All departments and interdisciplinary programs offer Honors versions of their majors, which are coded as Honors Plans in the student record. All students in LSA may apply for admission to an Honors in the major, whether they have been in the College Honors Program in their first two years or not. Departments determine the criteria for admission to the Honors major and the requirements for completing it; departments also choose which students may be admitted to the Honors plan. Students will be required to have an overall cumulative GPA of 3.4 to graduate with Honors (this is an LSA requirement); they may embark on an Honors major before they have reached that threshold, but the minimum should be attainable by the time they graduate.
Once a student has completed the departmental requirements and has finished the thesis, the department needs to send a recommendation concerning the level of Honors to the Honors office. Departments have their own processes for determining the level of Honors; it is never the sole decision of an individual faculty member.
What if a student doesn’t meet the GPA threshold?
In some rare circumstances, departments may ask the Honors Academic Board to graduate with Honors a student whose cumulative GPA is below the required threshold, 3.4, at the time of graduation. The request should be made by the faculty advisors who know the student’s work and history best, but must be endorsed by the Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Chair of the Department. The letter(s) for this request should explain the student’s circumstances, describe the Honors work, and provide a justification for making an exception to the GPA requirement. The student may also write a statement, but the request must come from the department on his or her behalf. The request should be sent to Jacquelyn Turkovich at the time the Honors recommendation is sent.
