You can tailor Honors coursework to your individual interest.

Student-Designated H Courses

Though there is a small required core of HP courses, there are also a number of courses that you choose to complete the requirements of the Honors Program. These are regular UMA courses with an Honors (“H”) designation. H-designated courses allow for maximum flexibility in the program, so that you can tailor Honors coursework to your individual interest.

How Do I Give a Course an H Designation?

You can give a course an H-designation by consulting with the course instructor. H-designated courses can be any level and subject. They don’t need to be in your field of study. In fact, because the Honors Program is centered in interdisciplinary studies, it would serve you well to give courses from a range of disciplines an H designation.

Following are guidelines for giving a regular UMA course an H designation.

  1. You should consult with the instructor of the course that you wants to give an H designation before the course begins to find out if the instructor is agreeable to the designation. You should consult with the instructor no later than the third week of the term. “H” designations are not given retroactively, and applications for the designation will not be accepted after the third week of the term. In other words, you must be intentional about choosing courses and consulting with the instructor. In fact, this consultation might (and should) take place during the advising period.
  2. You and the instructor together should create the plan for the “H” designation. The H work a student does may take any number of forms with the understanding that the purpose is to give the opportunity to engage the student more deeply in the course material. If the work that you agree to is in addition to the normal work load for any other student enrolled in the course, it should not exceed 20% of that work load.
  3. Once a plan has been agreed on, you should fill out the HP H-designation form with a list of the courses you will be taking for H credit and the professor teaching the course. This form is found on the Honors Program BrightSpace site; it is an online form, so be sure to fill it out and submit it when it’s complete. It’s your responsibility to notify the Honors Program by the end of the third week of classes and to consult with their professor(s) before submitting this information to the Honors Program.
  4. At the end of the semester, the Honors Program will contact the professor for confirmation that you completed the H work for Honors credit in the H-designated course. The Honors Program will then notify the registrar of completion and the registrar will then indicate an H designation on your transcript. (When looking at your transcript in MaineStreet, if you click on the link titled “Course History by Subject,” you can see which courses you have earned H credit for. An H will appear to the right of the course number.) If you don’t complete the H-designated course work to the instructor’s satisfaction, then the instructor will simply issue the grade that you would have received for the course without work indicated in the H designation plan.
  5. Please be aware that the H designation is separate from your grade and will not necessarily appear when you grade does. The electronic forms sometimes take a while to reach the registrar, so you should check your transcript regularly. If you have taken a course for H credit and completed the work to your instructor’s satisfaction and do not see it credited on your transcript, please contact the Honors Program at umahonorsprogram@maine.edu.

Ways to Give a Course an H Designation

It is the responsibility of the student and instructor to develop a plan for the “H” designation, with the understanding that it should not constitute more than 20% of the regular course work load (if it requires additional work). The general guideline is that the student should engage more deeply in the content of the course material. Following are some, though certainly not all, possibilities for how a regular course might become an H-designated course.

  • The student need not do additional work in the course at all, if she and the instructor are agreeable to this. Instead, the student may simply be required to submit exemplary work throughout the term or to complete a more sophisticated version of a course assignment like a paper or a project. For instance, if an instructor organizes her course on a point system and it is possible to exceed the requisite number of points for an “A” grade, then the student might be asked to exceed that number. For example, if 100 points are required for an A, but 130 points are possible, then the student might be asked to earn 120 points over the course of the term.
  • The student might write a term paper, or a longer, more in-depth term paper if that is already a course assignment.
  • The student might prepare a presentation for a conference presentation, on or off campus.
  • The student might prepare a lecture for the course, or a PowerPoint to illustrate a lecture that the instructor gives.
  • The student might prepare a pedagogical resource for use in the class or beyond.
  • The student might monitor discussion boards on Blackboard for the course, responding to other student posts, initiating discussions, and summarizing them.
  • The student might provide study guides for exams or lead study discussion groups.
  • The student might organize a guest lecturer for the course, make arrangements for the lecturer, prepare readings for the class, and follow up with a talkback.
  • The student might research a particular topic relevant to the course and present it to the class. There are any number of ways to present, depending on the course and its modality.
  • The student might oversee a class blog for the course, or monitor various websites related to the course in order to bring in relevant material.
  • The student might engage in volunteer work or service related to the course subject matter and write a reflection that connects this work to the course content.