What is an Honors Contract?

Honors Contracts give students a way to enhance non-honors courses so that they provide elective credits towards the Honors degree, in collaboration with the course instructor. With an Honors Contract, a non-honors class can count towards honors elective requirements. Note that the work associated with the Honors Contract does not factor into the course grade and is evaluated on a completed/not-completed basis.

Who is eligible for Honors Contracts?

Any Honors student is eligible to request an Honors Contract in a course in which they are currently enrolled. Not all courses are appropriate for Honors Contracts, and the faculty instructor for a course may choose whether to develop an Honors Contract.  

What kinds of courses are Contract-eligible?

Contracts are not permitted for internship or independent study courses, and only faculty-status instructors can agree to an Honors Contract. Beyond these limitations, departments and programs can decide which courses are Contract-eligible in the programs they offer. These decisions should be made with the goals of supporting students in completing their degree program and making progress towards Honors requirements. For some programs, that may mean focusing on core requirements in the upper division part of the degree program. For others, it may be important to provide opportunities early in the major.

What type of work is expected in an Honors Contract?

An Honors Contract requires that the student go beyond what is required for the course in terms of experiences and assignments/work.  A typical Contract will require about 20 additional hours of student work over the term.

The required work will ideally meet several of the following characteristics:

• Increased engagement with faculty-status instructors—substantive discussion-based interactions between students and faculty members.
• Provide a deeper engagement, relative to the course, with the topics/materials through features like:
  • Incorporate research through direct experiences or discussions on research methodologies and frameworks across disciplines.
  • Increased elements of writing and communication with feedback appropriately tailored to the discipline and subject matter
  • Provide an active and experiential learning emphasis
  • Engage students in hands-on experiences
  • Stretch beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries to emphasize interdisciplinary connections
• Explicitly contribute to developing a thesis or capstone project
• Encourage co-curricular activities beyond traditional classroom settings

Honors Contracts may involve—but are not limited to—activities like the following:

• Development of enriched teaching materials or lab experiments for future offerings of the course.
• Deepening a course-related assignment in ways that draw from other disciplines.
• Designing and completing a special project, performance, or product – ideally, one that might position the student effectively for future thesis work.

What are the benefits of an Honors Contract?

Honors Contracts provide students an opportunity to go beyond what is possible in a traditional class and work more closely with the faculty instructor. Contracts allow students to pursue their interests by diving deeper into their coursework. These experiences could lead to Honors Thesis topics and mentoring opportunities. The process of creating a Contract gives students experiences in self-advocacy and self-directed work, which are also excellent preparation for post-baccalaureate work and education. For departments and programs, Honors Contracts support students in situations where departments are unable to offer honors-specific courses due to resource constraints. For all departments and programs, Honors Contracts can also provide indications of where there is sufficient student demand to justify developing an honors-attribute course.

Issues that might arise

If the student does not complete the Contract, the student will not receive honors elective credit. Failure to complete the Contract SHOULD NOT impact the student’s grade in the course. The course grade is based solely on the course syllabus. The Honors Contract must be completed within the time frame of the course – thus, a student cannot complete the course, receive a grade, and then add the Contract some months later.

How is an Honors Contract established? What happens when the Contract is completed?

The Honors College will provide support for Honors Contracts. This will include the following: 1) a relatively painless process for students to propose Contracts and faculty to approve them, as well as for faculty to verify that the Contract was completed; 2) management of the Honors Contract for the student’s degree audit; 3) maintenance of records of previous Honors Contracts with examples for new faculty to examine; and 4) periodic review of Contracts across campus to ensure consistency and transparency.

We will finalize and distribute details about the technical process for Honors Contracts in Fall semester 2025. This will include a streamlined electronic form that records a work plan and outlines what is required for satisfactory completion, and enables straightforward faculty approval of the planned contract and faculty documentation that the Contract was fulfilled.

What are HON-attribute courses?

Honors degree requirements at the University of Utah are fulfilled through a partnership between the Honors College and degree programs. The Honors College provides a core curriculum of four courses focused on critical thinking, interdisciplinarity, discourse across diverse positions and domains and provides learning communities for personal and professional growth. We also provide unique opportunities through interdisciplinary electives, Praxis labs, and Integrated Minors. Degree programs offer HON-attribute courses to provide special opportunities to build expertise in the major and prepare students for successful thesis completion. Ideally, these fulfill major requirements as well as serve as electives for the Honors degree. The Honors College collaborates with departments to increase the number of HON-attribute courses available for each degree in order to (1) increase availability of courses that both fulfill Honors degree and major degree requirements; and (2) ensure that available HON-designation courses build experience and expertise within degree programs and prepare students for successful thesis completion.

What are the expectations of HON-attribute courses?

• Should be limited to a maximum enrollment of 30, providing for increased engagement with faculty. (An HON-attribute class may meet with a class with higher enrollments).
• Must be taught by faculty-status instructors (i.e., not graduate students or post-doctoral fellows).
• Must have several of the following characteristics (per the Honors Policy Board March 2024):
• Increased engagement with faculty-status instructors—substantive discussion-based interactions between students and faculty members.
• Provide a deeper engagement with course material, through features like:
• Incorporate research through direct experiences or discussions on research methodologies and frameworks across disciplines.
• Increased elements of writing and communication with feedback appropriately tailored to the discipline and subject matter
• Provide an active and experiential learning emphasis
• Engage students in hands-on experiences
• Stretch beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries to emphasize interdisciplinary connections
• Explicitly contribute to developing a thesis or capstone project
• Encourage co-curricular activities beyond traditional classroom settings
• Must have Honors in the course title to identify them as courses fulfilling Honors degree requirements.
• Must include a catalog course description that clearly indicates that the course has the HON attribute.
• Must have their own course number. In the case of an HON version of an existing course, a common convention is to add a 1 to the course number (e.g., 3091 for an existing 3090 course).
• In the case of an HON version of an existing course, should fulfill the same gen-ed/bachelors designations, major requirements, and/or associated learning outcomes as the non-HON version of the course.
• Can be offered at any level (1000-5000).
• Should contribute to major requirements in order to allow students to earn Honors elective credit and satisfy major requirements simultaneously.

How do departments and programs request HON-attributes for their courses?

In addition to the normal proposal materials for new courses, the department produces an HON-memo and a course syllabus. Both are submitted in Coursedog and emailed to l.munson@honors.utah.edu.

Memo - The memo (1) indicates the format of the course (HON version of non-HON course (offered meets-with or standalone), or HON-only course); (2) lists the course’s HON-attribute characteristics (see above); and (3) includes a brief paragraph explaining how the course meets the indicated characteristics. We especially encourage proposals for packages of classes that collectively serve Honors students within the majors. If submitting multiple courses at one time, a single memo can address these questions for all courses under consideration.

Syllabus - The syllabus should show clear evidence of the HON-attribute course characteristics that are  indicated in the memo through learning outcomes, assignments, etc. In cases where the new HON-attribute course is paired with a non-HON version of the course, differences from the non-HON version should be highlighted and should provide evidence of the HON-attribute course characteristics indicated in the memo.

We will finalize and distribute details about the technical process for HON course proposals in Fall semester, 2025.

Click here for examples of successful HON proposals (UofU Box access required).