To ensure that honors students are on track with their work, we require an hour-long mid-year meeting with the committee, to be completed before fall semester finals end. During the meeting, the student will give a 20-30 minute presentation (with slides) providing an update on their work. The committee will ask questions during/after the presentation to assess the student’s understanding and progress, and share ideas and advice about the work.
During the presentation, the student should:
Demonstrate understanding of foundational concepts and knowledge relevant for their work - what is the context?
Articulate their goals - what is the question or problem?
Articulate their hypothesis (or multiple hypotheses)
Demonstrate understanding of methodologies for their work
Present the data they have in hand, and explain how they relate to their goals, questions, hypotheses
Provide a timeline for the work of the spring semester, e.g. data generation, analysis, visualization, reading, and writing
A student who does all of these things well will pass!
If the committee has concerns about the student's progress, there are two possible outcomes:
Conditional pass: The committee assigns specific work to be undertaken before the spring semester, e.g. additional reading, labwork, or data analysis. Continuing with honors in the spring semester depends on the student following through on the assignment satisfactorily.
Fail: The committee agrees that the student is not in a good position to finish the honors project on time.
Continuing honors students may register for a 2-credit independent study (BIOL-642) during January. Students who pass conditionally are required to do so, and will use the time to complete the work assigned by the committee during the mid-year meeting. But, this option could be useful for any student who passes and plans to do significant work on their honors project in January.
During the mid-year committee meeting, students who pass or conditionally pass the mid-year committee meeting should set a date for the thesis defense ahead of the college-wide deadline, which can be found on the calendar linked here.