Honors Research
The name says it: the great glory of major research universities is their facility for research. Honors education should share this to the fullest extent with talented college students. That is why Honors at Iowa treats all research by its undergraduate students as honors research, and it is why Honors created the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates. ICRU connects students with money and mentors for frontier inquiries and creative work of all kinds. Even before ICRU opened in Fall 2006, though, the Honors Research Practicum had long been supporting students research by awarding academic credit for students collaboration on research with faculty mentors. And now the credit can count toward Honors Commendations.
Honors at Iowa offers many programs that help undergraduate students participate in research, and several appear in the right-hand menu. Lots of the top opportunities for scholarships, graduate and professional study, as well as employment turn increasingly these days on skills and experiences in research pursued by undergraduates. Some institutions focus on kinds and arenas of research thought especially suited to beginners. Iowa does some of this, but it emphasizes bringing interested undergraduates as fully and rapidly as possible into professional levels and venues for research. As a result, Iowa undergraduates often tackle particularly challenging questions and enjoy remarkably strong reputations.
At Iowa, the same holds for creative and performing arts. This University invented the master’s degree for fine arts to give academic support to work throughout the arts, and Iowa continues a leader in art and art history, cinema theory and production, dance, musical composition and performance, theater, and writing. The Honors Research Practicum can credit artistic creation and performance as well as research, just as Honors at Iowa provides for culminating “Honors Projects” as well as “Honors Theses.” And we count all these experiences toward Iowa’s distinctive Honors Commendations.
But student research is not just for senior theses anymore. Undergraduates are often ready for significant research in their second and even their first years of university study. Iowa starts students early by having them help professors who provide mentoring on methods, theories, and modes of analysis. The aspiration, usually realized here, is for the relationship gradually to reverse itself — so that faculty members eventually are helping their former student assistants conduct inquiries of their own. (These student-initiated inquiries make some of the best Honors Theses and Projects.) Through the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates, Honors also helps students apply for national fellowships to support their inquiries, during undergraduate years and beyond.