Honors sophomore certificate is pointless

By: Editorial Board

Posted: 11/17/08

The UConn Honors Program is known for its large cumulative final projects - generally theses that range from 50 to 200 pages in length. However, for students who enter into the honors program as freshmen, there is another lesser known (and totally nonsensical) midpoint project: the sophomore certificate. According to the current practice, incoming honors freshmen are instructed to complete a minimum of 16 special honors credits by the end of their sophomore years. Then, at the beginning of their junior years, the Honors Program holds a special ceremony in honor of their hard work and dedication.

It sounds nice except for one fact: after receiving their sophomore certificates, the honors credits that a student has received become worthless. Honors students are forced to begin anew, earning many more honors credits in order to eventually graduate with the honors distinction.

This system makes absolutely no sense because it fails to offer any meaningful incentive for students who begin the Honors Program their freshman year. Indeed, these students have the following choice: to complete two years' worth of extra-difficult college work in order to receive a paper certificate that has no bearing on whether or not students actually graduate with honors, or to pass on the paper and just beginning taking honors classes their junior year.

This choice makes little sense - the Honors Program is yet again expecting some of UConn's brightest incoming students to do more work for no tangible benefit. And, worse still, many Honors students report being rudely rebuffed when they ask the Honors Program administration about the current system. Indeed, comments like "I tried telling them that I felt the current system didn't make sense, but they told me that this was not the attitude of an honors student," abound among underclass honors students.

Instead of rebuffing these questions, the Honors Program ought to embrace the constructive criticism of its students and alter its structure for their benefit. To begin with, the program needs to start providing tangible benefits for taking honors classes early and frequently. This might come in the form of having a special distinction (recognizable upon graduation) for students who have been in the Honors Program for all four years of college. Or perhaps UConn honors underclassmen should just be given the full four years to complete their honors requirements instead of rushing to take 16 honors credits in the first two years, and then spending their time as upperclassmen taking even more honors classes. In any case, the system must be changed so that UConn's honors freshmen and sophomores are no longer asked to do more work for no real reward.