The Barrett Honors College is the top honors college in the nation, with students who compare favorably with those at the top 20 Liberal Arts Colleges. These smart, highly motivated, and engaged students are a pleasure to teach. The Barrett Honors College has over 2500 students, who are broadly engaged in the research, internships, community outreach, and the politics and social aspects of ASU.
Working with BHC students can add to your load, but can also add to your productivity and the pleasure you find in teaching and doing research or other creative activities. Faculty work with BHC students through various avenues:
Teaching: You can teach honors students in a seminar (either with an HON prefix or your unit's prefix), in a break-out session of a large course, or with an honors contract within any course. Honors seminars (Footnote 19 courses) can be on any subject, but enrollment is limited to 25; faculty often teach a favorite topic, something they are currently exploring, or engage students in their research topics. Honors contracts are initiated in any course in which a faculty member is willing to work individually with a student or group of students to enrich the course content and the student learning experience. Usually a contract is initiated by a student expressing interest to the professor; some professors have contract ideas developed as part of their pre-semester course planning, while others plan them with the interested student(s). Honors contracts take a wide array of forms; the key element is that the student and the professor interact. Honors contracts have included extra reading and discussion, writing and discussion, collaboration on research, student designed projects, film viewings with discussion, and student designed lectures or labs. Faculty can design these contracts to contribute to their research and teaching. For more information and for help designing an honors course or contract, contact Peggy Nelson (
MNelson@asu.edu or 965-9520).
Research: We maintain a website and honors list-serve to distribute information about research opportunities. If you want student help with research (paid, volunteer, or for credit), we can connect you with bright, engaged students. Professors report that honors students are at least as good as, and sometimes better than, graduate students. For more information and to list research opportunities on our website or list-serve, contact Peggy Nelson (
MNelson@asu.edu or 965-9520) or Kristen Nielsen (
KNielsen@asu.edu or 727-6175).
Internships: We also maintain a large database of internship opportunities, which students actively use. We estimate that over half of the BHC students are engaged in internships. If you would like a student to work with you as an intern (paid, volunteer, or for credit), we can list your internship. Honors students are especially helpful building new programs because of their strong task commitment. For more information contact Jill Johnson (
Jill.Johnson@asu.edu or 727-6993).
Thesis mentor: Mentoring a student through the thesis/creative project is the most time consuming and the most rewarding experience with honors students. All BHC students must complete a piece of work that is considered honors-worthy in a discipline. You can direct students in work that aligns with your research; a number of collaborative faculty-student projects have been presented at national, professional meetings and published. For more information contact Peggy Nelson (
MNelson@asu.edu or 965-9520).
Honors Faculty Advisor: One faculty person in each unit serves as an Honors Advisor to all of the honors students in that unit. The main function of this position is to provide honors students with direction as they move through their major. The BHC pays HFAs a stipend each year, the size of which depends on the number of honors students in that major. For more information contact Kristen Nielsen (
KNielsen@asu.edu or 727-6175).