Honors in Biological Sciences (BSCI 296)

• Introduction to the Biological Sciences Honors program
• Deadline for submission
• Finding an Advisor
• Other Considerations
• Formal Requirements for the Honors Program in Biological Sciences
• Recommended form of the written report and the thesis
• Honors Thesis (296) and Research Report (283, 286) preparation

This department has a vigorous Departmental Honors program, whose central feature is a two- or more- semester research project under the guidance of a faculty member. About 15-25% of our majors participate. The following pages contain the official description of the program. Professor James Patton directs the program. He will be happy to discuss the program with you.

Apply to the Honors program by May 15 between your junior and senior years at the latest. It is recommended that students begin planning for Honors by the first semester of their junior year.

You should select an advisor from the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences. We recommend that you interview several faculty members before making a selection. In most cases, students applying to the Honors program will already have begun their research, as a BSCI 283 or BSCI 286 project. This sequence is recommended, but not required. Faculty from departments other than Biological Sciences are not eligible to serve as research mentors unless they play an active role in the teaching of Biological Sciences majors.

Note that although you may enroll in BSCI 296 before you have applied to the Departmental Honors program, you may be dropped from the course during the summer or at the beginning of the Fall semester if you have not yet been accepted into the Departmental Honors program. College rules do not allow students to enroll in Honors classes (including Honors research) unless they have been accepted into the appropriate Departmental Honors program. You can be re-instated, but that makes extra work for you and us; it is a lot easier if you apply early.

If you have already completed more than one semester of research for credit by the end of your junior year, you may have to be careful about negotiating the College rules about research and Honors programs. Honors students will normally take BSCI 296 in both semesters of the senior year. There are situations where this might be varied.

A minimum grade point average of 3.25 and the approval of the faculty are required to enter the program. Students with averages below 3.4 will require strong support from the potential research advisor to obtain faculty approval; nevertheless, students with a strong interest in research should not be deterred from applying to the program by averages in this range; we are well aware that research ability is not necessarily highly correlated with GPA.

In general, we recommend planning ahead so that you can meet your graduation requirements without having to take more than 15 hours during a semester that includes Honors research. But if that is not possible, do not be deterred; some Honors students have taken heavier loads during the senior year. Honors students have also completed double majors and minors without difficulty.

I)  Eligibility for the Program

1. In order to enter the Honors program in Biological Sciences, a student must  meet the conditions required by the College of Arts and Science for admission to Departmental Honors programs
2. Have a grade point average in courses required for the appropriate Biological Sciences major of 3.25 or greater at the time of entry
3. Be approved by a majority vote of the faculty of the department. In deciding whether or not to admit the student, the faculty may consider any criteria that serve to assess the student's capacity for independent study and successful completion of a research project.

II. Admission to the Program
It is recommended that students planning to apply for admission to the program should contact the Honors program director, Professor James Patton during the second semester of the junior year. A research advisor for the student will then be chosen by mutual agreement of the student, the program director, and the advisor. In most cases, students will already be in a laboratory research program by that time, and most students choose to continue in the same laboratory. The student should apply to the program not later than the end of the first week of the first semester of the student's senior year. Students may begin Honors research before the Senior year, provided that they demonstrate scientific maturity to the extent that would reasonably be required of all entrants to the departmental Honors program.

The application must include a written research proposal prepared by the student and approved by the advisor, outlining the intended program of research.

Instructions for completing the application

• The Research Proposal section must be between 1200 and 2400 characters including spaces.
• The checklist is required.
• Applications not meeting length specification or missing information will be returned.
• BSCI GPA does not include General Chemistry or Organic Chemistry.
• Registering for BSCI 296: You must register for at least 4 hours. Most students register for 4/6, 5/5 or 6/4 in the two semesters of the Senior year. If this does not work for you, see the Director of the Honors Program.
• This form meets the College requirement for a written study plan for both semesters of Honors research.
• For complete program requirements, consult the Undergraduate Catalog, and the requirements for the Departmental Honors program.
• click to download application
  

Upon receipt of the student's application, the Honors program director will present the application to the faculty of the department.

If the faculty accept the application, the Honors program director will recommend the student to the Honors Committee of the College for formal admission to the program.

The Department Chair will then appoint members and designate the Chair of an examining committee. The committee will be appointed by the end of the third week of the semester. The committee will consist of four members of the Department faculty, including the advisor and the Honors program director. Exceptionally, and at the Department Chair's discretion, the committee may consist of five faculty members. Exceptionally, and at the Department Chair's discretion, the committee may include one member from outside the department.

III. Requirements of the Program
To receive Honors or High Honors in Biological Sciences, a student in the Departmental Honors Program must:

1. Complete the requirements for the appropriate major.
2. Complete BSCI 265 (MCB major); complete one of BSCI 223, 224, 230, 238, 239, 247, 257, 270 (EEOB major); complete at least two lecture courses with a course number greater than 221.
3. Achieve a minimum grade point average of 3.25 in all courses that count toward the major.
4. Satisfactorily pursue a research project under the supervision of the advisor, for a minimum of 10 semester hours credit in BSCI 283, BSCI 286, or BSCI 296. A minimum of 8 hours must be Honors research, BSCI 296.
5. Give a progress report to the examining committee at the end of one semester of research. The progress report will have a written component, and will also include an oral presentation.
6. Prepare an Honors Thesis, based on the research project, to be read and evaluated by the examining committee. The thesis must be submitted to the examining committee by 5 p.m. on the last day of classes before graduation.
7. Defend the thesis orally before the examining committee. The oral examination will be on the thesis and related material. The examination will take place no later than the end of final examinations during the second semester of the senior year.

IV. Awards
After the thesis defense, the committee will recommend to the faculty of the department the award of High Honors, Honors, or no Honors. The department will consider the committee's recommendation, and make its own recommendation by a majority vote.

A recommendation for the award of High Honors is reserved for the rare student whose Honors work is truly outstanding. In making this determination, the committee will consider the written document, the oral defense of the thesis, and the student's Biological Sciences grades.

The Honors program director, together with the Department Chair, will submit the department's recommendation for the appropriate award to the College faculty immediately after that recommendation has been made.

Written report  (due at the end of the first semester)

This report should help the student prepare to write the thesis a few months later. It should, however, be no longer than 6 double spaced pages. It should include:

• an Introduction, giving the background for the research, explaining its significance (including relevance to other projects), and briefly outlining the overall plan of the project.
• a Progress Report, describing experiments attempted and completed, and including both positive and negative results.
• a Research Plan, outlining plans for the second semester of research.

Thesis
The Thesis should include:

• a title page
• an Abstract (not more than 100 words)
• a Table of Contents
• the main body of the text, to include:
  • an Introductory chapter (a more complete version of the Introduction to the Progress Report).
  • an account of the research, including positive and negative results. This account may be organized into one or more chapters.
  • a concluding chapter. This chapter should include conclusions drawn from the research, and recommendations for further research.
  • a reference list. See the section below for reference style.

The main body of the text should not contain more than 20 double spaced pages, including figure legends, but not including Figures, Tables, or References. The thesis should not be in any fixed form of binding.

Note that both the report and the thesis should be viewed as reports of a scientific project. The questions to be answered are "Why is this research important? What did you achieve? Why is this significant? What should be done next?" The question "What did you learn from this experience?" is, of course, an important one for students to ask themselves, and to answer, but it does not form part of the report or the thesis, since the report is a preparation for the thesis, and the thesis is an exercise in scientific communication.

Oral presentation of the progress report; thesis defense

The format of the oral presentation of the progress report and the thesis defense is at the discretion of the Honors program director, who will consult with the Department Chair and members of the departmental faculty before changing them. At present, the formats are:

The oral presentation will take place one to three weeks before the last day of classes in the first semester, before the student's examining committee (but not usually including the Honors Director), and will last about 30 minutes. The presentation will last for about 12 minutes; the remainder of the time will be given to questions from the committee members. A draft of the progress report should be given to each committee member one week before the presentation; this draft will not be considered in grading the semester's work. A copy of the final version of the progress report must be given to each committee member by 5 p.m. on the last day of classes of that semester.

The thesis defense will be open to other undergraduate research students, the departmental faculty, and invited guests. The presentation will last for no more than 15 minutes; 5 minutes will be available for questions from the audience.

The following points apply to all 283 and 286 research reports, as well as Honors theses, unless stated otherwise.

Title page: should include the project title, the student's name, the words "Honors Thesis" or "Research Report", the month and year, the department and university names, and the name of the research advisor. The research advisor is a faculty member; if some other member of the laboratory, such as a research associate, was the effective advisor, he or she should certainly be thanked in an Acknowledgements section, but should not appear on the title page. Example:













Acknowledgements: These are not required, but are often included, and they are certainly a nice idea. If included in a thesis, they should be on a page of their own, after the abstract and before the table of contents. In research reports for 283 and 286, they should be at the end of the main text, before the reference list. Keep them brief and to the point; this gives them more impact. Note that if Mary Jones has a doctorate, she may be referred to as Dr. Mary Jones or as Mary Jones, Ph.D. (or M.D. or D.Phil.), but not as Dr. Mary Jones, Ph.D. Informal acknowledgements (I would like to thank Mary for ..." are also acceptable, if you feel they are appropriate.

Abstract and Table of Contents: required for theses (abstract must not exceed 100 words); not required for 283 and 286 research reports.

Introduction: Whatever else it may contain, an introduction should always include three elements:

• a general overview of the system or topic under study, in terms that are understandable to a well-read scientist in some field outside that of the thesis
• background to the work described in the thesis or report, including its significance; again, the reader is assumed to be from outside the field
• a very brief summary of the work described in the thesis or report
  

A summary of previous work on this project by the student (for example, in a directed or independent research project) and, if relevant, work done by others in the same laboratory, should also be included in the Introduction. Details are not required.

Page numbering: The title page should not be numbered, and the next page (the abstract) should be numbered 2. Ideally, numbers should be centered at the bottom of each page. These are recommendations, not requirements, because I do not want students to waste valuable time trying to change the numbering convention in their word processing programs. The only numbering requirement is that all pages must be numbered.

Fonts and formats: Use a 12-point serif font such as Times New Roman, Times, New Century Schoolbook, or New York. Times New Roman gives an excellent density of characters on the page. Sans-serif fonts such as Ariel and Helvetica are effective as labels (but not as captions) in figures, but these fonts are difficult to read in the body of the text. If you vary fonts and styles (such as boldface), do so extremely sparingly (but note that italics should be used under certain circumstances, see below). Do not divide ordinary text pages into columns. Use an inch margin on all sides.

Text, including Materials and Methods sections, should be double-spaced. Figure captions and reference lists may be single spaced.

Figures and Tables: should be numbered and inserted into the text, with their captions. A figure should appear as soon as possible after the first reference to it. They should not be grouped at the end of chapters or at the end of the thesis or report. They may be incorporated in the text pages, or on separate pages. If space allows, each caption should be on the same page as the corresponding figure or table.

If a figure or table is taken from another person's work, it should be acknowledged as the last sentence in the figure caption: "From Smith & Jones, 1998" or "Courtesy of Mary Wang".

Period covered by the report: For theses, describe the whole Honors project, not just the last semester. If you began the project before your senior year, you should very briefly note in your Introduction how far the project had progressed when you began your formal Honors work. Although you are not normally expected to describe the details of your earlier work, you should not assume that your readers are familiar with those details. If the reader needs to know about the previous work in order to understand the Honors part of the project, a brief explanation is appropriate. For research reports for 283 or 286 in which the work is the continuation of earlier research, summarize the earlier work in the Introduction.

References should be given in the text by author (use the form "et al." for references with more than two authors), and listed alphabetically at the end of the thesis, in the style of Journal of Molecular Biology, Journal of Cell Biology, Evolution, or similar. The title page should not be numbereThe reference list should include all authors (unless there are more than 20, in which case you may use et al. after the first author, even in the reference list), titles, and beginning and ending page numbers.

Some common errors:

The phrase "et al." as in "followed the procedure described by Smith et al.(1989)" is not normally followed by a comma, and has a period after al, but not after et. The comma is, however, used in the form "followed an established procedure (Smith et al., 1989)", when the whole reference is in parentheses. Like all non-English words inserted into an English sentence, the words should be in italics, or underlined. (Underlining is a recognized equivalent of italics.)

The phrase "Smith et al. (1989)" refers to the people, not the paper. The paper has its own title, not usually quoted in the body of the text. For this reason, it is correct to say "was described by Smith et al. (1989)", but not "was described in Smith et al. (1989)". Perhaps an exception might occur if Smith et al. were forced to eat their words.

Et al. is not normally used without a year. "Smith et al. (1989) showed ..." is correct. "Smith et al. showed ... (1989)" is not. "Smith et al. also found ..." is incorrect; it should be replaced either by "Smith et al. (1989) also found ..." or "Smith and his colleagues also found ...". But beware of this last construction; it is very easy to ascribe the leadership of a group to the wrong person this way!

Note the different meanings of "affect" and "effect".

The word "data" is plural. The singular (almost never required) is "datum". Refer, for example, to "these data", not "this data". The same applies to "media" and "criteria", but in these two cases, the singular forms ("medium" and "criterion") are often required.

Do not use apparently technical terms where plain English is clear and unambiguous. For example, "determined via SDS-PAGE" should not be used; "determined by SDS-PAGE" is clearer and therefore better. The reader should not have to pause unnecessarily, even for a fraction of a second, to wonder what you are talking about. The reader should never be expected to pause to admire your command of jargon, Latin, or other superfluous forms of language. Latin words and phrases are often very useful (see "et al.", above), but should not be used when they do not improve precision or clarity. If jargon is really necessary (which I doubt), its meaning should be defined at its first appearance.

Avoid ambiguities. For example, "was dialyzed against three changes of phosphate buffer, pH 7.0 ...". What is a "change"? Was the solution dialyzed three times agains a given volume of buffer, or was the buffer actually changed three times (for a total of four volumes)? "... for 1 day." Was it dialyzed for 1 day total or for three (or four!) days total?

Distinguish between primes (as in 5') and single quotes (apostrophes). Most word processing applications automatically change primes to quotes ("smart quotes", but not smart enough!), but this change can be undone.

The letter "u" is not an abbreviation for "micro" (as in "um" or "ul"). This is a leftover convention from the days before computers, when Greek letters were difficult to print. Use the Greek letter mu (µ) as in "µm" or "µl".

Results: these are often contained in figures. But remember, figures are often highly technical. Results should be clearly stated in the text (if appropriate, including a reference to figures or tables), and easy for the cursory reader to find.