Honors education is (mostly) distinctive to U.S. higher education, and only in some institutions, so your first exposure to it may be right now! Honors — not to be confused with “Latin honors” like cum laude, based on grade-point average — offers academic and other enrichment, some required and some optional, with a distinctive credentialing upon graduation. It is only for undergraduates, although honors at Penn State offers enhanced access to the Integrated Undergraduate-Graduate (IUG) program for qualified students. Apart from offering enrichment to the institution's most talented and ambitious students, honors is a recruitment tool to attract more such students in the first place.

While we are the Schreyer Honors College with a Dean who reports to the Provost, in recognition of the importance of honors at Penn State, we are not a degree-granting college: all Schreyer Scholars are enrolled in one or more degree-granting units, or (initially) the Division of Undergraduate Studies. A student's status as a Schreyer Scholar is indicated in LionPath and other Penn State information systems via a “student group” rather than a conventional college code. The governing University policies for the Schreyer Honors College are 65-00 and M-11 as periodically revised.

Students in any four-year (baccalaureate) program of study may be Schreyer Scholars, with minor exceptions that our office monitors. Students may enter the Schreyer Honors College at any undergraduate campus, but to graduate as Schreyer Scholars they must take their degree at University Park or another approved campus: Abington, Altoona, Behrend (Erie), Berks, Brandywine, or Capital (Harrisburg).

All campuses except University Park have local campus honors programs, with their own admissions criteria and program requirements. The campus honors coordinator runs the local program and serves as the Schreyer Honors College representative, and students may be in both the local program and the Schreyer Honors College, but there is no articulation agreement: campus honors students can only join the Schreyer Honors College via existing application pathways.

World Campus is not an approved Schreyer Honors College graduation campus, and because World Campus students do not have “2+2” access to complete at other campuses, Schreyer Scholars may not start at World Campus; they can, however, take classes or entire semesters of World Campus coursework towards a University Park or other honors-eligible campus degree with appropriate permissions.

Each fall students join the Schreyer Honors College as incoming first-year Penn State students, and as continuing second- or third-year students.

First-Year Pathway

The first-year process is highly competitive because we are limited to approximately 300 entering students per year. We typically receive over 4000 applications, as part of the Penn State overall application, and we make offers to over 900 students—this may seem like a large number to “yield” 300 students, but highly qualified applicants have many attractive options and they might apply to ten or more schools. Applications are reviewed by a Faculty Selection Committee with as many as 200 volunteer members, and you may be solicited to participate. Reviewers rate applications according to a rubric, and our admissions office determines the rating threshold for admission offers.

Second- or Third-Year Pathway

The admission process for second- or third-year students is significantly different; while we recommend a high GPA (typically 3.70) and require the approval of the student's major, the absence of an honors scholarship or housing guarantees means there is no University-wide limit. In recent years we have admitted 200 to 300 such students per year, via an application that is available on our website between early March and mid-May. If you serve as the sole or principal honors adviser for a major, you will review applications for your major. While first-year-entering Schreyer students are admitted to honors without regard to eventual major, students entering through the 2nd/3rd-year process are admitted for a specific major and may not complete a thesis in another area without additional permissions.

Paterno Fellows Pathway

Besides these pathways, students who start in the College of the Liberal Arts at University Park may choose Paterno Fellows “aspirant” status, and if they fulfill certain conditions over their first two to four semesters, they will become Schreyer Scholars (and full Paterno Fellows) without need for an additional application. Some of these students may enter in spring rather than fall.

At University Park each major has one or more honors advisers, proposed by the department and ratified by the Schreyer Honors College. Except for the Colleges of Business, Communications, and Education, the honors adviser serves students who are declared in the major *and* pre-major students who are at least tentatively (informally) inclined to that major. For instance, the Physics honors adviser might have a mix of PHYS_BS and SC_PMAJ students, based on the latter's expressed desire for honors advising in Physics. In the three colleges mentioned, all pre-major students have a non-major-specific college-level honors adviser.

All honors advisers for upper-division students (start of third year and beyond) must be faculty with the typical terminal degree for the department, because of the significant thesis role of honors advisers by that point. This does not apply to majors where students are expected to do their thesis in another area: Premedicine, Science [general], and the Bachelor of Philosophy. Honors advisers for lower-division students, whether declared in a major or still in pre-major status, may be staff rather than faculty, as determined by their college; that is the case, for instance, for the three colleges named above as well as Division of Undergraduate Studies (DUS). For honors advising purposes “faculty” means both tenure-line and teaching.

At Commonwealth campuses the honors advising model is locally determined. Currently, Behrend (Erie) and Harrisburg have a University Park-like model of honors advising by major, while all other campuses have a single honors adviser across majors. This includes several campuses (Abington, Altoona, Berks, Brandywine, and Harrisburg) where students can stay through the thesis and graduation, so those honors advisers can make individual arrangements to ensure sufficient faculty expertise beyond the thesis supervisor. For instance, if the campus honors coordinator is an English professor, they might not want to be the only reviewer of an engineering thesis besides the thesis supervisor, even though our system only calls for two reviewers.

Honors advising, whether for the occasional student or many, is a significant service role with promotion and tenure implications, and it should not be passed laterally from person to person without the approval of the department head or director of undergraduate studies. Likewise, a decision to reduce or increase the number of honors advisers should be taken by department leadership or at least with their approval, in consultation with the Schreyer Honors College associate dean for academic affairs. Changes in the honors adviser roster should be communicated to SHCAcademics@psu.edu.

The Schreyer Honors College does not expect honors advisers to continue in their role while on leave or sabbatical, so please consult with your department about naming an honors adviser in your absence. You may choose, with your department's approval, to remain in the role for all or some of your advisees but this should only be considered if you can guarantee typical availability (at least by email), especially for graduating students whose theses will need to be reviewed.

Assigning students to honors advisers is done in the department or college as for other students, and LionPath is the system of record. The Schreyer Honors College's Student Records System (SRS), retrieves this information on a nightly basis. Occasionally the Schreyer Honors College will make an “override” honors adviser assignment directly into SRS, so your rosters from LionPath and SRS might not match exactly. You might also have non-Schreyer advisees in your LionPath roster, depending on your overall advising responsibilities.

Each August we offer a one-hour Zoom orientation, which is recorded and available throughout the year. The 2023 version is available here. Our website has Schreyer Honors College requirements in long form (Handbook) and shorter form (Academic Requirements) as well as other resources for students and faculty. Please contact us at SHCAcademics@psu.edu or (814) 863-2635 if you have any questions or concerns or view the Schreyer Honors College staff listing online.

Some departments and colleges have more specific policies for Schreyer Scholars, e.g. about specific required courses, and as honors adviser you are expected to know those policies. The Schreyer Honors College doesn't maintain a list of these local policies, but we expect them to be accessible to students (including potential Schreyer students) via the department or college website. If your department has local policies that aren't posted, please make that a priority; even if there are no such policies, an honors page can encourage qualified students to apply (via the 2nd/3rd-year process) and answer common questions. That page is also the place to specify expectations (including timelines) for the honors thesis.

This is an annual statement of what classes the student plans to take over the following year towards major and Schreyer requirements, and what the student is planning towards key aspects of our mission. The plan requires only honors adviser review, and while it can be rejected (if you find it lacking, in progress towards major requirements, honors requirements, or substance of the free-response answers) the student is not obliged to revise it — you've merely documented your reservations. The main point of the plan is to serve as the basis for a wide-ranging discussion between student and honors adviser at least once a year, early in the fall semester for students new to Schreyer, and February/March for continuing Schreyer students. We hope for more frequent interactions than just once per year, of course.

As honors adviser, you are not the student's thesis supervisor except by coincidence, if you're the person the student has chosen based on “best fit” of interests/expertise. For the majority of students who are doing a thesis for honors in their major, you are their thesis honors adviser. At the thesis proposal stage, one year before intended graduation, you review and approve the student's proposed topic and thesis supervisor for generic soundness and appropriateness to the major (area of honors). Unlike the Schreyer Plan, the thesis proposal can't proceed unless it's approved, so if you see deficiencies in the proposal (too vague, inappropriate thesis supervisor, not aligned with the major, etc.) and send it back for revision, the student must revise it. The workflow for the thesis proposal is honors adviser and then thesis supervisor, so you wouldn't be in the awkward situation of saying no to something the thesis supervisor approved. The thesis supervisor might say no to something you approved, but that's not awkward because they have principal responsibility for the thesis.

In reviewing thesis proposals you employ your professional judgment, but you're acting on behalf of the major. For instance, some majors are comfortable with a thesis supervisor who isn't in the major (e.g. a History professor proposed to supervise a thesis for honors in Classics), while others are not. You should consult with past or current honors advisers or department administration if you're in doubt about local policies. Ideally such policies should be stated on a web page accessible to students as they prepare their proposals.

Honors options are individual student/instructor contracts to do enriched work in a non-honors course in exchange for an honors designation on the transcript that counts towards honors requirements. Your role is to review the proposed honors option for adequacy — whether there's enough information, and whether it looks like useful enrichment. The Schreyer Honors College separately makes sure the instructor is eligible to supervise an honors option, so you don't have to consider that. Note that your advisees might propose honors options outside of the major (at least the major for which you're their honors adviser), so you may be asked to evaluate proposals where you have no expertise. That is almost always fine, but if you are unsure about a proposal, please contact us at SHCAcademics@psu.edu.

Schreyer Honors College has thesis deadlines — for the proposal, the midpoint review, and final submission — but it's important to know your major's typical (and maybe even official) thesis timeline. At the extremes, some majors want students to hold off on identifying a topic and supervisor until the end of the third year (this discussion assumes four-year programs and student plans), which coincides with our procedural deadline, while others expect students to have those details coming into the third year. Most majors are in the middle, but whatever the case it's important for you to know those expectations so you can convey them to advisees, especially in their second year.

Some departments have intermediate deadlines for the thesis, for instance a complete draft or a polished single chapter, and it's important to convey those to students at the appropriate time; these deadlines, if they exist, are in addition to whatever deadlines the thesis supervisor conveys to the student. Ideally, these should be stated in the thesis proposal to avoid confusion and conflict later.

Your advisees will vary in their need for (and desire for) guidance towards finding a topic and supervisor. Some might be very self-sufficient; this can be a good thing, if they're making inquiries about potential topics and supervisors, or a bad thing, if they're trying to develop a fully-elaborated thesis idea on their own and expecting a professor to simply ratify it. Other students might be overwhelmed by the prospect of doing a thesis, or undermotivated to do it.

Another struggle you may encounter and need to mentor students through is that many students don't know how to reach out to faculty. This includes little things such as not addressing faculty properly, or big things such as not understanding that most faculty want to work with students who are neither a blank slate nor married to a specific project. Our staff work to address these issues, but as the honors adviser, students listen to your voice and your mentoring can have a strong impact on their success.

Your role as the Thesis Honors Adviser is detailed on our Thesis Roles & Responsibilities page. This page has information about non-standard situations, such as when you might be asked to serve as thesis honors adviser for someone who isn't otherwise your honors advisee, or where your honors advisee might have someone else as thesis honors adviser. You should also read the part about thesis supervision, to understand what that role entails.

Schreyer Scholars have widely varying expectations from honors advising. Some students self-advise using available resources, whether it's for course selection or broader questions like opportunities in or related to the major, while others expect honors advisers to guide them through things not specific to honors (like requirements in the major) or to the major (like general education requirements). Just as students vary in this regard, so do honors advisers. Based on your prior experience and roles, you might be more or less comfortable with advising students about major requirements or things outside the major/field.

As long as your department or college have staff advisers who handle those things, it's acceptable to refer students to those staff. What we've found is that how you refer students to other advising is important: it should be done affirmatively (“here's someone who is way more knowledgeable about that”) rather than negatively (“I don't know anything about that”). Of course, if your department or college has an overall expectation that students at a certain level (say, declared in the major) get their advising entirely from faculty whether honors or non-honors, you would be subject to that expectation. If you're a professional adviser serving as honors adviser to lower-division Schreyer students, in colleges that use that model, you can adapt this guidance to your situation.

The core rationale for faculty honors advising is that Schreyer students, because of their presumed intellectual interest in the major as a scholarly field (which culminates in the thesis), will benefit from regular interactions with faculty in the major beyond what they get in their classes. Our core expectation of honors advisers, whatever their comfort level with non-honors-specific matters, is that they have:

• An understanding of honors requirements (both general and major-specific)
• Enthusiasm to work with Schreyer students to identify and cultivate their interests within the major, and to see the major in a scholarly context
• Recognition that some students need more guidance than others to identify and cultivate those interests, as opposed to just classes-and-grades
• Reasonable responsiveness to student inquiries — at least to acknowledge receipt

That last point is important — our office almost never gets student complaints that an honors adviser gave them bad advice or was otherwise incompetent, but we occassionally get complaints that the honors adviser isn't responsive. We recognize that students sometimes have unreasonable expectations around responsiveness, especially for faculty whose other responsibilities are opaque to students, and we often remind students that what's urgent to them can't always be urgent to you. But if you're able to at least acknowledge receipt of student emails, promising a full reply when you're able, that should put most students at ease.