Please consider teaching a 1-hour Honors Seminar! HON 301 is an open topic seminar for up to 15 Honors Students. At only 1 credit hour, it does not overly burden your teaching load, and the Honors College encourages great flexibility and creativity in how you structure your course. Instruction should be at the level of a vigorous introductory course. Frequently, these seminars teach material that fits within traditional disciplines, but does this through examination of an unusual topic. Interdisciplinary and even team-taught proposals are welcome. Some sample courses from recent years are listed at the end of this email. Benefits of teaching this course include:
- Leading a small seminar with outstanding students
- Teaching something you know and love but rarely get to talk about
- Potential to recruit students into your field, either as undergraduates or graduates
- A chance to try out a new course idea or to teach a course connected to your research
- An opportunity to earn professional development funds
The Honors College will happily accept proposals for 1 credit-hour HON 301 courses for Spring 2021 up until September 1, 2020. Proposals should include:
- The topic of the course, explained in a few sentences that would appeal to students.
- A potential reading list (if appropriate - HON 301 sections do not require texts and can be all discussion, all lecture, or use other media besides text)
- A rough outline of the specific topics to be covered in the course
- A short summary of the possible assignments
- A brief explanation of the goals and learning outcomes of the course
- A statement about course modality: as small seminars, we can offer these as in-person courses with a remote option, but we have also offered fully online 301 seminars.
The proposal should be no more than 2 pages total and should be submitted electronically to the Honors Dean at wilkerw@uah.edu. The Honors Dean and Honors Council will review proposals and decide which ones to offer based upon the quality of the proposal and the proposed course’s potential fit with current offerings. If a course is not accepted for Spring 2021, Honors would still be willing to consider it for a later semester. Faculty who submitted proposals last year that were not accepted are encouraged to submit revised proposals. Honors 301 is typically taught as an overload, with overload pay coming from the Honors College. Please note that approval from both your Department Chair and Dean will be required before the course is fully approved. Please direct any questions to the Honors College Dean (wilkerw@uah.edu).
Selected past seminar titles:
- Robot Ethics
- Economics of Beer
- Rapid Prototyping with Raspberry Pi
- Bhagavad Gita: Yoga Philosophy and Practice
- Philosophy of Star Wars
- Environmental Economics
- Poverty in the U.S. (interdisciplinary service-learning course)
- Planets, Exoplanets, and other Worlds
