The Honors program at Calvin
Incoming students who
have been awarded National Merit, Presidential, Dean’s, Faculty Honors,
or Mosaic scholarships are invited to participate in the Honors Program. Other
students whose cumulative GPA at Calvin is 3.3 or higher after at least one
year of study are also eligible to participate. The Director of the Honors Program
at Calvin College is Professor Ken Bratt of the Classics Department.
Students should consult him for general questions about the program.
The English Department
strongly encourages qualified students to consider participating in the Honors
Program. The program offers Honors students the opportunity to enroll in smaller,
more accelerated sections of core courses, to engage in more comprehensive research
projects in upper-divisional English classes, and to develop an extended research
or creative thesis under the supervision of two English professors. Participating
in the Honors Program can be the most rewarding part of a student’s academic
work at Calvin College.
English Departmental Honors
Overview: To
graduate with honors in English, students must complete a minimum of six honors
courses (or 18 hours of honors work): at least three in the English department
(not including Honors English 101) and at least two from the general curriculum.
Honors English 101 may count as the sixth honors course required for graduation.
Students must also complete English 399: Honors Thesis (as one of their three
honors courses in English). In addition to maintaining a cumulative GPA of 3.5
or higher, both within the major and overall, students must also earn at least a B+ on their Honors Thesis in order to graduate with honors. For specific questions
about Honors requirements in the English department, contact the chair of the
English Department’s curriculum committee.
Advising: Students who are interested in graduating with honors in English should
notify their academic advisor as soon as possible so that they can
organize their schedules appropriately.
The Honors Thesis in English
Application: A
student must submit an Honors Application form (available from the department
secretary) to the chair of the English Department’s curriculum committee
by the end of reading recess in the semester prior to taking
for English 399: Honors Thesis. The department prefers that this application
be submitted in the second semester of a student’s junior year.
The Honors Application
form should contain the following:
- a listing of the honors
courses completed by the student, with the relevant grades;
- the student’s cumulative GPA;
- the title (or short description) of the Honors Thesis;
- the name of the primary supervisor and secondary supervisor of the thesis;
and
- the signatures of the student’s academic advisor and his or her primary
supervisor.
The department encourages
students to develop their Honors Thesis from a paper completed in a previous
English course. Such an approach may also make it easier to identify the appropriate
primary supervisor. After completing the Honors Application, the student should
talk with his or her primary supervisor to discuss relevant readings that will
be necessary to prepare the Honors Thesis Proposal.
Honors Thesis Proposal: The department expects students to work during the previous
semester, summer or interim to complete a large portion of their honors research
prior to the semester in which they take credit for English 399: Honors Thesis.
By the end of the first week of classes in the semester in which a student is
taking credit for English 399: Honors Thesis (preferably the fall semester of
a student’s senior year), the student must submit an Honors Thesis Proposal
to the chair of the curriculum committee.
Copies of previously approved
Honors Thesis Proposals and completed theses are available from the department
secretary.
Honors Thesis Proposals,
both creative and critical, should contain the following:
- a 500-750-word essay
about the Honors Thesis, which should include a summary of the proposed argument,
a discussion of the critical, theoretical, or artistic approaches of the thesis,
and an explanation of the influential critics or writers whose work the student
will engage;
- an annotated bibliography
of at least 15 to 20 sources;
- a schedule of deadline
dates for completing drafts and the final thesis, in keeping with the enclosed
Honors Thesis Schedule; and
- the signatures of both
the primary and the secondary supervisors of the project.
Please note: Students who do not submit a satisfactory Honors Thesis Proposal by the
deadline will have to drop English 399: Honors Thesis from their schedules for
that semester.
Expectations: The department encourages both critical and creative Honors Theses.
For the critical Honors Thesis, students write a 6500-8000-word, scholarly essay
that shows perceptive and original insight into a topic and that contributes
to the discipline’s ongoing conversation about that topic. Students interested
in pursuing graduate studies could conceive of this essay as a potential writing
sample for their graduate school application.
The
expectations for the creative Honors Thesis depend on genre and supervisor,
but the following are general guidelines: 1) 10-12 poems, or 2-3 short stories,
or 2-3 scenes of a script, or 2-3 chapters of a novel; and 2) a 2000-2500-word
essay that discusses the student’s understanding of the form of that genre,
his or her particular use of that form, and the significance of other writers
in shaping his or her own form. In both cases, the expectation is that students
will complete and submit the Honors Thesis (with the grade assigned by the primary
and secondary supervisors) to the chair of the English Department’s curriculum
committee by December 1 in the Fall or by April 15 in the Spring.
Because theses must be
completed before the Honors Convocation in the Spring, students are encouraged
to write the Honors Thesis in the Fall. Students writing the thesis in the Spring
should be aware of the earlier deadline.
Supervision:
An Honors Thesis demands substantial independent work and initiative on the
part of the student, but the department is committed to guide this independent
work through its system of thesis supervision. A student should seek out faculty
members with expertise in their proposed honors topic to serve as primary and
secondary supervisors for his or her thesis.
The primary supervisor
works with the student to refine an honors topic, approves the Honors Application,
advises the student about critical background reading to prepare the Honors
Thesis Proposal, approves the student’s Honors Thesis Proposal, reads
and comments on drafts of the Honors Thesis, and determines the final grade
of the Honors Thesis in consultation with the secondary supervisor.
The secondary supervisor approves the Honors Thesis Proposal, reads and comments on at least one draft
of the Honors Thesis, and determines a final grade for the Honors Thesis in
consultation with the primary supervisor.
Oral Presentation: The chair of the English Department curriculum committee will schedule an Honors
Colloquium during the final two weeks of the semester. Each of the students
taking credit for English 399: Honors Thesis in that semester will make a 10
to 15 minute presentation about his or her Honors Thesis. The format is informal
and celebratory, and students should feel free to discuss their initial interest
in this topic, to offer a short summary of their argument or approach, to read
a brief selection from the thesis, and/or to make a brief comment on their continuing
interests in this subject.
Notifying Registrar’s
Office: No later than the spring semester of their senior year, students should notify
the Registrar's Office that they intend to complete the requirements to graduate
with honors in English.
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