To be eligible for honors, a student must have a 3.0 cumulative average and 3.7 average in all Asian Studies area courses. Note that language courses are not included in the Asian Studies average.

Students who wish to be considered for honors should apply to the director of undergraduate studies with a five-to-eight page proposal outlining the project. The proposal should include your general question, your specific materials, your research design, a bibliography, and a schedule for your work (conceived in weeks and months, not days!) It is strongly recommended that proposals be made by the end of the junior year, but proposals will be accepted through the third week of the fall semester of the senior year. (Students abroad in Asia during their junior year should make every effort to consult with their advisors and apply for honors while abroad.) Applications must be endorsed by the student's honors project supervisor.

Note that initial acceptance into the honors program does not ensure permission to continue in it. Students must demonstrate to the satisfaction of their supervisor that they are making progress on their project by the end of their first semester in order to advance to the second.

The honors committee consists of a supervisor and one or two other members. In Asian Studies, the supervisor frequently, but not always, is the student's major advisor. If the advisor is not the supervisor, he or she is normally a member of the committee. Only professorial faculty and senior lecturers are eligible to supervise projects (and senior lecturers take on such work above and beyond their paid work, so be properly grateful).

The general rule is to schedule backwards. Your faculty committee must report its decision about awarding honors within a week after classes end. In order for the committee to review the final project and make its recommendation, it must have the final, revised, completed, surprise-free version before the last week of classes. Thus, the normal due date for the final version of the honors essay is the Friday of the thirteenth week of classes in your final semester.

In order for you to present that final version, you need to have worked on revising a full draft for at least three weeks or a month. This means that you must present a strong, near-complete draft to your committee before the middle of March. (A committee needs at least two weeks to read a draft; in fact, responding to the full draft is usually the committee's most time-consuming task). Thus, the normal due date for the draft is the Friday of the eighth week of classes in your final semester.

In order to produce a full draft by mid-March, you need to have begun writing since early January. This means that you need to have completed most of your research by the end of the fall semester. In order to do this, you need to finish planning your research within the first very few weeks of your senior year. This is the reason for the early deadline for your honors application.

Although your committee may set individually appropriate deadlines for various stages of your project, the following seem almost universally applicable.

Secure the commitment of your project supervisor, formulate a small set of organizing questions or ideas, and submit your proposal. Identify other possible members of your honors committee; ideally you should secure the commitment of at least one more member at this time. Over the summer, begin to gather research materials or supplies, identify and approach contacts, and, if possible, begin actual research on the project.

Complete your honors committee if you have not already done so. You want different perspectives and expertise, but you don't want a committee with such different ideas about directions for your work, no matter how interesting those different ideas are, that you will be unable to satisfy all members of the committee. Your supervisor can help you avoid this situation. By the end of September in your senior year, you should submit to the DUS a signed list of all the members of your committee.

Discuss your proposal with your entire committee. Be sure you and each member of the committee are clear about how often you will meet, either individually or collectively. And be clear about due dates for pieces of the project.

Ordinarily the first semester consists mostly of research, reading, and completing a significant piece of written work. You may do this independently, in Asian Studies 401, or in conjunction with an appropriate course. As part of their preparation, students of China, Japan, and Southeast Asia normally take Asian Studies 211, 212, or 213, respectively. By the end of the semester you should have produced a piece of work that your supervisor can use to evaluate the promise of your honors essay (and give you a grade in Asia Studies 401 if you are taking it). The piece of work can take different forms: a draft of part of the essay (perhaps a first chapter or an introduction), an extended outline of the whole essay, or a relevant course paper. If your supervisor does not judge the honors essay to be viable at this point, you will not be allowed to enroll in Asian Studies 402, the honors course. Continuing the honors program into the second semester is not automatic.

In exceptional cases, students who are studying in Asia during the first semester of their final year are allowed to pursue honors. In such cases they must apply for honors and organize their committee before they leave.

Keep your committee informed about your progress. This is very important. No project proceeds without hitches and temporary blocks. When you are most at a loss is too often when you most avoid your committee. This is a mistake. Your supervisor and other committee members interpret lack of communication as not needing help or irresponsibility about the project in general. Don't put off talking with your supervisor when you are stuck or discouraged. Report in, discuss the situation, and work out strategies for handling the difficulties together.

The essay is expected to be a well-crafted piece of research and analysis, normally from 30 to 50 pages in length. Quality is emphasized, not quantity. Start writing the essay in earnest from the beginning of the second term. Keep your committee informed as your work progresses and even more importantly as you encounter difficulties or blocks.

Meet with the whole honors committee to discuss the draft of the project and receive recommendations for revision. This meeting should occur no later than March. You'll need at least a month to revise. Be sure to set a clear date for submitting the final copy of your project to your committee. (The committee needs time to read the essay carefully and then meet to evaluate it.) Before your defense, you should also leave a copy with the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

An oral defense is required for honors in Asian Studies. While this sounds fearsome (and it sometimes is - particularly if you haven't kept in touch with your committee), it's usually fun. You now are the expert and have a chance to address some speculative issues that you didn't dare to include in the written version. You can talk about the broader implications of your work, what you wished you could have included but didn't, and the directions you might like to take in the future.