Responsibilities of Departmental Honors Chairs

1.       Each department is responsible for running its own Departmental Honors Program. The Departmental Honors Chair is the go-to person for students who are interested in joining the Honors Program in each respective department. As such, part of the Honors Chair's responsibility is to be familiar with all of the requirements of a student completing honors in the department. These things include (1) how to join the departmental honors program, (2) how to complete an honors contract (if applicable), and (3) how to complete an honors thesis. Each department differs in regards to whether a one semester or two semester thesis is required and some even differ on whether the student completes an honors contract or completes a series of one-credit colloquia. It is important to know what your departmental guidelines are so that you can properly inform students who are interested in joining the program.

2.       As Departmental Honors Chairs you should keep copies of all paperwork filled out by the students that require your signature. You should keep track of where the students are in the Departmental Honors Program and handle any problems that arise.

3.       You should encourage students in honors to apply for ATP semester grants and ATP summer grants and be familiar with how these processes work.

4.       We rely on Departmental Honors Chairs to encourage faculty to teach honors courses and colloquia. In fact, many of our chairs take on the responsibility of making sure honors courses are offered in their departments every semester. This really makes our job a lot easier. Although we send out an e-mail to all faculty, we rely on Honors Chairs to encourage faculty in their department to offer honors courses.

5.       We expect Honors Chairs to socialize with the honors students, including attending the honors dinners, the freshmen honors holiday party, and other scheduled events. One of our main goals in the Honors Program is to try and build a sense of community among honors faculty, students, and administrators. This doesn’t work if faculty do not attend the honors events.

6.       Honors Chairs should revisit their Honors Program every so often to see whether or not they would like to institute any changes. Departments can change their programs at any time if they, for instance, do not like having an honors contract or would like other requirements to be instituted. These changes would just need to be approved by the Honors Program and governance.

 

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Last Modified: April 7, 2011