Departmental Honors

  • Students are invited to the program if they qualify
    • Credit hours in the proper range
    • GPA of at least 3.6
  • In order to join, students must complete a Department of Biological Sciences Honors Program Registration Form. Once the completed form is received, they are automatically put into the program. There is not an email verifying this.
  • Students in the program must complete three research classes: BSC 497, BSC 498, and BSC 499. They will need to find a research mentor and develop a project that will last for 2 semesters (BSC 497 and BSC 498).  After completing BSC 498, they will take BSC 499, a seated 1 credit class to polish off their presentation skills and their thesis.
    • Students are registered for BSC 497. Here is the contract so that you can share it with students as needed.
      • Upon successful completion of BSC 497, students are enrolled in BSC 498. Upon successful completion of BSC 498, students are enrolled in BSC 499.
  • Students must also complete at least 8 credit hours of honors level courses with a biological focus at the 300 level or higher. There are lots of courses where they can receive honors credit.  Here is a list of pre–approved courses, but others may qualify. The honors course can be an honors section of a seated course, a faculty initiated honors project within the course or a student initiated honors project. For the latter two, a contract must be submitted to the University Honors Program using their forms.
    • Faculty Initiated Honors means that the instructor presents the requirements to interested students and sends a contract with the names and IDs of the students to the University Honors Program. At the end of the semester, the instructor verifies that the requirements were met. Students must earn at least a grade of B- in the course in addition to meeting the Honors requirements to obtain honors credit.
    • For the Student Initiated Honors, the student and instructor agree on a project and the student completes the paperwork and sends it to the University Honors Program. Again, the student must earn at least a B- in the course and the instructor will verify the grade and that the honors requirements were met with the University Honors Program at the end of the semester.
  • Students who receive honors credit for a class will have a statement on their transcript that they met the Honors requirements under that class on the transcript. This is probably the easiest place for you to look to see if they are meeting their honors class requirements.

 

Questions? Contact Dr. Brian Langerhans at langerhans@ncsu.edu.