989) 964-7320
Cathy Davis, Administrative Secretary
Science East 260
cldavis@svsu.edu
(989) 964-4110