Honors Program
The ENVD Honors Program site is currently under construction. Program information and details may change. For up to date information, please contact nathan.p.jones@colorado.edu.
The Department of Environmental Design (ENVD) will confer the Latin honors designations of Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, and Summa Cum Laude on students who have completed a written honors thesis or design project that demonstrates independent inquiry, intellectual thought, and a scholarly contribution through research and creative work.
Projects worthy of the honors designation will be works of creative expression, including design, research, and theoretical work that demonstrates a high level of intellectual and/or creative ability and analytical skills. This may be a written thesis, a design exhibit, or a built work that presents a piece of original scholarship and that represents a contribution to the field of environmental design.
Completing an honors project allows students to investigate topics of interest, provides the opportunity to work closely with a faculty thesis chair, and creates a culminating intellectual experience that produces both a meaningful project and an invaluable learning experience. The Honors project represents the climax of their college careers.
Honors Eligibility
In order to be eligible to pursue ENVD Latin Honors, students must complete the following tasks by the beginning of the fall semester of their senior year.
Students must have a GPA of 3.3 or higher to pursue graduation with Latin honors. However, a student whose GPA is below a 3.3 may petition for an exception within their Intent to Pursue Honors document. The student will explain their GPA and why it does not properly reflect their ability to complete an honors project.
At the time of completing the Intent to Pursue Honors form, the student must have an agreement with an ENVD faculty member who is willing to act as Thesis Advisor for the student.
Students must submit an Intent to Pursue Honors digital form in the spring of their junior year in ENVD. In addition to basic identifying information, the form asks students to articulate the project concept, which classes they will attend to support their thesis in the fall and spring, who their faculty advisor will be, and a brief literature review of seven sources (a specific prompt is provided in the Intent to Pursue Honors form.
Students should prepare their forms in consultation with their proposed Honors Thesis Advisor.
Past Honors Theses
2023
Balancing Global Building Standards and Contextual Design: A Critical Regionalist Analysis of the WELL V2 Building Standards Impact on Design and Wellbeing
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Grassland Restoration: Exploring best practices and interdisciplinary collaboration in the context of grassland restoration
Reinforcing Appalachia
Briki: Re-Brick Your Dorm
The Green Paradox: Gentrification & Greenness in the Mile High City
2022
The Racialization of Educational Spaces: Exploring the Design of the University of Colorado Boulder and its Contribution to Racialized Experience
Destressing University Environments: Evaluating Campuses that Encourate Resoration and Recovery in Students
Grocery Store Display Design Limits In-Store Food Accessibility For Wheelchair Users
2021
Entryways to Queerness: Exploring the Architecture of Sexual Racism
The Hidden Potential of Denver's Industrial Spaces to Address Environmental Inequity
Confronting Gendered, Ethnic, and Religious Prejudice Within Park Design
2020
Disaster Relief Shelters for Hurricane Victims in Puerto Rico
"Afrofuturist" Architecture: The Promises and Pitfalls of Future Architectural Imaginations
Eye on our Landscapes: Measuring Gentrifying Physical Features of Post-Industrial Landscape Architecture Projects
To be eligible to receive the designation of Latin Honors, students must complete the following tasks within the academic calendar of their senior year. If ALL the following requirements are met, the Honors Council will consider the level of Latin Honors to be awarded to the student.
If all requirements are NOT MET, the Honors Council WILL NOT grant Latin Honors designation, unless the student provides specific, timely evidence of why an exception should be made that will be reviewed by Honors Council and accepted or rejected.
- Completion of creative work that conforms to requirements set forth by Honors Council as described below
- Participation in Honors Symposium in early spring
- Completion of a defense before the Jury Defense Panel, which shall include both a poster or slide deck presentation and a written document of at least ten pages, as described below
- Consistent involvement with the Honors Thesis Advisor, which at a minimum shall mean one meeting per week (who may be your research faculty PI, the faculty with whom you are working on an independent study, or your studio instructor)
- Clear and consistent communication with Honors Council as to progress and concerns
Defense and Designations
Students must defend their theses to their defense jury in April, prior to the Friday before spring break. The date of the juried defense will be set by Honors Council each year prior to the end of the fall semester. Students are expected to work closely with their Thesis Advisor to prepare and submit a final draft of their thesis document one week prior to the juried defense.
The jury defense will take between one to two hours. During the jury defense, students will present their project, referring to their poster, slides, or other graphic documents, similar to the symposium presentation. Thereafter, the jury members may ask probing or clarifying questions. At the conclusion of the questions, the jury members will have ten minutes out of the student’s presence to discuss a recommendation to the Honors Council: whether the student has earned honors, and if so, what level of honors is appropriate. The Thesis Advisor will complete the defense form for all jury members to sign, which will be submitted to Honors Council within a week after the defense. The defense form will be supported by a letter written by the Thesis Advisor to the honors council explaining the project and the level of honors the jury feels is appropriate. If the jury is not unanimous, any dissenting members may submit a separate letter to the Honors Council.
Students may make edits and corrections to their project and written document which incorporate both feedback from the defense and edits proposed by their chair and other readers. Honors determination will be based on what was presented at the defense or may be conditional on these edits. Significant rewrites, alteration of conclusions or findings, addition of data or design, or other major changes are not permitted as part of this process.
Latin honors will be awarded at the following levels: cum laude (with honors), magna cum laude (with high honors), or summa cum laude (with highest honors).
Administration of Latin Honors: The Honors Team
To promote the success of ENVD Honors candidates, and to ensure the high quality of Honors students’ work, the following team roles have been defined and are required. Each student will be supported by:
The Honors Advisor must be a faculty member of professor or instructor ranks and must be a rostered ENVD faculty member. The Honors Advisor will work closely with the student to advise and support the student’s journey to their honors defense in March. The Honors Advisor and the student will schedule a recurring (once per week) meeting while the student is working on their honors project. The chair’s role is to provide advice, resources, and support for the student.
- The chair may be an ENVD faculty member with whom the student is completing an independent study, or with whom the student is an unpaid research assistant. Other qualifying design or research projects under faculty guidance and supervision may be permitted as well.
- The chair may be an ENVD studio instructor that the student has for either their 3100 or 4100 studio in which they generate design and research projects that are submitted as their honors project. If that faculty is on a non-recurring contract (as adjunct, lecturer, or other position), the student will secure a second ENVD faculty member who will serve as co-chair. This person will not attend weekly meetings but should be kept updated such that they could step in if the need arose.
- Department guidelines limit an individual faculty to chairing two honors committees per year, unless an exception is granted by the Honors Council and Executive Committee.
The Outside Advisor will be a CU-Boulder faculty of professor or instructor ranks. The outside member should be chosen by the student from faculty in related, complementary fields that will add depth and breadth to their honors research. The outside member’s role is to provide additional research resources in their area of expertise and to help the student to integrate those ideas into their work
- The student must register the name of their outside member by October 15 of their senior year.
The Defense Jury Panel will attend the Honors Defense event that will take place in March and provide feedback to the students and to the Honors Council as to the quality of scholarship and the value provided by the student’s work to the design community.
- The Defense Jury Panel consists of 5-10 members of the design and academic community, as defined below. The goal is to have a high jury member-to-entry ratio; thus, this number will be adjusted according to the number of students undertaking honors in a given year.
- The Honors Council forms the core of the Defense Jury Panel and will issue invitations to other panel members.
- The student, together with their Honors Advisor, will be responsible to select at least one person to be part of the honors jury. The student must submit the name(s) of their jury member(s) by October 15 of their senior year. The ENVD Honors Council will determine the appropriateness of the selection and issue an invitation to the Defense Jury Panel.
Jury composition
- Academic Jury Member: This category of jury members consists of professors, instructors, and lecturers in the design and art fields. These jury members will have made significant contributions to their fields and are actively participating in design or research. These faculty members may be from ENVD or another department within the University of Colorado.
- If the student is submitting a studio-based honors project, one of their Academic Jury Members should be the studio instructor.
- If the student is submitting a Research Assistant or Independent Study project, one of their Academic Jury Members should be the sponsoring faculty member.
- Practicing Professional Jury Member: This category of jury members consists of designers in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, urban design and/or product design. These jury members are active practitioners and will offer insights into the current movements in the field. They may work for any scale of firm (from one-person firms to large international firms) but should be located in Colorado within a day trip to Boulder.
- Entrepreneur Jury Member: This category of jury members consists of entrepreneurs in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, urban design and/or product design. These individuals will be someone who contributes in the organization and operation of (one or more) businesses and is associated with having taken on greater than normal financial risks associated with that business.