Honors at Wayne State University
Why Honors?
Community. Service. Research. Career.
These four pillars define the undergraduate experience for members of the Honors Program. During each year of study, you'll concentrate your efforts on one of the four pillars.
Year One
The focus of the Honors first year is community and the urban experience. You'll enroll in a two-part signature course, City I and City II, which focuses on urban issues and history, introducing you to different disciplinary approaches to the city.
The course includes both lectures and a freshman seminar, and creates a sense of community within the Honors first-year class. You get to know one another and take advantage of the Detroit Passport, which includes tickets to cultural and entertainment events. The year culminates with students working in small groups to create a community-based research project on topics such as child literacy, recycling, or poverty.
You'll create an academic plan of work incorporating curriculum, as well as Honors advising and faculty mentoring.
Year Two
Year two involves service learning, which takes the skills you have cultivated in the classroom and puts them to use in real-world situations.
Service learning courses provide valuable experiences and help the communities WSU serves. These courses combine academic skills and hands-on practice. You work with your course instructor and classmates to perform research and reflection on elements of your service projects. Honors collaborates with community partners – organizations that know how to target needs and monitor students’ work – to achieve maximum benefit for all participants.
Service learning is not volunteering – it’s serving and learning. It provides solid, needed work to the community and enriches your knowledge and understanding of society while advancing your academic preparation in your chosen field of study.
For example, some students participate in the Detroit Fellows Tutoring Project, a service-learning opportunity within Honors. Tutors earn two to four Honors credit hours while teaching reading skills to children in kindergarten through fourth grade.
Other students undertake community-based service projects that grow out of the Honors first year course. These projects may range from daycare to music education; they involve students as responsible, active participants in the life of their community.
Year Three
In year three, you are encouraged to develop individual, funded research projects. Hands-on research experience provides important preparation for graduate school as well as professional opportunities.
Working with full-time faculty mentors, you can apply for Undergraduate Research Grants which provide funding up to $2,300. You can apply to present your work at the university’s Undergraduate Research Conference, sponsored by Honors. This annual event showcases the university's best undergraduate research projects and allows student researchers the opportunity to share their work through panel and poster presentations. You may be selected to present your work at the Michigan Undergraduate Research Forum or the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Financial support is available for students accepted at these symposia.
Through your research projects, you become vital contributors to the research mission at the university.
Year Four
You begin working on a career plan the day you enter the university. But you concentrate your efforts in year four, when you complete a senior thesis, which is the culmination of your undergraduate work and the first step toward a postgraduate career. Completion of the thesis is required to graduate with honors. The thesis is a substantial research-based project written in collaboration with a faculty mentor in the your major.
As an Honors graduate, you will be better prepared thanks to career-building experiences beginning with the freshman seminar and including undergraduate research projects and faculty mentoring. These experiences are beneficial in applying for jobs, as well as graduate or professional study.