Apply for Honors Course Funding

Course Funding Proposals for the 2024-2025 Academic Year

We are now accepting course funding proposals for 2024-25! For full consideration, please submit your proposal as a single .pdf by 5:00 PM on Friday, November 17, 2023. Please email your proposal to Pete Keys (pkeys@wisc.edu).

2024-25 Course Funding Proposal (Fillable PDF)

The Honors Program encourages you to consider offering undergraduate courses as Honors courses! Honors instruction is a valued high-impact practice in L&S and provides you with an opportunity to develop innovative courses and collaborate with some of the most engaged, intellectually curious undergraduates on campus.

Funding is available to support “Honors Only” courses, including stand-alone seminars and instructor-led discussions/labs. Financial support from Honors is intended to allow departments to increase their total offerings of Honors Only courses without compromising their regular offerings.

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Which courses are most desirable for the Honors Program?

Instructors and departments from all L&S disciplines are encouraged to apply for Honors funding.

Courses with no or few prerequisites and that are open to first-year students are in high demand. Students pursuing an Honors in the Liberal Arts degree are required to take Honors courses across L&S breadth areas, which means that courses at the intermediate/advanced level with an L&S breadth designation are also highly valuable.

We welcome courses with an interdisciplinary profile. Some course characteristics that are particularly sought by students are:

  • Courses that carry biological/physical/natural science breadth and could appeal to non-science majors
  • Courses with literature/humanities breadth that could appeal to non-humanities majors
  • Social science breadth courses with content related to natural sciences, medicine, or legal studies

What form of funding is available?

Three forms of funding are available, based on the format of the Honors Only instruction.

  • For an Honors Only seminar: Short-term replacement lecturer salary (33.3% lecturer)
  • For a faculty-led Honors Only discussion/lab: $2000 supplies and expense allocation
  • For a faculty-led Honors Only discussion/lab: $2000 bonus salary for the participating faculty member

Replacement lecturer funds can enable departments to “free up” a faculty member to teach a low-enrollment Honors Only seminar and hire a lecturer to teach elsewhere in the curriculum. For large courses that will have an Honors discussion(s) or lab(s) led by the instructor of the main lecture, departments can elect to receive either a supplies & expense allocation for use by that instructor or *bonus pay for the participating faculty member.

*If the faculty member is requesting bonus salary, the department chair’s letter must include a statement that the faculty member is currently in good standing.

If you or your department have other ideas for how you would wish to use available funding or if you have questions about possibilities, do not hesitate to reach out to the Honors Program Director.

Can I receive funding for the same course more than once?

Yes. To aid with longer-term curricular planning, Honors funding is renewable (by application) for subsequent years.