The Honors Senior Project is similar to, but different from a capstone essay or the Honors track within a major.  (Note, lots of majors have their own honors thesis program and that might be right for you.  Talk to the Honors staff about options.)

The Honors Senior Project is specifically intended to be interdisciplinary and give students the chance to pull together the different strands from their majors and minors, their courses in the sciences and the humanities, education and business, into one carefully conceived and deeply researched project.  For instance, a double major in English and Theater might decide to stage a production dramatizing and updating a poem about love from the Middle Ages.  A GUS and Biology double major might do a project about environmental change and energy efficient public toilets.  Or a Political Science major might produce a podcast on voter-turn-out efforts in suburban counties in Presidential elections. 

With this interdisciplinarity in mind, the final product can, in other words, be a carefully written (and re-written) paper with lots of footnotes, a film, a podcast, or whatever makes sense for your project and your intellectual interests--there is no one-size-fits-all approach! Read on to learn more about the types of Senior Projects you can create.

The Honors Senior Project is designed for Honors students who want to complete an advanced research project (which may take lots of different forms) in addition to their other Honors Program requirements. (See below, you can get for one upper-level honors class.) Students will work closely with the Honors Academic Chair, a faculty mentor, and a second reader to research, write, revise, create, and present their work prior to graduation. Your faculty mentor will play a key role in your success with this project.   

Of course, your mentor will help with your project, but so will the Honors Senior Project Program.  It is structured as a step-by-step process to get you on the right track to start your project and to keep you on the right path while you do your research and think of how to share your results.  During the Spring Semester (typically of your junior year), you will enroll in a class that will meet once a week and help you to shape your topic, fashion a research question, build an extensive bibliography, think about methods, and create a research design.  Over the summer, students can do additional reading and research.  During the fall semester, students will write up/film/stage their results.  Along the way, there will be plenty of opportunities to share your work and get engaged feedback and participate in research/writing accountability groups.