INFORMATICS
Honors Program Will Lure the Best and the Brightest
The Information School in January 2006 became a participant in the University of Washington’s Honors Program, enabling undergraduate students in Informatics to graduate with College or Departmental Honors and allowing the School to offer designated Honors courses. Students can begin to pursue Informatics Honors options immediately.
“While Informatics has been successful in attracting highly capable University Honors students each year, these students have been unable to complete their Honors program within our major because the Information School didn’t participate at the university level,” explains Mariko Navin, director of undergraduate student services. “Now qualified students will be able to take Honors courses within the Informatics major and graduate with Honors.”
The UW Honors Program oversees two kinds of honors tracks, College and Departmental Honors. College Honors is a four-year track that students typically enter as freshmen, completing a 45-credit Honors core curriculum in lieu of the University’s standard 60-credit general education requirement plus the department’s honors requirements to graduate “with College Honors.” Departmental Honors, on the other hand, begins when a student enters a major and consists of honors requirements completed within the major, leading to a degree “with Distinction.”
Approved academic units can participate in the UW Honors Program either on an ad hoc basis (with courses arranged as “Honors” on a course-by-course basis) or by creating a specially designated Honors curriculum within the major. The iSchool currently has limited resources for programs that serve a few students, so the School will initially participate on an ad hoc basis, although it may consider creating special Honors courses in the future as the program matures and as resources permit.
Ad hoc Informatics Honors courses will be arranged between individual students and consenting faculty members, with courses designated as Honors based on the completion of supplementary work, following University Honors Program guidelines. Projects that lead to Honors course designation may include extended or additional writing assignments, participation in faculty research and/or public presentation of research, and service learning.
“At this time, the number of Informatics majors seeking Honors will be only a handful of students per year, but the demand from qualified students is strong,” says Navin. “Without our participation in the Honors program, our students--even those who entered the University Honors program as freshmen and completed the rigorous Honors Core curriculum prior to admission to our major--would not be eligible to graduate with Honors in Informatics. Without an honors program, we were at risk of losing prospective students to programs that offers Honors options. The Informatics Honors Program will not only help to retain--but also to attract--the University’s most promising and capable undergraduate students to the iSchool.”
The Informatics program joins 51 other undergraduate majors on the Seattle campus that offer Honors. For more information on the UW Honors Program, please see the UW Honors website.
Whatever your dreams in life, you'll need the right information at the right time to reach your goals. Our job at the iSchool is to help you flourish by marshaling information and technology to serve you. We do that when we apply our expertise to important questions and nurture the minds of future professional leaders. The iSchool believes that connecting people with knowledge is of fundamental individual and societal importance.