Honors Contract
An Honors contract allows students and faculty to collaborate towards creating opportunities for the student to dive deeper into the course subject matter through intellectually creative components that will be completed alongside existing course requirements.
Students get the opportunity to:
- Work closely with dedicated and passionate faculty
- Gain leadership, independence, and other crucial skills to increase comfort and success in 4-year and/or professional environments
- Use their Honors projects for submission to undergraduate conferences
- Have Honors credit noted on their transcript
Faculty get the opportunity to:
- Work closely with dedicated and passionate students
- Share their knowledge and experience beyond the course outline and objectives
- Act as a mentor that nurtures and inspires our future scholars
- Be part of our Honors community where we honor ourselves and our community through collaboration, curiosity, and creativity toward imagining a future we have yet to create.
Submission Steps
Check the Honors Canvas shell for Fall and Spring deadlines (self-enroll link: https://sdccd.instructure.com/enroll/WNHMBD)STEP 1: Select the course that you want to convert into an Honors class and let your professor
know you are interested in collaborating with them to turn their class into an Honors
class.
You can turn almost ANY class into an Honors class through an honors contract including
classes that are fully online, partially online, and short-term. (Exceptions: course numbers below 100, chemistry course number below 200, course units
below 3, and summer courses).
STEP 2: Your professor agrees to work with you, so they invite you to join Honors through
their SDCCD faculty dashboard (share the video tutorial below with your professor.
It tells them how to invite students to Honors).
Click here for print step by step instructions on how to invite students to apply
for Honors.
Note: Be prepared to explain why you are interested in pursuing additional study
in this course. If your professor is willing to create a contract with you, think
about scheduling an appointment with them to discuss the components of your Honors
contract (i.e., Between 3 - 5 additional Honors assignments).
STEP 3: You will receive an email that lets you know that your professor has invited you
to honors. You can then go to your SDCCD student dashboard and apply for honors using
the drop down menu that appears when you right click on the course number.
Click here for step by step instructions on how to apply for Honors.
STEP 4: Click submit on the bottom of the page. You should receive another email confirming/notifying
you that your contract is submitted. There is nothing more for you to do, other than
to successfully complete the course and honors requirements. There is nothing more
for your professor to do, other than submit the Honors syllabus addendum you both
designed together. They upload the syllabus addendum to the Mesa Honors Canvas shell
(self-enroll link: https://sdccd.instructure.com/enroll/WNHMBD)
Honors Course vs. Honors Contract
Honors courses are offered each semester in a variety of subject areas. They are listed in the Online Schedule of Classes (select the "Class Attributes" option under the "More Options" tab).Honors courses vary according to discipline, but all increase the range and depth of the learning experience by stimulating strong critical thinking skills, generating lively discussion, facilitating student collaboration, and teaching advanced research and writing skills.
