Graduating as an Honors Scholar in History entails taking a minimum of five upper-level courses in history for honors credit, or 15 total credits of honors work in the major. This requirement may be fulfilled in a variety of ways:

• Students may enroll in specially designated honors sections of upper-level courses.
• Student may enroll in “honors-enriched” courses in which some seats are reserved for honors students who also work with the professor as a mini-honors section.
• With the instructor’s consent, students may convert any non-honors upper-level history course into an honors course through an “honors conversion agreement” approved by the student, the course instructor, and the History Honors Advisor. The approved conversion agreement outlines the nature and schedule of the additional work the student will do to earn honors credit for the class. These assignments may include supplementary readings, attendance of scholarly lectures, additional individual discussions with the instructor, class presentations, webpage design, or other projects entailing historical research, writing, or oral reports.
• With the instructor’s permission, Honors Scholars in History may take graduate courses in history as part of their honors course of study.
• Students who spend a semester or year in a study-abroad program may convert courses they take during that period into honors courses with the consent of the course instructor and the approval of the History Honors Advisor.
• In their senior year or its equivalent, Honors Scholars devote two semesters to the research and writing of an undergraduate thesis in history.

The goal is two-fold: to deepen our honors majors’ exposure to the professional and scholarly activities of historians and to give you the opportunity to share your original scholarship at the end of your senior year.

During the final two years of study as History Honors majors, students must fulfill these four engagement requirements:

Requirement 1:

Attend one scholarly presentation by an historian and write a 1-2-page response paper to be submitted to the honors advisor, Academic Advisor Heather Parker.

With prior consultation with an honors advisor, this requirement can be fulfilled by:

• attending a Wednesday Workshop presentation by a history faculty member or visiting historian;
• attending a major talk by an historian at any UConn campus (e.g. Fusco, Gender and History, Foreign Policy, Maria and Ishier Jacobson Lecture at Stamford);
• attending a talk by an historian at the UCHI, in Judaic Studies, in MCL, Asian-Asian American Studies, Africana Studies, or any other interdisciplinary center at UConn;
• attending a virtual/live streamed presentation by an historian at another university or research center.

Requirement 2:

With prior consultation with an honors advisor, the student must do one of the following:

• attend a second presentation by an historian and write a second 1-2 response paper (as described above);
• attend a session devoted to history at a professional conference or annual meeting of a    professional society and write a 1-2- page response paper. The meeting may be interdisciplinary (e.g., Law and Society or Northeast Conference on British Studies) so long as the panel is devoted to an historical theme;
• explore a collection in a digital history archive in any field, from the UConn University Archives and Special Collections to an accessible digital collection held anywhere in the world, and write a 1-2-page presentation on the archive, its notable features, and its organization.
• serve as a judge in one of the state or regional History Days and write a 1-2 page paper about the experience;
• present their research at a fall or spring university-wide Frontiers of Undergraduate Research event;
• attend a meeting of a graduate seminar in history (with the instructor’s advance permission) and write a 1-2-page response paper;
• complete a history internship

Requirement 3:

Write a one-paragraph abstract of their thesis, to be submitted with the final version of the thesis.

Requirement 4:

Give a brief (10 minute) public presentation on your honors thesis at a dedicated department event toward the end of the second semester of work on the project [format tbd].

Note: The public presentation requirement would of course be modified for students who may need accommodation as laid out for them by CSD.