Proposals are now being accepted for Fall 2025 Honors Seminars.
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 courses are structured. Instruction should be at the level of a vigorous introductory course. Frequently, these seminars teach material that fits within traditional disciplines, but does so 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
- 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 or a small stipend
The Honors College will happily accept proposals for 1 credit-hour HON 301 courses for Fall 2025 until February 14, 2025. 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. Small seminars can be offered as in-person courses with a remote option, but we have also offered entirely online seminars.
The proposal should be no more than 2 pages total, and should be submitted electronically to the Interim Honors Dean at keith.hollingsworth@uah.edu. The Interim Honors Dean and Honors staff 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 Fall 2025, Honors would still be willing to consider it for a later semester. Faculty who submitted proposals last term that were not accepted are encouraged to submit revised proposals.
Examples of selected past seminar titles include:
Robot Ethics
Mathematics of Social Justice
Rapid Prototyping with Raspberry Pi
Health in Space
Physics of Video Games
Role-playing Ancient Greek History
Batman and Philosophy
Toxicity in the American Workplace
Moving Beyond Apollo: The US Space Program in the 1970s and 1980s
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 Interim Dean (keith.hollingsworth@uah.edu).