Each semester I supervise independent study, usually with several students. Any student can ask any faculty member for permission to do an independent study or honors thesis with them. Ideally, the faculty member will be one with whom the student has established a good working relationship and also someone who has sufficient knowledge about the area in which the student wishes to work to provide helpful guidance. If you are interested in exploring whether to do a project with me, read the following and then come in and discuss it with me.
Students can opt for either one, two, or three hours credit.
The thesis is necessary to graduate with honors, and I recommend that honors students complete one. Honors students can get up to nine hours of credit for the thesis by enrolling in three different semesters. For a three semester thesis, I recommend that a student enroll first during the summer and spend time reading in areas of interest in an effort to learn about a broad subject area with a view to narrowing that area down to a thesis topic area by the end of the semester. The second semester would be spent researching the actual topic. Students planning to spend only two semesters working on an honors thesis would combine these two endeavors in their first semester.