Honors Work with Jeremiah Bodnar

I am a past coordinator and proud continuing supporter of the honors program. I have enjoyed seeing my honors students present at Stanford and Berkeley every year for the past several years. I am also certified to run the embedded honors component for my courses. The purpose of this page is to explain the way I run that embedded honors component.

What Is Expected from an Honors Project?

I work extensively with each of my honors students as they develop projects addressing a philosophical problem. Each of those projects will involve at least 3 significant readings by historical or professional philosophers on a specific philosophical topic, followed by a discussion that incorporates the ideas of those philosophers but offers a new and unique contribution to the philosophical question at hand.

Working with an Honors Group

Honors students will work in cohorts of about four honors students that will focus on one philosophical topic. An initial set of readings will be established for each cohort. Those meeting times and days are established at the beginning of the semester or before, and all meetings are mandatory for any student joining the honors cohort. If you have other events during any of those scheduled meetings, I will sadly be unable to complete honors work with that student.

Limited Availability

Because of the extensive amount of mentoring provided to each honors project, and the high number of students often hoping to complete an honors project, I have found it important to create a very tight organizational structure that I have followed for several years now. I generally organize between two and three sets of honors cohorts, each cohort containing 4 honors students. Those cohorts meet with me and the rest of their cohort five to six times throughout the term.

How do I Join an Honors Cohort?

If you know you are taking one of my courses and you would like to complete honors work along with that course, please contact me as early as possible, since I will generally only have eight to twelve spots available and the tend to fill up at the very start of the semester or even before the semester begins.