Honors Program - Albright College

Honors Program - Albright College Honors Program Communication. Critical thinking. Analytical adeptness. Flexibility. Adaptability. Teamwork. These skills form the basis for developing intellectual, civic and practical capacities. The Albright College Honors Program challenges the most talented and motivated students to take these skills to an even higher level. If you wish to be truly challenged during your college education, the Albright College Honors Program is for you. Incoming first year students who have reached a level of academic achievement are invited to apply.  Or, you can apply if you have earned a 3.5 grade point average in your first semester. Occasionally students can apply to the program after their first semester. Academic Honors, Departmental Distinction and College Honors Academic Honors, Departmental Distinction and College Honors are honorific designations awarded at graduation. Although these designations have overlapping requirements, they are awarded independently of each other. Academic Honors is awarded by the academic dean strictly on the basis of grade point average. You will graduate with Academic Honors if your final cumulative grade point average is 3.5 or higher. If it is between 3.50 and 3.69, you will graduate cum laude ; if it is between 3.70 and 3.84, you will graduate magna cum laude ; and if it is 3.85 or above, you will graduate summa cum laude Departmental Distinction is awarded to students who have met certain requirements in their department. You will graduate with Departmental Distinction if your final cumulative grade point average is 3.25 or higher, your final departmental grade point average is 3.5 or higher, and you successfully complete a Senior Honors Project in the same department. Be sure to check with your adviser or department chair for any additional departmental requirements. College Honors is awarded to students who have successfully fulfilled the requirements of the Albright College Honors Program. You will graduate with College Honors if you satisfy the honors course requirements, maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.5 or higher and successfully complete a Senior Honors Project. Please note that the same Senior Honors Project may count toward both Departmental Distinction and College Honors. Applying to the Program If you are a current Albright student , you can pick up a hard copy of the interest form in the Registrar’s office Students who are not yet enrolled at Albright should fill out the following form or contact the Admission Office at admission@albright.edu to discuss participation in the program with their admission counselor. Join the Program as soon as you are eligible. In doing so, you will get the most out of the benefits of participation in the Program. Most students join either before or during their first semester at Albright. If you would like to join the Program later than your sophomore year, you will want to consult with your academic adviser and with the Director of the Honors Program to work out a strategy for fulfilling the requirements. Three Honors Courses/Modules/Independent Studies Grade Point Average Senior Thesis To remain a member of the Honors Program in good standing, you must complete two of these courses by the end of your sophomore year and the third by the end of your junior year. Honors Courses Honors Modules Honors Independent Study Honors Courses are inquiry-oriented, with a limited enrollment.  Topics vary from semester to semester and discipline to discipline. All Honors Courses you are required to take count toward your graduation requirements, and they do not increase your overall course load. Of the three required Honors courses, at least one can be an introductory level course, such as ENG 102 or PSY 100.  Other course opportunities include more advanced courses, which are designed to count toward general studies or concentration requirements. An Honors module gives you the opportunity to take a regular course for Honors credit by supplementing or replacing some course requirements with a special Honors project. These projects vary from course to course, so you will want to consult with the professor teaching the course to work out specific details. This consultation should take place as soon as possible, but optimally no later than the first week of the semester in which you are taking the course. You must take the initiative in setting up this meeting and you are encouraged (although not required) to arrive at the meeting with a suggestion of what your project might entail. Students are encouraged to have regular meetings with the instructor as a part of any module they design. Students are also encouraged to put the plans for the module in writing so that expectations for both student and instructor are explicit. An Honors module makes it possible to use a regular course to meet your Honors requirements, as well as possibly a general studies or concentration requirement. This may be particularly useful if you have a scheduling conflict with the Honors courses that are being offered. Honors Module Proposal Form An Honors independent study gives you the opportunity to arrange a specialized study with a particular professor. This makes it possible for you to explore specific areas of interest that are beyond the scope of regular course offerings. You may want to consider taking an Honors independent study in conjunction with your Senior Honors Project, during either your junior or senior year. To join the Albright College Honors Program, to remain a member in good standing, and to graduate with College Honors, you must maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.5 or higher. If your cumulative grade point average falls to between 3.5 and 3.25, you may remain in the Program on a probationary status. Students on probationary status do not have the privilege of registering early for classes. (See Section IV of this guide for more information on the privilege of registering early.) If your cumulative grade point average falls below 3.25, you will not be allowed to continue in the Program. If you bring your cumulative grade point average back up to the probationary level, however, you may apply for readmission to the Program. GPA and course requirements for writing a Senior Thesis: College Honors: You must graduate with an overall GPA of at least 3.50 and you must have completed three honors courses. Departmental Distinction: You must graduate with an overall GPA of at least 3.25 and you must graduate with a GPA in your concentration of at least 3.50. The Senior Honors Thesis gives you the opportunity to conduct independent research. The project will likely be in your area of concentration (or one of them, if you have several), but the possibilities are endless. Students in the past have chosen a wide variety of projects, some combined with independent study projects, study abroad or Albright Creative Research Experience (ACRE) Grants Your project will consist of some type of research, a written presentation of that research in the form of a thesis, and a personal presentation of that research to the Albright College community. There are several major deadlines you must keep in mind to remain on track with the project. If you are graduating in the fall, you must speak with the senior thesis coordinator to set up deadlines. Choosing a Topic, Advisor, and Readers Summer Research Submitting a Proposal Proposal Requirements Avoiding Common Oversights Submitting the Rough Draft Submitting the Thesis Presenting Your Research By your junior year (or earlier), you should begin selecting your project topic, advisor, and two readers. Your advisor must be a full-time Albright faculty member and will work most closely with you throughout the project. Your readers must also be full-time Albright faculty members . Typically: One reader is from within your department One reader is from outside your department This combination allows you to receive feedback from both a subject-area specialist and a well-informed non-specialist. By the end of your junior year , you must submit a form to the Coordinator of Senior Honors Projects listing your topic and including signatures from your advisor and readers. If you and your advisor believe it is important to include an adjunct faculty member or non-Albright faculty member as a reader, a written explanation—signed by your advisor—must be submitted explaining the need for this exception. Although project timelines vary, you will almost certainly want to conduct serious work on your project over the summer before your senior year. This may involve preparing a detailed bibliography, doing background reading, collecting data or engaging in laboratory work, and it may be conducted at home, on campus, or at a special site in the U.S. or abroad. You may want to consider applying for an ACRE Grant to support this part of your research. Shortly after the beginning of the fall semester of your senior year, you will submit a proposal to your advisor and readers. They will review your proposal and make suggestions on how to improve it. After making the necessary changes, you will submit your proposal to the Honors Committee via the Online Senior Thesis Proposal Form . The Honors Committee will review your proposal and let you know of any revisions its members would like you to make. As you write your proposal, keep in mind that you will be submitting it to the Honors Committee, which includes faculty members from a variety of disciplines. Make sure that your writing is clear and that your thoughts are as accessible as possible to a wide audience. There is no specified length for your proposal. More important than its length is its thoroughness and clarity. It may be helpful to know that many successful proposals in the past have been about two to three pages before they were submitted via the online form. Your final proposal will be submitted electronically using the Online Senior Thesis Proposal Form , you should use the following guide to draft your proposal. You will then be able to copy and paste the contents of your proposal into the web form for submission. Your thesis proposal must contain the following sections: An account of how you became interested in the project. Your goals for the project. A tentative hypothesis or thesis; for art/theatre projects, a contextualization of your goals. Your proposed methods of inquiry. A summary of preliminary research. A preliminary bibliography. A timeline for the project containing a brief outline of monthly progress goals. The Honors Committee will flag proposals that lack a clear goal, hypothesis, or context. Also, proposals that do not contain a sufficient bibliography and timeline will be returned for revision. Please be sure to include all seven of the sections listed above in your proposal. One reason it is important for you to construct a timeline for completing the various stages of your project is that it will help you avoid the devastating effects of procrastinating on a project as large as this. Be sure to include in your timeline the submission of a rough draft to your advisor and readers in late February. (Check the calendar at the end of this section for the exact date.) This is an important step in ensuring that you are on track to finish your project on time. The further along you are at this stage the more time you will have for revising and polishing your thesis. Depending on your topic, you may well find this task of revising and polishing to be the most important part of your entire project. If done well, this part of independent research can be very rewarding and can result in whole new levels of clarity and insight. Thesis submission involves three stages. 1. You must submit your thesis to your advisor and readers, who will make suggestions for changes. (To avoid unpleasant surprises at this stage, you will want to make sure that you have been working closely with them throughout the entire process.) 2. You will revise your thesis in accordance with the suggestions made. (If you disagree with a particular suggestion, you will want to create a compelling argument to convince your adviser and readers that your thesis is stronger without following it.) 3. You will submit the final copy of your thesis to the Honors Committee via the Coordinator of Senior Honors Projects. Your thesis must be accompanied by a signed cover page, a library release form, and an abstract. At this point, the Honors Committee entrusts the review of the content of your thesis to your adviser and readers and merely checks to make sure that the thesis and its accompanying forms are all complete and submitted on time. The Honors Committee has not set a minimum length requirement for your thesis. Its length will depend on your project and the discipline in which you are working. In general, theses in the sciences tend to be shorter than those in the humanities, since their main point is usually to report the results of experiments or the interpretation of data. As a general guideline, if you are writing a thesis in the sciences, you may want to aim for 20-30 pages. If you are writing one in the humanities, on the other hand, you will probably want to aim for 40-50 pages. One of the most exciting aspects of your research will be the presentation of your conclusions to a campus-wide audience. You will be asked to present your research to the Albright College community during Honors Week in the spring. You may choose to present your work orally (using slides, overheads, or Power Point as needed) or during the Honors Week poster session. Oral presentations are 15 minutes long, plus time for a few questions from the audience. Since your audience may contain faculty and students from a variety of disciplines, you should try to make your presentation as accessible to them as reasonably possible. If your project is quite technical, you should at least be able to explain simply and clearly its larger context and importance before proceeding to the parts that only a specialist would be able to follow. Presentations have typically been presented in Klein. If you choose to present your research via a poster, you will be expected to be present to answer questions about it during the honors week poster session in the Center for the Arts Mezzanine. Senior Thesis Project Calendar for the Class of 2026 (Spring Graduates) Receive Invitation to Write a Senior Thesis April 2025 Submit Enrollment Form May 2025 Submit Proposal to Advisor and Readers Fri, Sept 5, 2025 Submit Proposal to College Honors Committee Tue, Sept 16, 2025 Receive Committee Response to Proposal Fri, Oct 3, 2025 Resubmit Proposal if Required Fri, Oct 17, 2025 Submit Rough Draft of Thesis to Advisor and Readers Mon, Mar 23, 2026 Submit Final Copy of Thesis to Advisor and Readers Mon, Apr 6, 2026 Submit Final Copy of Thesis to College Honors Committee Wed, April 15, 2026 Present Project During Honors Week Honors Talks: Apr 20-22, 2026 Honors Poster Session: Thurs, Apr 23, 2026, 5:00 PM Apr 20-23, 2026 Honors Reception Thurs, Apr 23, 2026, 5:00 PM For more information contact: honors@albright.edu