The University of Arkansas Honors College hosted the second-annual Honors College thesis research conference at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 23 on the fifth floor of the Arkansas Union, according to their website.
The honors thesis is a large component of the Honors College experience and is required in order to graduate as an honors student, according to the Honors College website.
Jennie Popp, Associate Dean of the Honors College, said that this large project can be a deterrent for students to either join the Honors College or graduate from the program.
“It’s the number one reason why students drop honors, because they’re afraid to address that issue,” Popp said.
The Honors College has numerous events throughout the year to try to help students better understand the thesis project, Popp said. Some of these events include workshops and research proposal drafting sessions.
Michael Zachary, Technical Director for the Honors College, said the event was created in 2017 to help students feel more confident about the honors thesis process.
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“What find is our students really look at this as a giant mountain to climb of the thesis process, so what we are trying to do is kind of demystify that,” Zachary said.
Popp said the purpose of the event was to provide resources and contacts to potential faculty mentors, as well as examples of thesis projects from students past and present. The conference also offered breakout sessions for each individual college to highlight college-specific tips, in addition to the poster presentations from students. Networking with faculty was also encouraged at the event.
For future years, Popp said she hopes that the conference will expand into a week-long event, highlighting a different college each day instead of a short event on one particular day. The event has a short history, but Popp said she thinks this year had an even better turnout than last. Popp said she wants students to know that research is not scary, it can be enjoyable, and that it is never too early to get started.
Katie Wilson, Associate Director of Student Success in the Honors College, said that she thinks the mentoring component of the honors thesis can never be started too early.
“Our motivation here was to give students examples and then the names of the people that can help them start thinking about that thesis process from any stage of the honors experience,” Wilson said.
Wilson said she teaches a freshman course called University Perspectives, and one of her students met the professor that would later on become their thesis mentor.
“The honors college is just so huge that it can be a little daunting and I think students can feel pretty isolated,” Wilson said.
Zachary said that although it is difficult to coordinate student and faculty schedules, he and the rest of the Honors College staff hopes that more and more people will get involved with this conference as time passes.
