Bluffton is a university full of experiences and opportunities ranging from on-campus employment to extracurricular groups and clubs. One prominent academic option is the opportunity to complete a departmental honors project. This year, five seniors were awarded departmental honors for the successful completion of their self-designed projects.
Elizabeth Luersman, photo by Nathan Heinze
“An honors project is basically when a student decides to focus on one topic and really dive into that topic,” said senior art education major Elizabeth Luersman. “You can write a paper, do an art show or concert or play.”
For Luersman’s honors project, she wrote and began illustrating a picture book about childhood depression, a topic she said she feels has not been explored by many other children’s books.
“When I was looking at topics, I wanted to do something that was meaningful and helpful,” said Luersman. “So if there was a student going through depression… if they’re younger, they might not understand what depression is, so it would act as a gateway to start a conversation with a child.”
An honors project is completely voluntary, but each student shared of the encouragement they received from faculty to pursue their projects.
“It’s completely up to you to decide if you want to do one or not,” said senior public relations major Jena O’Brien, whose project was an analysis of Michigan State University’s response to the investigation of Larry Nassar. “Personally, I had [Professor of Communication] Gerald Mast and [Associate Professor of Communication] Zachary Walton talk to me a lot about an honors project and urge me to complete one.”
Jena O’Brien, photo by Nathan Heinze
A departmental honors project effectively starts in the first semester of a student’s junior year. Students develop an idea and appoint a committee of faculty members to meet with regularly and discuss the progress made on the projects.
Senior art and writing major Cara Echols, who created an art magazine titled “Compose” for her honors project, said the committee is made up of a sponsoring faculty member, an additional faculty member from the student’s department and a faculty member from outside of the student’s department.
Cara Echols, photo by Nathan Heinze
“I had [Assistant Professor of English] Jamie Lyn Smith-Fletcher, I had [Assistant Professor of Art] Jim Fultz from the art department, and then [Assistant Professor of Communication] Marathana Prothro was my outside department person,” said Echols. “I chose all of them because… Jamie Lyn is a really awesome person and really great with writing, Jim just from the artistic and visual standpoint and Marathana has obviously worked a lot with publications.”
Senior English education major Emily Rush wrote a collection of short stories as her honors project. She said that students must defend their project to their committee upon completion. Rush also said that once a project has been approved by the student’s committee, an electronic copy is posted for the rest of the university’s faculty to approve.
“For my defending it to my committee, it was just sending those on my committee – which was Jamie Lyn [Smith-Fletcher], [Professor of English] Jeff Gundy, and [Assistant Professor of Religion] Jackie Wyse-Rhodes – sending them my final copies of my stories so they could read through them, see what I had done,” said Rush.
All five students successfully defended their projects and were awarded departmental honors, and they encouraged interested students in pursuing their own projects.
“I really enjoyed it, and I would encourage anybody to dive into something they were really interested in,” said Senior biology major Katelyn Amstutz, who researched plants from the university arboretum and put pictures of them on the library website as her project.
Amstutz also had some concise advice for those who might do an honors project in the future.
“Start early and set good deadlines,” she said.
