The department encourages qualified geography majors who wish to graduate with honors in geography to apply for admission to the department honors program. Students find the process of graduating with honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude) to be a most challenging and rewarding capstone to their college career.   

Eligibility

  • Cumulative GPA at CU of at least 3.3
  • Geography GPA of at least 3.5
  • At least 18 credit hours in Geography with at least 1 upper division Geography course

Students who are eligible and have identified a project of interest must then:

  • Select a primary thesis advisor within Geography to supervise the Honors research
  • Select a second reader outside the student’s major department
  • Select an Honors Representative from the GEOG department. Current Honors reps include Dr. William Travis (William.travis@colorado.edu) or Dr. Joe Bryan (Joe.Bryan@colorado.edu)
  • Thesis committee members must be faculty members or instructors on a multi-year contract; graduate students are not eligible to be thesis committee members
  • Your committee should be established and your project idea formulated BEFORE you apply online to the Honors Program.

As part of the application, you will need to submit:

  • a short proposal of the honors research, including your research timeline and bibliography, and
  • online registration form to the Arts and College Honors Program by the relevant deadlines (https://www.colorado.edu/honors/graduation)

While working on your honors project, you may be eligible to receive senior thesis credits through GEOG 4990 in both the semester prior to the defense, as well as the semester of your defense. To register, fill out the Honors and Senior Thesis Credits Registration Form with your sponsoring faculty member. Once the form is filled out, send the form to Gabby Sales (gabriela.sales@colorado.edu) to be put into DocuSign.

Finally, for a detailed timeline of the Honors thesis project, see Geography's Honors Information Document and the University's College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program