Graduation with Distinction
Excellence in the Major
The Graduation with Distinction program recognizes students who achieve excellence in their major area of study as determined by the departments and as approved by the Committee on Teaching, Academic Standards, and Honors of the Arts & Sciences Council. All academic departments and programs offering a major, as well as Program II, have established procedures for conferring graduation with distinction on students who meet their standards and requirements. This recognition is separate and distinct from Latin Honors. (See History of Graduation with Distinction.)
In general, students seeking to graduate with distinction in the major will participate during their junior and/or senior years in a seminar and/or a directed course of reading, laboratory research, or independent study which results in substantive written work. Each student's overall achievement in the major or in Program II, including the written work, is assessed by a faculty committee. In Program II this committee is established by the directors of undergraduate study in the units concerned. Graduation with distinction may be awarded at one of three levels: Highest Distinction, High Distinction, or Distinction. Since the fall of 2002, Trinity College has offered the option for a student to earn double honors for a single thesis written for two separate departments or programs, an option distinct from that of completing two entirely separate theses and earning honors in each of two departments or programs in which the student is majoring.
All students in Trinity College are encouraged to seek distinction in the major because of the rewards that accrue when they pursue independent academic research under the guidance of a faculty mentor. The opportunity to forge a close personal and working relationship with one or more professors in one's field of intellectual interest is invaluable per se, and the mentor's familiarity with the student's work and potential can also be enormously helpful when the student is applying to post-graduate programs of study. Graduation with distinction is thus not only an honor that is noted on the transcript, but can represent a high point in the student's academic career and be beneficial to one's subsequent scholarly pursuits.
For more information about the Graduation with Distinction program contact:
- Norman C. Keul
Associate Dean, Humanities and Interdisciplinary Studies
Box 90043, 011 Allen Building
Phone: 919-684-2096
Fax: 919-660-0488
E-Mail: nkeul@duke.edu
