If you are admitted to the honors programs, you are required to:

• Take a HISP S-498/P-498 Readings for Honors course, combining it with a 400-level course in a subject of your interest. This should happen sometime during your junior year or, at the latest, during the first semester of your senior year.
• Ask a Spanish or Portuguese professor to become your research director. You then develop, with their approval, a feasible research project on any aspect of Luso/Hispanic literatures, cultures, or linguistics.
• Register for HISP-S499 or P499 during the semester in which you are writing your thesis.
• In general, an honors thesis is 8,000-12,000 words. The thesis may be written in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, or English, to be determined in consultation with the faculty mentor.
• In addition to the director, two faculty members will serve as readers on the thesis committee. The two additional faculty members are chosen in consultation with the student, and the faculty members can be tenure-track or non-tenure track faculty with expertise in the area of the thesis. One reader may be a faculty member from outside the department.
• The decision to hold an honors thesis defense meeting, either in-person or online, is left to the discretion of the honors thesis director. A defense usually lasts 60 to 90 minutes. Following a defense, a student works with the director to incorporate comments from the readers into the final draft of the honors thesis. If no defense is held, the readers should submit their comments to the student and director. The student will work with the director to incorporate comments from the readers into the final draft of the honors thesis.
• The grade for the thesis will be communicated by the honors thesis director to the Director of Undergraduate Studies via an electronic form that is located on the department’s intranet.

After a successful defense of the honors thesis and completion of all the required coursework for the major, you will earn the honors distinction in Spanish or Portuguese, receiving an honors cord for graduation.

Students admitted to the honors program in Spanish are strongly encouraged to apply for membership in Sigma Delta Pi.