Eligibility

Who is eligible for a Biology degree with Honors?

An undergraduate major in the Department of Biology (Biology or Microbiology ONLY) may earn a degree with honors by meeting the requirements. In most cases, the work must begin a minimum of two semesters before a degree with honors is granted. You are strongly urged to select a faculty advisor and start work during your junior year or earlier. Some students begin honors work during their first year.

View a list of faculty members approved to serve on your Honors thesis committee.

View the faculty list

What are the formal requirements for a degree with Honors?

A 3.300 overall College GPA is required at the time of graduation. Even if a thesis is submitted well in advance of graduation, a 3.300 GPA at the time of graduation is a requirement.

Completion of all required coursework for the desired degree. Coursework must include six credits of BIOL-X490 Independent Study. BIOL-X490 must be taken during at least two semesters. Summer may count as one semester if registered in BIOL-X490 during the entire summer. (In some rare cases, MSCI-M450 or CHEM-X399 may be used in place of BIOL-X490 upon written permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. If MSCI-M450 or CHEM-X399 is approved, it may not be mixed with BIOL-X490 for purposes of honors requirements. If a student is working in a Psychology Department lab, BIOL-X490 is required.)

Research work in Biology or in an associated discipline.

Successful defense of an Honors thesis as certified by an appropriate faculty committee.

Research rules

Honors research may be performed at IUB, at another campus of Indiana University, or at another university—provided that your Honors committee evaluates all such research.

The Honors committee is comprised of the student’s faculty mentor and at least two additional members of the faculty of the IUB Department of Biology.

Honors research ordinarily encompasses two academic semesters, an academic semester and a full summer, or two full summers. Summers should involve full-time research. Registration in BIOL-X490 during two summer sessions of a single summer does not complete the research requirement for a degree with honors.

If you earn BIOL-X490 credit in a SPEA lab, you cannot convert that research to a Biology upper level lab or use it for the Biology Honors notation.

If you are pursuing the Honors notation and plan to use BIOL-X490 research as an upper level lab in the Biology B.S. or Biology B.A. degree, you must successfully complete the thesis for lab credit.

The Honors thesis cannot be used for your intensive writing requirement.

Eligibility

Who is eligible for a Biology degree with Honors?

What are the formal requirements for a degree with Honors?

Research rules

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