Requirements
This section provides a brief overview of the requirements to graduate with University Honors. Staff in the Honors Program Advisement Center, 102 MSRB, (801) 422-5497, are available on a walk-in basis to answer questions about the program.
To graduate with University Honors, a student must be an admitted daytime student who maintains a 3.0 or higher GPA throughout the program and completes all of the requirements below or see requirements here. Students must earn a B or higher in Honors courses for Honors Program credit.
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Requirements: Leadership
Complete one of the following options:
Option 1: Complete 2 courses
- HONRS 310: Foundations of Interdisciplinary Leadership (1.0 credit)
- HONRS 390R: Honors Leadership Practicum (3.0 credits)
OR
Option 2: Complete 1 course
- HONRS 391R: Honors Student Leadership Council (4.0 credits, 2 semesters, by application only)
Requirements: Thesis
Honors Thesis
Complete an original research project or creative work that is mentored by a faculty member.
- Submit a Thesis Proposal
- Defend your Thesis and pass
- Publish your work or project after successfully defending your thesis, see published Honors theses here.
Thesis Funding
- Research: You may request up to $1200 in research funds from the Honors Program to support your research, if the funds serve a bona fide research purpose. Please work closely with your advisor to develop a budget, and specify how you will use Honors program funding in your thesis proposal. See Thesis Proposal guidelines for additional information.
- Culminating Experiences: Students presenting thesis research at academic conferences, or those seeking off-campus publication venues, may request up to $1000 in support funds for these culminating experiences. This requires a separate conference funding request form.
Thesis Proposal Samples
- Anthropology - Gendered Material Culture in Prehistoric Eurasian Archaeological
- Accounting - Auditing Companies with Poor Internal Control
- Advertisement - Comparing Expressions of Human Used in Memes by Russian and English Speakers
- Applied Statistics - Clustering Healthcare Costs by Disease
- Art - Expressing Distance through Architecture
- Art History - The Allegory of Good and Bad Government
- Bioinformatics - Nicotiana Attenuata, Predictors of Psychosocial and Physiological Distress in Colorectal Cancer Patients
- Biology - Does Negative Frequency-Dependent Selection Maintain Male Polymorphism in the Livebearing Fish Xenophallus Umbratilis?
- Business - The Effects of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Short-Term Volatility of Security Prices
- Chemical Engineering - Development and Validation of Molecular Dynamics Simulation for FLiNak
- Classical Studies - Telling The Story of a Forgotten Martyr: Step One
- Communication Disorders - Using Electropalatography to Analyze Intra-Speaker Variability in German L2 Fricative Production
- Communications - The Use of Mass Media in the Lives of Juvenile Delinquents
- Computer Engineering - Adaptable ICSHK with Irregular QAM Constellations, Deep Learning for Acceleration of Spectrally-Sensitive MRI
- Computer Science - Computationally Modeling the Trophic Cascade in Yellowstone National Park, Formal Languages for Objective Specification in Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning
- Dance - The Ballroom Bonus: A Qualitative and Journalistic Study of the Benefits of Ballroom Dance in Utah Valley Public Schools
- Economics - Effectiveness of Different Regime Types in Preserving Common Resources: Evidence from a Lab Experiment, The Price of Public Land: Elasticity of Demand Analysis of National Parks Entrance Fees
- Electrical Engineering - Increasing Isolation Between Closely Spaced Planar Tx/Rx Antennas
- Elementary Education - Transmitting Values of Bilingualism for Returnee Children in Rural Mexico
- English - Finding Scheherazade, Broadcasting the Search for Understanding: The Essay's Relationship with the Podcast
- Family Life - How Maternal Gatekeeping and Media Conflict Affect Media Monitoring in a Co-parental Context
- Finance - The Effects of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Short-Term Volatility of Security Prices
- Geography - Correlating NDVI to Forest Fires in British Columbia, Canada
- Graphic Design - Visualizing Cognitive Loads
- History - "The Paternal Care of a Patriot Legislature" - Legislative Instructions and the contested Boundaries of the Political Nation in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland
- Interdisciplanary Humanites - A Translation of and Reflection on "No Hay Isla Feliz"
- International Relations Thesis Proposal - Populism and Political Palimpest: France's Revolutionary Political Culture
- Landscape Management - Landscape Foundations A Practical & Technical Guide to Landscape Maintenance
- Linguistics - Accepting Konglish: Emerging Conceptions of Korean Linguistic Identity
- Manufacturing Engineering - Novel Methods for Composites Recycling via Pyrolysis
- Mathematics / ACME - Dynamic Coalescence as a Mathematical Model of Leadership and Empirical Evidence of the Value of Strategic Sacrifice, Using Group Affinity to Predict Community Formation in Social Networks
- Mechanical Engineering - Evolution of MG AZ31 Twin Activation with Strain: A Machine Learning Study, Perception of Speech and Song in Religious Music: A Neurological Approach, Development of a Mid-Fidelity Aerodynamics Model of a Blown Wing
- Media Arts - Passanger Seat and An Examination of Female Power in the Thriller
- Microbiology - In Silico Discovery of Influenza Polymerase Inhibitors
- Molecular Biology - Qualitative Analysis of Caregivers Receiving an Educational Intervention on RHD in Samoa
- Music - Sacred Sounds: A Compassionate Listening Guide to Musical Worship, A Fascination with Our Dead: Addressing the Discord Between Modern Music and Museum Culture
- Neuroscience - The Effect of Student Emotional Maturity on Their Perception of Test Question Fairness, Self Regulation, Threat Perception, and Perceived Parental Support: an fMRI Investigation of Children with ADHD, Sex Differences in Ethanol Modulation of Dopamine Release in the Mesolimbic Reward System
- Nursing - Student Perspectives on Working in Interdisciplinary Teams to Improve mHealth, A Descriptive Study of Male Victims of Sexual Assault
- Nutritional Science - College Students' Report of Canned Foods and Their Current Understanding
- Physiology and Developmental Biology - The Effect of Overexpression of IRF5 on B-Cell Inflamatory and Co-Stimulatory Activity
- Physics - Order in Chaos: An Algorithmic Approach to Flocking Behavior, Gamma-ray Bursts in Inhomogeneous Interstellar Media
- Political Science - The Effect of Belief of Victory on Third Party Vote Share: How Evan McMullin Actually Won Utah in 2016, Motivations behind China's Increased Involvement in International Peacekeeping Operations
- Portuguese - Pages of the Revolution: Symbolism in Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen's O Nome das Coisas
- Psychology - Oxytocin Genotypes and Social Affiliation: A Model of the Genetic Underpinnings behind Social Bonding
- Public Health - Program coordinators experiences with introducing parent-focused health lessons to a child-centered nutritional supplement program: An exploration of recent programmatic changes in Liahona Children's Foundation
- Sociology - Country-Level Analysis of Differences in Educational Achievement between East and Southeast Asia
- Spanish / Pre-Dental - The Limitations and Capabilities of Hispanics and Dentists in Improving Hispanic Oral Health in the U.S.
Requirements: Courses
Complete all of the following with a grade of B or higher:
- HONRS 110 (.5 credits): Intro to the Honors Experience
- HONRS 120 (2.0 credits): Interdisciplinary Intro
- HONRS 22x (3.0 credits each): Any three Unexpected Connections courses
- HONRS 320 (3.0 credits): Great Questions Essay Tutorial (NOT a Thesis Class)
- HONRS 310/390R or 391R (4.0 credits total): Leadership Development Experience (effective F2020)
- HONRS 499R (3.0 credits): Thesis (effective F2020)
Select a course to see current topics, course descriptions, and GE categories
HONRS 110: Intro to the Honors Experience
Section 1
Vika Filimoeatu/Honors Advisors
This course provides a general introduction to the Honors Program and the Honors community. Students will become familiar with program requirements, aims, opportunities, and culture through presentations, activities, and mentored advisement and will create an academic plan toward graduation with University Honors. This course may be taken concurrently with HONRS 120.
HONRS 120: Interdisciplinary Intro
Sections 1-12
Spencer Magleby/Undergraduate Teaching Fellows
This course introduces the Honors interdisciplinary curriculum. In this course, students learn to consider big or “great questions,” formulate and evaluate good research questions, and explore different disciplinary approaches to these questions through guest lecture and discussion. Students learn to identify various thinking patterns, and begin to explore interdisciplinary approaches to learning (preparation for HONRS Unexpected Connections sequence). This course may be taken concurrently with HONRS 110 and is a prerequisite for all other Honors courses that follow.
HONRS 220 Unexpected Connections: Biology-Letters
Section 001: “Literature and Health”
John Talbot/Janelle Macintosh
What if you flipped the traditional job descriptions?: “Doctors and nurses tell stories; poets and writers heal.” That would be one way of getting at what this course is about – discovering the surprising connections between health and literature, biology and culture. We’ll consider health in its physical, social, and mental aspects. We’ll explore not only the biological principles of health, disease, and death, but also how cultural meanings are created. We’ll question the relation between health and death. Through readings of literary texts – from ancient scripture to medieval epic to modern science fiction – we’ll discover how questions of health, healing, and death manifest themselves in culture, literary art, and the very language itself.
Section 002: “Being Mortal: The Search for the Good Life"
Wade Hollingshaus/Steve Wood
"Being Mortal" centers on the concept of life—where life is represented both through the discipline(s) of science and also through the disciplines of literature and art. With this in mind, we have chosen to frame the course in terms of two different but related notions: “life examined” and “the examined life.” The two are complementary, but there is also tension between them. We will spend this semester exploring their complementarity and their tension. Our ultimate endeavor in this is to come to a better understanding of what it means to live the “good life.”
HONRS 223 Unexpected Connections: Physical Science-Letters
Section 001: “Transcendent Skies: Literature and Astronomy”
Denise Stephens/Aaron Eastley
From time immemorial people have been inspired by the heavens. We have studied them, imagined and ordered them as constellations, sought the divine through them, and made them metaphors in our art. This course combines Physical Science and Letters, focusing on astronomy and the influence of the heavens on writers and readers from classical antiquity to the present. On the literary front, we will inquire into the many ways in which texts both affect and connect us. We will consider literary works spanning from Greek and Roman classics to Shakespeare, and give careful attention to Tennyson’s In Memoriam and C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. On the astronomy front, we will explore how our views of science have changed. What started out as empirical observations led to physical laws where outcomes could be predicted and unseen worlds could be discovered. But as science grew and developed, small deviations from these physical laws forced us to reevaluate the unseen world and accept that science is driven by uncertainty, and at the smallest and largest scales science is still an exploration of the unknown and a desire to explain what we cannot know. This will be a hands-on, experiential, fun and deeply intellectually engaging course. We will meet primarily in the BYU planetarium, personally make some of the most famous observations first made by people like Galileo, and hope (COVID conditions permitting) to take field trips to the observatory on West Mountain and down to southern Utah, and read books like Michael Ward’s The Narnia Code and Alan Lightman’s Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine.
Section 002: “Finding Truth: Disagreement and Engagement in a Complex World”
Ryan Christensen/Karl Warnick
Most of the information that informs our beliefs comes second-hand, and with the world growing more complex, identifying trustworthy authority is becoming ever more important. But how do we know what sources to trust? Can there be equally valid authorities that disagree? And how do we live in a society filled with disagreement and uncertainty? We will consider these questions through wide-ranging case studies from science and philosophy -- including free will versus determinism, the existence of God, climate change and global warming, bioethics and the morality of mandated vaccination, and machine learning and artificial intelligence in everyday life. The goal is to help students find solid footing in a polarized world where each of us has both blind spots and valuable perspectives to contribute as we engage in critical discussions and serve in our communities and vital institutions.
HONRS 226 Unexpected Connections: Social Science-Letters
Section 001: "What is Normal? Exploring Definitions and Behavior through Psychology and Literature"
Rex Nielson/Mikle South
HONRS 227 Unexpected Connections: Social Science-Arts
Section 001: “The Comedy of Life: Exploring Social Structures through Humor.”
Kerry Soper/Kurt Sandholtz
This interdisciplinary course explores how humor and comedy emerge from--and are made resonant through—social structure, including class hierarchies, gender relations, and other unspoken cultural codes/rules.
Section 002 & 003: “Race and Music”
Jacob Rugh/Luke Howard
This course is a dialogue between two disciplines of study, the sociology of race and the history of music. Students will learn using multiple modes of inquiry across a variety of learning activities and multimedia. Course content will be presented as a dialogue between race and music, mainly, but not exclusively, in the US context. The course will build on parallel conceptual and theoretical foundations of race and music, then followed by increasing intertwining of race and music. Major topics covered will include the color line in society and the sonic color line in music, cultural appropriation of Native symbols and of racialized musical genres, the tension between segregation, assimilation, and antiracism in society and music, and questions of racial identity American society and its music. We will interrogate the question of what it means to be American in a racial and musical context, and the transition from racial assimilation to multicultural pluralism. The semester will culminate by summarizing both race in music, and the music of race--the historical rhythm of racial progress and regress, and where we go from here.
HONRS 290R Unexpected Connections: Physical Science-Arts
Section 001: “Scale and Perspective in the Arts and Physical Sciences”
Matt Bekker/Dean Duncan
STEM subjects are quite distinct from the Humanities, in all sorts of important ways. This fact has led, quite properly and productively, to all sorts of different conversations, explorations and even disciplines. That said, we can, we do get carried away with this idea of the two brain-sides. Sometimes we admire each other from afar, but never make much of an effort to actually communicate, or visit together. But not in this class! Scale and Perspective in the Arts and the Physical Sciences is committed to the notion that these two great disciplinary traditions have all sorts of things to say to and learn from each other. We will consider an exhilarating array of things relating to proportion and point of view. Size and subjectivity inform our understanding of physics and painting, geography and narrative, climate and the 10 Commandments. Plus, obviously, we’ll blow stuff up and watch movies!
HONRS 320: Great Questions Essay Tutorial
Sections 1-3
Julie C. Radle/Graduate Teaching Fellows
This capstone to the Honors Program coursework provides group and individual instruction in researching and writing the Great Question Essay (NOT the Honors Thesis). This essay is interdisciplinary in its approach to an approved “big or “great” question of the student’s choice. Students enrolled in the course will spend most of their time researching and drafting the essay, and will also meet regularly with the instructor and peers for consultation, advisement and direction. Course instruction focuses on developing a great question, applying an interdisciplinary research approach using empirical, behavioral, and interpretive thinking patterns, and understanding the essay genre and style of writing this requirement hopes to foster.
Deadlines
Don't Stress—Plan Ahead!
Select your graduation to view the applicable deadlines. Click a specific event for more information.
Event | Deadline |
---|---|
Deadline to Apply for Graduation | September 15 |
Great Question Essay (HONRS 320) | After completing Unexpected Connection courses |
Thesis Proposal Submitted | May 1, 2020 |
Leadership Development Experience | Semester following the completion of the experience or November 13 |
Thesis Defense Information Form | November 13 |
Submit Preliminary Grad Names to University | November 17* |
Last Day for Thesis Defense | December 11 |
Last Day to Submit Thesis Submission Form | December 14 |
Thesis Poster | December 14 |
Thesis Final PDF | December 18 |
Thesis Publication (Poster, Printed & ScholarsArchive) |
December 18 |
Graduation Meeting | |
Exit Survey | December 11 |
Honors Graduation Ceremony | April 22, 2021 |
University Graduation Date | December 17 |
Last Day to Submit Final Grad Names to University | December 28* |
*University Deadline
Graduating in December 2020
Event | Deadline |
---|---|
Deadline to Apply for Graduation | November 15, 2020 |
Great Question Essay (HONRS 320) | After completing Unexpected Connection courses. |
Thesis Proposal Submitted | September 25, 2020 |
Thesis Poster | April 1 |
Leadership Development Experience | Semester following the completion of the Leadership experience or February 19 |
Thesis Defense Information Form | February 19 |
Last Day for Thesis Defense | March 12 |
Last Day to Submit Thesis Submission Form | March 15 |
Submit Preliminary Grad Names to University | March 17* |
Thesis Final PDF | March 19 |
Thesis Publication (Poster, Printed & ScholarsArchive) |
March 19 |
Graduation Meeting | March 29 - April 2 |
Exit Survey | April 16 (prior to picking up your graduation regalia) |
Honors Graduation Ceremony | April 22 |
University Graduation Date | April 22 |
Last Day to Submit Final Grad Names to University | April 26* |
*University Deadline
Graduating in April 2021
Event | Deadline |
---|---|
Deadline to Apply for Graduation | February 15 |
Great Question Essay (HONRS 320) | After completing Unexpected Connection courses |
Thesis Proposal Submitted | November 6, 2020 |
Thesis Poster | June 18 |
Leadership Development Experience | Semester following the completion of the Leadership experience or May 14 |
Thesis Defense Information Form | May 14 |
Submit Preliminary Grad Names to University | May 17* |
Last Day for Thesis Defense | June 11 |
Last Day to Submit Thesis Submission Form | June 11 |
Thesis Final PDF | June 18 |
Thesis Publication (Poster, Printed & ScholarsArchive) |
June 18 |
Graduation Meeting | |
Exit Survey | June 11 |
Honors Graduation Ceremony | April 22 |
University Graduation Date | June 17 |
Last Day to Submit Final Grad Names to University | June 17* |
*University Deadline
Graduating in June 2021
Event | Deadline |
---|---|
Deadline to Apply for Graduation | February 15 |
Great Question Essay HONRS 320 | After completing Unexpected Connection courses |
Thesis Proposal Submitted | January 15, 2021 |
Thesis Poster | August 6 |
Leadership Development Experience | Semester following the completion of the experience or July 3. |
Thesis Defense Information Form | July 2 |
Submit Preliminary Grad Names to University | July 12* |
Last Day for Thesis Defense | July 30 |
Last Day to Submit Thesis Submission Form | July 31 |
Thesis Final PDF | August 6 |
Thesis Publication (Poster, Printed & ScholarsArchive) |
August 6 |
Graduation Meeting | |
Exit Survey | August 6 |
Honors Graduation Ceremony | April 22, 2021 |
University Graduation Date | August 12 |
Last Day to Submit Final Names to University | August 12* |
* University Deadline
Graduating in August 2021
Note: Honors Program deadlines are firm. Students submitting materials after these deadlines will be considered for graduation the following semester. Honors students may only extend graduation by one semester beyond completion of their major and other university requirements for the purpose of completing Honors requirements. Individual departments may have earlier thesis deadlines than our Program deadlines. Be sure to check with your faculty thesis advisor or Honors Coordinator.
Department Coordinators
The Honors Coordinator serves as the liaison between the Honors Program and students in the various disciplines across campus. They refer students to possible mentors, help identify faculty experts in their discipline, inform students of research opportunities, and can assist students in identifying possible thesis topics.
Coordinators provide department-specific guidelines for the Honors Thesis Proposal, and are a participating member of the thesis committee from the proposal stage through to the defense. Check the list of department coordinators to find yours.