Nisbet Honors Program

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:

• Literacy and the Life & Work of C.S. Lewis
• Music & Society in the 1960’s
• Getting Glazed: The Art & Science of Ceramics
• Numbers, Infinity & Reality
• Border-Crossing From Africa to Spain Through Documentaries & Films

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.

Eligible students will be invited into the Nisbet Honors Program and will be recognized as a Nisbet Honors graduate once they meet all the requirements.

Eligibility

Students enter the program either as incoming freshmen or as late entrants.

Incoming Freshmen: Admitted freshmen will be guaranteed an invitation into the Nisbet Honors Program if they meet the following standards:

• ACT Composite of 28 (or better) OR SAT Combined Math and Evidence Based Reading and Writing of 1300 (or better) AND
• Class rank of 10% or better

Admitted students from high schools which don’t provide class ranking, as well as other academically talented incoming students, will be considered individually and notified on a rolling basis if they are invited to join the Nisbet Honors Program.

Other accepted students who chose the test-optional route but are similarly high achievers may be asked to write an essay or provide other information to be considered for the program.

Late Entrants: Students who do very well once they have begun their studies at Converse are also considered for the program. Freshmen and Converse II students must earn at least a 3.5 GPA after taking 12 hours at Converse to be invited to apply. After receiving an invitation to apply, a student is required to complete an application, request a letter of recommendation from a full-time professor at Converse, and submit a graded sample of 2-3 pages of writing. If the application is accepted, the student may immediately begin participating in honors extracurricular activities and may take honors courses starting the next term. All students who apply should realize that Honors Program courses are not regularly offered in the evenings.

Requirements

To complete the Nisbet Honors Program and be recognized at graduation, students must perform well in academic courses after entering the Honors Program. To remain in the program, members should maintain a GPA above 3.2 and receive grades of B- or better in honors courses. To graduate from the Nisbet Honors Program, all students must complete the following three courses:

• Freshman honors seminar (199H) (or, if a student begins the program as a late entrant, another honors course to replace it.)
• Interdisciplinary honors seminar (299H course)
• Junior honors seminar (fall or spring)

Additionally, all students must choose ONE of the following options:

• Two additional honors courses
• One additional honors course and an honors directed independent study
• One additional honors course and an honors module
• Completion of an honors thesis

Generally, the selected option will constitute 6-8 hours of coursework.