August 10, 2026
The CPSY department has roughly 25 full-time faculty in it (and trust me, we're trying to hire more!) There are about 20 additional faculty members who are either research faculty in the department or have secondary or affiliate appointments. When you are thinking about honors, this is the first group of people whom you should consider as a possible advisor. Here's the website with all of these people. If you declare honors with any of these individuals and they agree, you're all set. You just have to complete the requirements. And the first requirement is to submit a proposal for honors. This post is mostly about how we evaluate those proposals. This includes the projects themselves, as well as advisors for the projects, when they are outside of the department.
(Quick side note: When you declare honors, you have to have a second reader, regardless of who your primary sponsor is. If your primary sponsor is outside of the CPSY department, you have to request one of the 25 full-time faculty as the second reader, so it's really important to be familiar with this first group).
(Another quick side note: This post mostly concerns honors declarations in Psychology, Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience. BDS declarations are *slightly* different, and I encourage you to talk with the honors advisor or the BDS advisor prior to submitting your application)
So, that's about 45 individuals who all run research groups from which to choose. Sounds like a lot, right?
The challenge is that the four concentrations housed in the CPSY department - Psychology, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Behavioral Decision Sciences - are broadly defined. There are faculty members in lots of other departments around Brown that could supervise a thesis. Indeed, many students start working in labs or research groups in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior or the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, or departments like Economics, Sociology, or even Philosophy. And many of those faculty are not listed on the website. So, it's possible that you have created and maintained a relationship with a faculty member from another department outside of CPSY. Let's say that you want that person to be your thesis advisor. And let's say that person agrees. What do you do next?
Well, in the early part of your Semester 7, you declare honors. This involves filling out a form (link to follow - note the form for the 26-27 AY is not ready yet), which both you and your advisor have to sign. If the advisor is not listed on that website, then the advisor has to fill out a little more information, and provide us with an up-to-date CV (which EVERY faculty member at Brown has, don't worry about asking for it. It is not an imposition). This gets submitted to the honors advisor and reviewed by the Departmental Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (which I refer to as the "Duck" - DUCC). This is important. There's isn't one person evaluating your honors application. There's a committee of 5-6 faculty and usually one graduate student.
(Another quick side note: I chaired the DUCC for many years. NO ONE among my colleagues likes that this committee is referred to as "the Duck" other than me. I think it's funny. One of my colleagues thinks I'm childish. OK. Fine. What do you want? I play with little kids for my research).
The DUCC meets on a schedule, which is set in advance, and independent of the date honors declarations are due. So, some years, they happen in the same week. Other years, there up to a 2-week period between honors applications being due and the next DUCC meeting. And for the record, right now, I have no idea when the DUCC is going to meet in 2026-2027 AY, and I also haven't yet determined when honors applications will be due (other than sometime in September). So, this means that when you submit your honors application you have to wait. And waiting is hard. (Another side note - I reread that entry, and promised a Part 2 about the waiting game - OK, that's coming next). It is possible that you might not be accepted into the honors program until October. Or it is possible that you might get an email from me saying that your advisor never responded to emails from the DUCC, and because of that you're not accepted at this moment in time. That doesn't mean you won't be accepted, but it does mean that you might want to think about your choice of advisors.
So, what happens after you submit a proposal. What does the DUCC do? Here are the questions that we ask when we are evaluating your proposal:
1) Does your proposed advisor have the word "Postdoctoral" in their title?
2) Does your proposed advisor have the word "Clinical" in their title?
3) Does your proposed advisor have the word "Visiting" in their title?
4) Does your proposed advisor have a Brown affiliation?
If the answer to questions 1-3 is Yes, or the answer to question 4 is No, then we will not approve the proposal. There are no exceptions. This is also true for second readers, by the way. Your second reader can't be a postdoc or have any of these other titles. They also can't be a graduate student (i.e., someone who doesn't yet have a Ph.D.). Moreover, these individuals (i.e., the primary sponsor and second reader) must hold these titles for the entirety of your thesis experience (i.e., both semesters).
Note, soon (perhaps sometime during the 2026-2027 academic year), a lot of titles are going to change. I don't have all the details yet, but many people are going to become "Research Specialists", "Research Scholars" and "Research Scientists". (WHERE do they come up with these titles????). I don't know the difference among these titles yet (I'll learn about during the Fall semester). My guess is that some will and others will not be eligible to advise thesis projects.
OK, so far, so good?
5) Is your proposed advisor on sabbatical either (or both) semesters?
This isn't a deal breaker, but if your proposed advisor is on sabbatical both semesters, and particularly is away from Brown during that time, that will be a concern and your proposal could be rejected. You should ask your advisor whether they will be on sabbatical.
OK, keep going:
6) Does your proposed advisor already have a CPSY1980 section number?
How do I find this out? There's an easy way to tell: Go to CAB and type in the advisor's name into the next semester of classes (so, for right now, that would be Fall 2026). If CPSY1980 comes up, they have a section. If is doesn't, they do not.
If they do have a section number, then the DUCC will consider the proposal more favorably because we know that person has advised thesis projects in the past. If they don't, again, it's not a deal breaker (for example, they could be new), but we will talk about it. I do want to say that if you have an advisor outside the department, and that person is on sabbatical during some or all of your thesis experience, the application is probably going to be denied. It would require really special circumstances for it to be approved.
7) Who is your second reader?
It used to be that second readers were assigned. Now (starting in 2025), the student is responsible for stating who their second reader is. This person does not have to be an expert in the topic, but just willing to read and give feedback on the thesis in the spring. Obviously, meeting with the second reader to garner feedback on design, litearture, and construction, is important and provides students with important discussion that is part of the scientific process.
It is up to the student to reach out to a second reader to get them to agree before the thesis application is due. We strongly encourage students to email potential second readers early in the Fall semester, or even the semester before, to make sure that they are able to serve.
If your primary sponsor is not a primary faculty member in CPSY, your second reader must be one of the primary faculty in CPSY. There are no exceptions to this rule.
If your primary sponsor is a primary faculty member in CPSY, your second reader can be anyone from Brown, although the same rules as described in #1-4 still apply (no postdocs, visiting professors, adjuncts, graduate students, etc.)
And now the important questions:
8) Is the project related to the concentration? How will it advance knowledge in the concentration?
9) Does the advisor have the expertise to advise in the concentration?
10) What kind of data analysis will you do?
11) Is the project feasible?
Please try to answer these questions in your application. The last two questions (#10-11) are critical. If the answer is "I won't do any analysis" or "I don't know", the proposal is probably going to be rejected. The former means that the project is unacceptable, and the latter means that you're not prepared to conduct the thesis (Remember, you will have to have taken CPSY0900 and CPSY1900* to be accepted into the program). Also, your project has to be conductible in a reasonable time course by you. If you don't have IRB approval, you have to get it (that could take months). If you need time or resources to collect data, and your sponsor doesn't have either, that will be problematic (and probably preventative). Remember, honors projects can not be whatever you want - they have to be negotiated with a sponsor, a second reader, the honors advisor, and approved by a group of faculty. As the honors advisor, I will do my very best to advise you about what is and is not feasible in the given time period. For example, developmental studies take a really long time - usually it's best to start the summer before and negotiate the project with a sponsor who has experience (and the IRB approval, and the expertise) to conduct that kind of work. fMRI studies (or anything that involves imagine or phyiosology) are expensive (and time consuming), and if you don't have access to a lab with those resources, then it's probably not going to be something you can propose.
*There are a lot of students who put off taking CPSY1900 until semester 7, and declare honors taking it concurrently. This might change. Possibly as soon as AY 27-28.
OK. That's the process. Yes, this is a long entry. Yes, there are a lot of rules. Please remember that we are human beings, and you can talk with us (that's what office hours are for), and if there are concerns, we will talk with you about them.
But if there are a lot of concerns with the application - like you don't have good answers to questions 8-11 - maybe honors isn't right for you. Again, go back to the last entry about why people might want to engage in the honors program. Not having good answers to questions 8-11 usually correlates with the bad reason for wanting honors in the first place. And perhaps other kinds of capstone experiences would be the better way to go.