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International Studies majors who wish to graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill with honors or highest honors must complete a senior honors thesis. Rising senior International and Area Studies majors with a minimum cumulative 3.2 GPA are eligible (see eligibility note below). Students undertaking an honors thesis must enroll their senior year in a year-long seminar. Students who successfully complete a senior honors thesis will have the designation "honors" or "highest honors" printed beside their names in the Commencement bulletin and recorded on their diplomas and transcripts. **An information session for 2008-2009 prospective honors students will be held Friday, Feb. 22, 2008 at 11 am on the 4th floor of the FedEx Global Education Center. Students planning to submit a prospectus for admission to the honors seminar are encouraged, but not required, to attend. Before attending the info session, please review the information posted below. Applying to the Honors Seminar Honors Project Research Funding The Honors Thesis and Time Commitment Important Note Regarding Eligibility
APPLYING TO THE HONORS SEMINAR The first task for a prospective honors student is to identify a thesis topic. Students are encouraged to consider integrating a study abroad into honors work, as it provides an excellent opportunity for research that can be used for an honors thesis. Once a topic has been chosen, the next step is to identify a thesis advisor. Any member of the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty is eligible to serve as a thesis advisor, as are retired faculty and post-doctoral fellows. Graduate students cannot serve as advisors. While the thesis advisor may come from any department at UNC, the advisor's area of expertise should be consistent with the topic of the student's thesis. The Center for Global Initiatives maintains a searchable database of faculty with international expertise. Once a topic and advisor have been identified, the prospective honors student must submit a 2-3 page prospectus in the spring of the junior year. The prospectus should outline the student's project and indicate the name of a faculty member who has agreed to serve as thesis advisor. For students planning to write theses during academic year 2008-9, the deadline for submission of the prospectus is Monday, March 24th, 2008. A designated committee in CIAS, to include Professor Banu Gokariksel, who will be teaching the Honors seminar during the 2008-9 academic year, will evaluate the substance, feasibility, and clarity of the project outline in order to determine admission into the INTS honors program. In writing the prospectus, you should include the following:
The prospectus must be typed, double spaced, in 11 or 12 point font. It should be submitted electronically to Tara Hudson. HONORS PROJECT RESEARCH FUNDING The Honors Office offers financial awards to support senior honors thesis research. There are two funding cycles per year, with proposal deadlines in September and March. The March funding cycle makes funding awards to students whose projects are sufficiently well-planned that they could begin work over the summer before their senior year. Award funds may be used to support any legitimate cost directly connected to the undertaking of the honors project. Students must meet the honors minimum cumulative GPA requirement of 3.2 to apply for an award. Projects with an international dimension may qualify for a supplemental award of up to $500 from the Center for Global Initiatives. Students must apply through the Curriculum in International and Area Studies; please contact Tara Hudson for more information. The deadline for the spring 2008 funding cycle is March 17, 2008 at 4:00 pm. Funding is also available through the Office of Undergraduate Research, and the Center for Global Initiatives offers awards to students conducting international research projects. THE HONORS THESIS AND TIME COMMITMENT An honors thesis is a substantial piece of original research; in other words, students are engaged in creating their own academic scholarship. The intent of the thesis is to pose and answer a unique research question, or to shed new light on a topic that has previously received scholarly attention. Writing an honors thesis is a substantial time commitment. Many students begin their projects the summer before their senior year so that they can spend the school year focusing on the writing. Most theses run 60-100+ pages and cite 20-50+ sources, so on top of the writing, there is a substantial amount of background research that goes into the thesis. The thesis process may also involve travel, interviews, or other data collection and analysis, depending on a student's topic and methodology. Therefore, writing an honors thesis is something students need to be 100% committed to doing. It also requires excellent time management skills and discipline, as it is a very self-directed process. Prospective honors students are encouraged to look at theses from past years to get an idea of what the final product encompasses. Past theses are housed in the suite of the Curriculum in International and Area Studies and are also available at the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Library. Abstracts of recent theses are available via the Honors Program's archive. Each year, the Douglas Eyre Prize is awarded to the author of the best International Studies thesis. Click here to read the 2008 winning thesis, "Managing Society: The Politics of Social Provision in Kazakhstan's Oil Industry" by Elizabeth V. Carlson. The year-long honors seminar is composed of two 3-credit courses: INTS 691H (taken in the fall) and INTS 692H (taken in the spring). Students receive three hours of major credit (as either a theme or area course) for INTS 692H. INTS 691H will receive elective credit. The seminar meets more frequently in the first semester than the second. The seminar director expects each student to produce a rough draft of about two-thirds of the thesis in the first semester. The second semester will be devoted to finishing the rough draft, rewriting, and finalizing the thesis, as well as preparing for the oral defense of the thesis. The oral defense must be completed by early April for May graduates; the exact deadline will be provided to students enrolled in the seminar. The defense will take place before the student's honors committee, composed of his or her advisor and a second reader. The committee will determine whether the student should receive highest honors, honors, or course credit only. IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING ELIGIBILITY Students who wish to write a senior honors thesis must have a cumulative GPA of 3.2 or higher. Students with GPAs below this standard but for whom it is mathematically possible to achieve a 3.2 by the end of the first semester of the honors seminar may be allowed to provisionally enroll in INTS 691H. These students must petition the Assistant Dean of Honors, Anne MacNeil, for permission to enroll in the seminar. If a student's cumulative GPA drops below 3.2 or if a provisional student fails to meet the 3.2 standard at the close of the semester in which INTS 691H is taken, that student will not be allowed to enroll in INTS 692H and will not be eligible to graduate with honors. This is a university-wide rule, and there are no exceptions. Such students will receive course credit for the work completed, and may be allowed to continue their projects as independent study, with the approval of the CIAS Director of Undergraduate Studies.
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