As a Nisbet Honors student, you will complete 5 or more honors courses, including interdisciplinary courses that connect learning from two different fields and a junior honors seminar designed to give you a leg up in graduate school and life after Converse. Most of these courses are available only to students in the honors program.
Types of Courses
Freshman Honors Seminars
If you come into the program straight from high school, you will typically begin your first semester of college with a Freshman Honors Seminar. These courses count toward General Education Program (GEP) requirements.
Sample Courses:
- “Gender, Indian Wars, and Witchcraft in Colonial New England” (History)
- “Perspectives of the Vietnam Experience in Novels and First Person Accounts” (Politics)
- “A Woman on Stage! Masterpieces of Spanish Theatre in English Translation” (Hispanic Studies)
Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars
As signature Converse experiences, these courses are team-taught by professors from different fields. You will take at least one of these as a Nisbet Honors student. These courses count toward General Education Program (GEP) requirements and sometimes major requirements.
Sample Courses:
- “The Sixties in Music and Historical Memory” (History and Music History)
- “Philosophy of Religion” (Philosophy and Religion)
- “The Politics of Energy” (Political Science and Physics)
- “The Great Depression” (History and Economics)
- “Biology of Sexuality and the Literature of Love, Marriage, and Birth” (Biology and English)
Junior Honors Seminar
This is a one-credit course designed to help students prepare for life after Converse. You’ll learn about graduate school scholarships, draft a personal statement for grad school applications, find out about undergraduate research opportunities, revise resumes, discuss family and career challenges, and explore the meaning of the liberal arts before and after graduation.
Honors Directed Independent Studies
As more distinguishing factors of the Converse experience, these one-term independent research or creative project courses are designed by one or two students together with a faculty mentor. Students taking these courses often present their work at conferences or in publications.
Upper-level Honors Courses
In these courses, students delve deeper into less common topics to fulfill major requirements or to explore an area of interest.
Sample Courses:
- “From Colonial Goodwives to Martha Stewart: Domestic Advice and Experience in America”
- “Intelligence and the Brain”
- “Women in Africa and Asia”
Senior Honors Thesis
This is an intensive and often interdisciplinary research project, creative project, or musical performance beginning during a student’s junior year and culminating in a public presentation to the college and local community late in your senior year. In consultation with a faculty mentor, the student designs the project, helps select an advisory committee of faculty, and researches and creates the final work. Highly qualified and motivated students are permitted to do an honors thesis as a substitute for two upper-level honors courses.