DCD Honors Track
Talented undergraduates have the option to pursue an Honors track. Honors students will be required to take 18 credit hours of courses that will satisfy the Liberal Studies Honors Requirements as well as departmental requirements for Honors in the Major. Students interested in the Honors Program must apply to the university. You may want to peruse FAQs about the Honors Program. To see more information about the department requirements for the Honors Track, please see the information sheet below.
Honors in the Major
Students completing Honors in the Major conduct a thesis project under the guidance of a faculty member of your choice and an oversight committee. During the time that you are working on your thesis, you'll be registered for 6-9 hours of 4000-level thesis credit, and upon completion of your work you will orally defend your written report in a meeting with your committee.
Students must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.200 to complete Honors in the Major. In our department, most students work on their proposals in the Spring or Summer of their Junior Year and complete their research and written report in their Senior year.
You must adhere to strict deadlines to complete the honors thesis. Information can be found on the Honors in the Major website.
Other Research Opportunities
If you do not meet the minimum requirements for honors in the major, consider approaching a faculty member to work on a Directed Independent Study with you. Although this option does not allow for graduating "With Honors," it does give you the opportunity to work closely with a faculty member, and to do an original research project as an undergraduate.
Faculty members and doctoral students often are seeking volunteers to help with their research. Those experiences might involve clinical or laboratory work. For example, volunteers might help with testing participants, collecting observational data, scoring tests or coding data, summarizing and entering data for analyses, creating graphs, etc.