Honors Courses & Contract

About honors coursework

Honors courses provide additional challenges, emphasize writing and critical thinking skills, and give you the chance to explore topics in greater depth. JCC honors courses will allow you to network with leaders and professionals on campus and in the community. Additionally, the courses will provide opportunities to work one-on-one with professors and build mentoring relationships.

To earn JCC’s honors citation, you must successfully complete:

  • one three-credit hour honors symposium course
  • two one-credit hour project-based honors courses

Honors Symposium courses

The honors symposium is a three-credit course designed to inspire you to approach global topics from diverse perspectives. You will have the opportunity to delve into intriguing discussion and participate in an environment that fosters curiosity and academic exploration.

Spring 2024

  • Waste & Want - Global Food Systems (ANT 7514 - 3 cr. hr. - Shannon Bessette)

Students will understand how food is one of our most basic needs, but few of us think about how food is produced, where in the world it comes from, or how it must travel to get to us. This course will help students understand social, political and economic processes such as colonization, industrialization, and corporatization, and how they laid the foundation for the current global food system. Students will also engage with ongoing, contemporary concerns such as the relationship between agriculture and the environment, food waste, labor practices, food aid, and how race, class, gender, and nationality impact our experience of food systems. Throughout the course, we’ll look at how people resist and reshape food systems, and how we can find alternatives that do more to protect people and the environment.

Honors project-based courses

To earn the honors citation, you are required to successfully complete two one-credit, project-based honors courses which are related to courses in which you are currently enrolled or have recently completed. Each project must include some form of applied learning: fieldwork, internship, service learning, innovative/creative project, and/or undergraduate research. After registering, you will be guided by the honors program coordinator and your advisor to identify a course to which to link your project. You’ll then work directly with a faculty member to design a project that fits your interests and goals. Your project-based courses will help you develop and practice organizational and time-management skills.

Each project-based honors course must include:

  • 45 hours of applied learning (such as fieldwork, internship, service learning, innovative/creative project, and/or undergraduate research)
  • An 8-10 page researched essay
  • A public presentation/demonstration of the project (may take place within a campus or community setting and may include JCC Student Showcase presentations)

Students and instructors are advised to complete learning contracts for semester project-based courses by the end of week six.

Fall 2023

  • Honors Project I: INT 2015 – CRN 3720 – Instructor A. Raynor
  • Honors Project II: INT 2515 – CRN 3721 – Instructor A. Raynor

Spring 2024

  • Honors Project I: INT 2015 – CRN 3541 – Instructor A. Raynor
  • Honors Project II: INT 2515 – CRN 3542 – Instructor A. Raynor

Honors contracts

The honors program sets the requirements for earning the honors citation and coordinates the agreement between faculty members and students. The instructor for each course determines the individual student’s grade.

If you are a faculty member who has agreed to work with an honors student to complete a project-based course, fill out the required e-contract and begin the process. Once filled out, send it to your respective dean to continue the process.'