An Honors Enrichment Contract (HEC) is an opportunity to pursue focused and customized pre-thesis work. Students need not have a fully defined thesis topic in order to pursue an HEC, but they should have identified an area of interest that may lead to a thesis.
Students pursuing this option will be engaged in significant undergraduate research activity in labs, studios, and performance spaces supervised by faculty members. Just as with the HEC Course Option, the goal of the Lab/Studio/Performance Space HEC is to provide students with the opportunity to engage in an enriched form of study that will prepare them in a meaningful way for the work they will be doing on an undergraduate Honors thesis in the year following. Students are required to take a minimum of three credits during Junior Year. These credits can be spread across two semesters or taken during one semester.
Questions about this requirement can be sent ashonors@uvm.edu.
Requirements of the Lab/Studio HEC
As with the HEC Course Option, this HEC will require the student to submit a contract request form to the College of Arts and Sciences outlining the work the student will need to complete to receive credit for the Honors Enrichment and the method of assessment.
Students are required to complete a total of at least 3 credits of HCOL 3882. All 3 credits may be taken in one semester or they may be split between two semesters (i.e. two credits in fall and one credit in spring or the reverse).
If the credits are split (either 2/1 or 1/2), students will need to submit a separate application each semester.
In general, for each credit of HCOL 3882, the Lab/Studio HEC must include around 3 hours/week in the lab/studio/performance space (working alongside and in regular consultation with their faculty mentor). Thus, a 3-credit HEC would entail approximately 7 to 8 hours of work each week.
HCOL 3882 will be evaluated with a letter grade (A-F)
Choosing a faculty mentor for the Lab/Studio HEC
In almost every case, the work pursued as part of the Lab/Studio HEC will evolve into an Honors thesis. For this reason, students are urged to remember that the guidelines for the Honors Thesis in the College of Arts and Sciences specify that "The thesis supervisor must be a tenured or tenure-track professor at ¶¶Òõ̽̽, and is typically a faculty in the CAS department/program of the student's major/CAS thesis credits." Information about a faculty member's status at the university can be found by looking the faculty member up in the ¶¶Òõ̽̽ Directory.
Just as with Option #1, students seeking to pursue the Lab/Studio/Performance space HEC should approach faculty in a timely, respectful manner and with the recognition that faculty members are not obligated to supervise an HEC.
Approval of the HEC
In the semester prior to pursuing the HEC (and at the very latest, before the end of Add/Drop of the semester in which the HEC is being pursued), students and their faculty mentors will submit the electronic HEC request (online MS Form linked at bottom of page) to the College of Arts and Sciences.
Please read the requirements carefully.
Any and all questions pertaining to these requirements should be directed to or 656-3344