Course by Contract Information

Course by contract is available to students in Honors Interdisciplinary Program or Upper Division Honors Program from cohorts in pre-FALL2023 catalog years.

To complete a course by contract*, an Honors student may seek approval from the faculty member teaching the course to explore some topic in the course more deeply as a way to meet a portion of the Academic Foundations requirements. This contract must be submitted to the Honors Program to be counted as Honors credit. This way, students can complete their Honors course requirements while also completing requirements for their major or minor(s).

*Upper Division Honors students must complete courses from 300 or 400 level to count as sufficient Honors credit

Typical project proposals for the Course by Contract option include:

• doing additional selected readings from two or three unassigned texts followed by a summary report on them.
• undertaking additional research and writing a paper on it.
• working on a related project with the course professor.
• taking part in a hands-on experience to compliment course discussion then writing a summary on what was learned.
• completing a service-learning component with appropriate reflection.
• building and presenting a lesson to the class.
• maintaining a weekly blog about the course.

NOTE: faculty may offer specific projects to Honors students in their class

If the faculty member teaching the course agrees to the proposed project, the student should submit the Honors Upper Division Course by Contract approval form, which can be found under the Forms page

Students approved to do a Course by Contract must:

• complete the approved project by the end of the last regular day of class for the semester in which they are enrolled in the course--i.e. BEFORE final exams.
• obtain instructor signature on the Course by Contract form verifying that the project has been successfully completed.
• earn an A or B in the upper division course for which the project is being done, or if the course is only taught on a pass/fail basis, the student must pass the course.
• provide all documentation to the Honors Program in a timely manner.

If all work has been completed successfully as noted above, the Honors Upper Division Course by Contract will be used to satisfy 3 course credits under the Honors Academic Foundations requirement.

Course by Contract Examples

Dan Kinglsey
EDSE325: Behavior Dimensions of Students with Exceptionalities
Instructor: Jason Robinson
“I will be creating a PowerPoint with information about tools to use in a classroom to make it more sensory-sensitive friendly. I will do additional research about how to best support sensory-sensitive students in the classroom.”

Grace Cheney
PSY375: Sensation and Perception
Instructor: Ryan Darling
“I plan to explore, in depth, the use of color in expressive art therapy. I believe that it has a profound impact on the mind and body, as well as offering creative freedom to patients. Strengthening my understanding of color, through additional reading and application within PSY375 will enhance my knowledge of traditional expressive art therapy.”

Angie Kaufmann
ENG195: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth
Instructor: Kristin Bovaird-Abbo
“I created a 7^th grade level lesson plan over J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit as an additional project for ENG195. In developing a lesson plan, I will need to become familiarly with the specific learning student objectives of a typical 7^th grade English classroom using Colorado State Standards. I will then need to think about how Tolkien’s The Hobbit will allow me to achieve specific learning objectives as well as articulate specific assessments, linking each clearly to the desired student learning objectives.”

Caroline LaPrade
AST100: The Sky and Planets
Instructor: Charles Kuehn
“Each week, I will write weekly reflections about the lecture and textbook material and how it relates to the development of civilization. I will research the weekly topics outside of class regarding their discovery and its influence on the relevant era and growth of civilization. This includes describing how it affected the era it was discovered, how the knowledge of the topic has been updated or changed, and/or how the scientific conclusion has continued to impact us today. My weekly reflections will be 1-3 paragraphs long and emailed directly to the teacher by the end of Sunday each week."

Dani Magasano
BAMG353: Human Resource Management
Instructor: Milan Larson
“I will interview 4-5 human resource professionals about their real-time leadership changes, specifically with the impact of COVID-19. After the interviews, I will compile a 1-2 page reflection of each interview and analyze prevalent themes found throughout the group of professionals.”

Marguerite Bradley
THEA160: Beginning Acting
Instructor: Rebecca Rich
“For my extra project, my professor will provide me with extra reading materials and videos to further my learning within the class, and I will prepare a self-taped or performed monologue to show development and learning from this extra material.”

Lisa O’Connor
PSCI207: Women and Politics
Instructor: Chelsea Welker
“I will be required to read 4 additional longer readings that allow for greater understanding of course material and a more in depth understanding of legal doctrine relating to women and politics. I will also be required to write 4 short argumentative reflection papers (2-3 pages double-spaced) in response to these readings. I will also be required to write a 3 page, longer final research paper.”

Maxim Tuell
GNDR380: Queer Studies
Instructor: Christine Talbot
“This paper seeks to exemplify the current trends in secondary language arts and literature education regarding the queering of curriculums and application of queer theory to classroom pedagogy, as well as potential future directions therein.”

Brandon Elias
BIO210: Cellular Biology
Instructor: Andrea James
“I will write roughly 300-word weekly reflections about how the course material relates to career goals and/or science knowledge. A follow-up 30 minute discussion with my instructor will be included.”

Karyssa Cowan
MUS150: History of Rock and Roll
Instructor: Leo Welch
“I will be writing my additional paper for this class on the song American Pie and the events leading up to the song as well as the culture surrounding it. In class we talked a little bit about some of the major rock artists that “died” off in 1958-59 which caused the first wave of rock to end and kind of die off for a few year. My paper will expand on all these events and go into why these figures were so influential that their absence cause the first wave to die off and other music genres to have a small rise. This relates to my self-designed theme of showing how the history and culture of a time period reflects the music because in my paper I will be showing how the events at the time and the culture of the late 50s motivated the lyrics in the song. I will emphasize the impact of the culture on the artist’s rise and then also how the culture reacted to their absence specifically in the song American Pie.”