What is Honors at Manoa?
For highly motivated undergraduate students, the Honors Program offers special academic opportunities; it is a valuable complement to students' academic and professional careers, helping them to realize their potential. For those students with the curiosity and the innovative spirit that create new opportunities, the Honors Program provides a place within the ordinary curriculum that fosters the extraordinary and transforms an undergraduate career into a voyage of discovery.

Who is eligible for Upper-Division Honors?
All undergraduates, regardless of their major, can participate in upper-division Honors. Ideally, students apply in the second semester of the sophomore year or the first semester of the junior year. In any case, a student should have at least four semesters before graduation after beginning the program.

Admission Requirements
No minimum GPA is required. Rather, the student submits three letters of recommendation from faculty who know his or her work. At least one of the faculty should be from the student's major and at least one should be from outside the student's major. If this preference cannot be met, students should give priority to recommendations from faculty who know them as individuals, not just as names in a gradebook. Recommendations from faculty on other campuses within the UH system are welcome. Mainland transfers can ask faculty from their previous institutions if they wish. When the appropriate application form, along with these letters, arrives in the Honors Program office, it is sent to the student's major department for approval, and then the Honors Program officially notifies the student of the decision. In some cases, individual departments also have specific admission requirements.

PROGRAM COMPONENTS

Interdisciplinary Junior Honors Seminar (HON 491) gives students a graduate-style seminar experience. The classes meet in small groups (twelve maximum) once a week to investigate and discuss an interesting topic from outside the participants' majors. These seminars challenge students by taking them outside the specialized focus of their major and by introducing them to the different ways other majors have of approaching a problem. The emphasis is on student participation, on writing and speaking to the point, on analysis, and on intellectual growth. The topics vary from semester to semester. Past examples include "Communications and Civilization," "Knowledge and the Modern World," "Multidisciplinary Approaches to Studying Diversity," and "Religions, Culture, and Health.” Most students take this course the first semester in the program. This course carries an automatic W Focus.

Introduction to Research (HON 495) is usually the second course taken by Honors students. In this rigorous course, part tutorial and part workshop, students acquire and improve research skills in preparation for completing a successful Senior Honors Project. At the end of the semester students submit a proposal for their Senior Project that includes an abstract, outline, focused bibliography, and as much preliminary writing (e.g., a review of relevant scholarship) as possible. This course carries an automatic W & O Focus.

The chance for independent study comes in the senior year when, under the supervision of a faculty advisor selected by the student, students research a project on a topic chosen from their major field. (Projects for fine art majors and creative writers present creative work along with a brief analytical introduction.) The Senior Honors Project (HON 496) is a student's best chance as an undergraduate to dig deeply into a subject that interests him or her. Every year these projects win a number of the research prizes at UHM; every year some are turned into published articles or policy papers; every year some projects are exhibited or performed. The 2nd semester of HON 496 carries an automatic W Focus.

Researching a topic, conducting fieldwork, presenting artwork or performing can all be good preparation for graduate work, but executing such complex projects can be useful in all careers. Any plans for the future will profit from the ability to work intensively under a mentor's supervision, to analyze a problem and devise new ways of solving it, to maintain a formal schedule of studio work or rehearsal, to track down data beyond the usual sources, to sift and organize a mass of conflicting or ambiguous evidence, and to make complicated information clear and persuasive.

Because the preparation for research and independent study are structured as a rehearsal for tasks routinely performed in a professional career, Honors students are also expected to know how to speak about as well as write about their Senior Projects. In order to gain valuable experience in the important skill of oral presentation, all Honors students must twice present their research for the Senior Honors Project at the campus-wide Undergraduate Research Symposium and Exhibit: once when they complete HON 495 and a second time in the semester of their planned graduation.

CANDIDATE for HONORS
Students must complete all program components to become a candidate for graduation with an Honors designation: Interdisciplinary Junior Honors Seminar (HON 491), Introduction to Research (HON 495), and the Senior Honors Project (HON 496).

Evaluation of an Honors Candidacy
HON 491 and 495 are graded CR/NCR. Seminar leaders submit written evaluations with one of the following designations: "No Honors," "Honors," "High Honors," "Highest Honors." Instructors for HON 495 may or may not use these designations with their written evaluations.

HON 496 is repeatable once and most Senior Honors Projects require two semesters beyond HON 495 to complete. Credits for HON 496 are letter graded by the project adviser.

The Senior Honors Project itself is evaluated with written comments by a committee comprised of the faculty advisor and at least two other faculty (usually from UHM) with the same range of possible designations as the seminar.

Adequate GPA: average of 3.0 in major and all courses taken since becoming a junior at UHM. One of those averages must be in the top 25% of student's graduating class from his or her college.

The Honors Council reviews the evaluations of the Junior Seminar, the Research course, and the Senior Project as well as the student's GPA and decides the final designation with which the student will graduate: "Honors," "High Honors," or "Highest Honors."

Graduate with Honors
Completion of the Honors Program and a positive recommendation by the Honors Council allows a student to graduate with Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors. This designation appears on a diploma made especially for graduating honors students as well as on the transcript and gives an excellent indication to prospective employers, graduate programs, and professional schools of a student's willingness and ability to accept a challenge beyond the ordinary. Honors students are also given a special notice in the Commencement Program and a gold cord to wear over their gowns.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Advising: The Director of the Honors Program is available throughout the year for advising. During the fall and spring semesters, students working on their Senior Honors Project must have advising sessions with the Director.

Library privileges: While working on a Senior Honors Project, Honors students are given the same extended-loan privileges as those obtained by graduate student dissertation writers: they may check out for an entire semester any Hamilton Library books.

Credit toward university requirements: The three credits of Junior Honors Seminar (HON 491) may be applied either to the Social Sciences or to the Humanities general education requirements (except for the literature requirement). Some departments accept the Senior Honors Project credit as applicable to their major requirements. Junior Seminar and Senior Project credits can also be used as upper-division electives. In addition, HON 491, 495, and 496 are always designated as "Writing Intensive" courses.

Graduate courses: As an Honors senior, a student may apply for permission to enroll in two graduate courses per semester; furthermore, one course per semester may be taken for graduate credit, provided the student still has enough credits for the baccalaureate and the department offering the course is agreeable.

Honors Reading Room: Located on the top floor of Sinclair Library, room 504, the Honors Program has a reading room reserved for Honors students--and their guests if space allows. The room features a study area; computers with CD-ROM readers, word-processing software, and internet access, plus printers; lockers where students may leave books; a small library of paperbacks, magazines, and Honors theses--and a view of Manoa valley. Students may use it whenever Sinclair Library is open.

Also available in the reading room before each registration is the Honors Newsletter, with information about deadlines, procedures, regulations, and activities.