Department Honors Liaisons Guide

Department Honors Liaisons connect students and faculty to foster undergraduate research experiences and creative collaboration and to provide research support for faculty scholarship. As an overlay program comprised of more than 2000 students (and inclusive of students from every major on campus), the Honors College depends on these liaisons to serve as a key link between their departments and the Honors College.

Responsibilities include:

  • Connecting students and faculty mentors for Fellowships and for Honors Projects: Work with Honors College to arrange a meeting with faculty and students in their second year (first year for transfers) to talk with them about how to find a mentor.
  • Attending Honors Department Liaison meetings once a semester.
  • Alerting faculty in department about Honors networking events, Calls for Fellowship Proposals, and other Honors events / opportunities for faculty.
  • Working with Honors to schedule conference-style presentations of projects to showcase the department’s students. Any questions or communication regarding this process should be sent to Rae Mansfield (email: Rae_Mansfield@uml.edu). Here are the steps to follow:
    • Honors provides a list of students from your department who plan to complete Honors and graduate at the end of the semester. These lists will be available by mid-October for Fall graduates and by early March for Spring graduates. These are the students who will need to present their projects.
    • Based on the number of students, select several dates / times and locations for conference-style presentations. All presentations must be completed by the Friday of finals week.
    • Either assign dates/times or contact students and their committee members and ask them to sign up for a time on a first-come first-serve basis. These schedules should be set by November 15 for Fall / March 30 for Spring.
    • Share your schedule with Honors by November 15 for Fall / March 30 for Spring.
    • Presentations should follow the norms of your discipline but should be a minimum of 12 minutes followed by a question-and-answer period. An Honors representative and at least one member of the student’s committee must be present. If your department schedules presentations as part of a senior showcase/capstone class, please provide Honors with the date, time, and location. Honors will assist with logistics, if necessary, especially in the case of interdisciplinary presentations.
  • Making sure Honors Plan(s) for your department’s major(s) is up to date:
    • Honors need the liaisons to identify any changes in elective and / or breadth of knowledge courses that are most desirable for the given major (for example: some engineering majors are required to take microeconomics) and which course(s) your department prefers students take to back the Honors Project (capstone, senior research, directed study and more). This will help us to identify courses that should be offered as Honors courses and might require the lecture / recitation format.