Honors Courses - Engineering Honors Program - Purdue University

There are four general types of honors courses at Purdue:

• HONR courses offered through the John Martinson Honors College
• Courses with H-designated sections (for example, COM 11400-H)
• H-Ready courses. Learn more about these courses by visiting the H-Ready Courses web page
• Honors contracted courses

Students can also earn credits usable for completion of the honors curriculum by taking graduate-level courses (courses at the 500-level) or supervised research courses (courses that involve directed study, independent research, or an honors thesis).

Students can learn more about these options by visiting the Honors Curriculum and Courses web page at the JMHC website.”

An honors contract is an agreement between an instructor and a student that makes a standard course eligible to receive honors credit. A course taken with an honors contract will involve additional or alternative required coursework. The student and faculty instructor of the course will reach an agreement on the exact work to be done for the honors contract, and this information will be documented and submitted as part of the contract approval process. Students should expect to produce work of elevated quality and to meet regularly throughout the semester with their faculty instructor.

Students interested in honors contracting a course must request a grade mode change for that course using the scheduling assistant in myPurdue before the end of the second week of classes in the current semester. Detailed information for the current semester deadlines is available from the Honors College; you can also consult the academic calendars webpage and look for the link to the drop/add refund and deadline calendars. The relevant deadline is last day to audit and/or request H grade mode.

For each College of Engineering course that you plan to contract, you will need to complete a College of Engineering Honors contracting form by the deadline. As a part of completing the form, students will need to upload a document that provides a description of the work to be performed for the contract. This document can take one of two forms:

• An honors syllabus which contains the details of the honors activity to be undertaken by the student, including deliverables, expectations, deadlines and (most importantly) a modified grading scheme for the course that takes the work done for the honors contract into account.
• A regular course syllabus that contains a description of an honors project that all students wishing to obtain honors credit for the course must complete. The description should have all of the same information as an honors syllabus.

Students will work with their respective course instructors to get the necessary document in a timely manner.

Be aware that submitting an honors syllabus lacking sufficient detail may result in requests for additional documentation or, potentially, the honors contract not being approved. To assist students and faculty instructors in the construction of an appropriate document, we have created an honors syllabus template available as a downloadable Word file. This file provides guidance on what to include in an honors syllabus, and it can also be used to guide the development of an honors project description that gets incorporated into the standard course syllabus in whatever format the instructor prefers. Use of this template is not required, but we strongly recommend that students and instructors review it in order to learn best practices for making a solid honors contract document. We have also created a webpage that has examples of honors syllabi along with answers to frequently asked questions.

For questions about honors contracting for engineering courses, please contact your academic advisor or email Timothy Whalen at whalen@purdue.edu.

If you wish to have an honors contract for an engineering course that is offered as a departmental study abroad course, the study abroad office provides special instructions on the workflow you need to follow in order to get contract approval.

Note: Honors contracting of engineering courses does not require hard copies of the Form 23 + Honors Contract Form because our online process replaces those for this purpose. However, if you wish to honors contract a course offered by another college at Purdue, hard copies of the paperwork may be needed. To be sure of the process you need to follow, please contact the respective college’s honors liaison prior to getting started. You can find the contact information for honors liaisons by college on the second page of the Honors Contracting Form, Procedure and FAQs (PDF) document.