Departmental Honors

Nomination Process

Students interested in completing Departmental Honors must be nominated by a Math faculty member prior to their final year  (Capstone prep is a great time for this!  Students will be developing proposals,  and Honors students will need to develop a proposal that leads to a year-long Honors project.).  This normally will occur three semesters before graduation, but might occur two semesters before.  In order to be eligible for nomination a student must satisfy all three of the following requirements:

1. A Math GPA of at least 3.5 with no semester grade below a B in any upper division Math course,
2. An overall GPA of 3.0,
3. 2 upper division Math courses either completed or in progress.

Once nominated, a student takes Math 474 Capstone Prep and develops a proposal for an Honors Project.  The project proposal must follow the guidelines for Capstone in Mathematics projects but must be for a year-long project that holds the promise of completing publishable results (And while it is not strictly stated, it is useful if the project can be terminated after one semester, in case the student decides not to pursue Honors after all.  This will mean that the student has completed capstone and then just finished.).  After the oral and written project proposals have been reviewed, the Math faculty will determine if a student’s project is worthy of being selected as an Honors project.  Moreover, by the time the candidate is selected he/she must also have completed at least 2 Upper Division Math courses with a grade of B or higher in both, and have at least 1 additional upper division Math course completed or in progress.

Completion of Departmental Honors

To complete Departmental Honors students must successfully pass all of the following courses (If you are advising a Math Honors student, please take note of these!  Students will need to sign up for these courses and they will need to go into the student’s four-year plan.  Watch the credit limits in the last three semesters.):

• Math 474 - Capstone Prep --2 credits  (taken spring of Junior  year)
• Math 475 – Capstone--2 credits (taken fall of Senior year)
• Math 497 - Honors Research--3 credits (taken Spring of Senior year)

This is equivalent to one year of mentored research experience, plus one semester of research preparation in the Capstone Prep course.  The final project will be presented in three venues: a written thesis, an oral presentation, and a poster presentation.  The advisor in conjunction with Math faculty will review the project at the end of the Capstone course to determine if the student may proceed with the Honors Research course.  At the end of the Honors Research course they will again confer to determine if the project meets the standards of an honors project.