Honors

Sociology Honors Program

The Sociology Honors Program allows qualified students to benefit from the combination of the best features of a liberal arts college with those of a major research university.
Here are some distinctive features of the Honors Program:

• Honors classes are typically small and allow you to interact with faculty who are especially committed to undergraduate education.
• You’ll have the opportunity to conduct independent research leading to an honors thesis under the supervision of scholars widely respected in their fields.
• You’ll work in tandem with inventive and highly motivated peers.
• A Michigan degree awarded "with honors" (or perhaps "with highest honors") catches the eye of prospective employers and prestigious graduate institutions.
• The completion of an independent project encourages the self-confidence that stands you in good stead whether you enter business, the professions, academe, or politics.

APPLICATION GUIDELINES

To apply to the Sociology Honors Program, you must have at least a 3.5 GPA in your sociology courses and a 3.4 GPA overall. You should have second-semester sophomore or first-semester junior status when applying. The application is submitted during fall semester of the junior year, and the three-course sequence (397, 398, 399) begins winter term. The application requires a two to three page essay indicating your interest in sociology and potential topics for a thesis, two letters of recommendation from sociology faculty and/or GSI’s and an unofficial transcript.

The class size is capped at about 15 students. Application forms are available in early October from the Sociology Undergraduate Office. You should plan on completing Sociology 210 (Statistics) or Statistics 350 prior to enrolling in Sociology 397 winter term of the junior year, and should take Sociology 310 (Methods) prior to or concurrently with Sociology 397.

JUNIOR HONORS RESEARCH SEMINAR--SOCIOLOGY 397

This course is organized primarily as a workshop. All of the course assignments and activities are designed to help students define a topic for research, develop a research question or questions, review the literature relevant to the topic, and specify the methods to be employed in pursuing the research questions. The first few weeks of the course serve as an introduction to the range of topics in sociology and the methods of research strategies. Later in the term, students focus more specifically on the tasks needed to develop their research plan and writing a research prospectus.

Note: Soc 397 is offered only in the Winter term.

SOCIOLOGY 398 - 399

In Soc 398, the student works directly with a faculty mentor, but the honors coordinator retains a partial mentoring relationship, meeting frequently with the students. In Soc 399, the student completes the analysis of data and writes the thesis under the direct supervision of the mentor, with guidance from the honors coordinator. The thesis is evaluated both by the faculty mentor and a second reader who is also a member of the sociology department.

To graduate with honors, students must meet all the general concentration requirements in addition to completing the honors thesis. Upon completion of the course work and the evaluation of the thesis, students graduate with one of the following designations: “with honors,” “with high honors,” or “with highest honors.”

The Sociology Honors Symposium is the capstone event of the honors sequence. It is an opportunity for the honors students to present the work they have been doing over the past year and a half to their friends and family. Check out what the 2006 honors students selected as their thesis topics. Honors theses dating back to 1996 are available in the Undergraduate Office.