Undergraduate research is a major component of The Honors College, culminating in an Honors Thesis. The Honors College encourages its faculty to involve students actively and substantively in their own research, so that students see first hand how new information is produced. Honors College classes are conceptualized and taught with this research model in mind. The Honors College also seeks to initiate academic programs and collaborative endeavors that provide research opportunities for Honors College students. One student's Honors thesis emerged from his work with a co-sponsored symposium on Jane Austen’s Emma, and another student’s thesis grew out of her work on George Bernard Shaw’s Candida as part of The Honors College’s collaboration with Meadow Brook Theatre.

Honors College students are also encouraged to participate in undergraduate research conferences, such as the annual Meeting of the Mind’s Conference. Honors College students present with papers emerging from Honors College classes. One student, who presented a paper entitled “Stereotypical Imagery in Maps of Latin America from 1493 to 1886,” concluded the following: “During the exploration of the New World, maps became the official documents of territorial claims, political stances, and scientific discoveries. Often coveted state secrets, the visual diaries of hundreds of expeditions reflect common beliefs and cultural attitudes of their time. The decorative images, elaborate cartouches, and written commentaries of the maps presented here consistently depict Latin American lands and peoples with specific stereotypes. Drawings of the land as an exotic paradise, images of European conquest, both active and passive, and fantastical depictions of Native Americans culminate in a visual embodiment of the New World as a half-naked, befeathered native woman holding an arrow and posed with one foot on the severed head of a white man. Common misperceptions of Latin America will be dealt with, as well as the eventual transfer of “otherness” from Native Americans to blacks near the end of the nineteenth century.”

Once each semester, students in Honors College Classes are chosen to present select research done in their HC classes to the student body. Some of the topics presented this year were Aids in the Caribbean, Wetland Destruction, Public Transportation, Manifest Destiny, Hip Hop Culture, A Career in Pediatrics , Future of our Waterways, White Noise, and Economic Progression.

Ashley Denard"Homosexuality & an Uninformed Society"

Marcia Wieland"Trancendentalism and Charles Ives's Psalm 90"