Honors


Natalie Norton	Trevor Mooney	Natasha Abadilla

The Honors Program in Human Biology affords qualified majors the opportunity to work closely with faculty on an individual research project, culminating in an honors thesis. The goal of the Honors program is to engage students in serious professional research at all stages, from defining clear research questions and designing an appropriate and sound study, through collecting and analyzing data, to synthesizing and finally presenting the results.

In line with the interdisciplinary nature of Human Biology, the Honors program accommodates projects in a range of empirical sciences, including social, biological, biomedical, and behavioral sciences. One quality that all Honors projects share is that they are data-driven and stem from a clearly articulated research question.

The Honors Handbook

Examples of past projects

Participants in the 2014 Honors Symposium

Support for research

Presentation from Information Session Nov 2011 (pdf)

Info for students working internationally

Honors timelines

Students may apply to the honors program once they have completed the Human Biology core with a minimum 3.0 GPA, have an overall Stanford GPA of 3.2, and meet other requirements detailed in the honors handbook. Students apply to the honors program in Winter Quarter of the junior year. Students planning to conduct honors research are encouraged to begin research or preparation during Autumn Quarter of their junior year. Research conducted to fulfill the internship requirement may be the starting point for honors research; however, once a research proposal has been approved for honors, subsequent research may not be used for the internship.

An Honors College is held for a select number of senior honors students just prior to Autumn Quarter each year. The honors thesis is normally completed by the middle of Spring Quarter of the senior year. Each honors student then presents a brief summary of honors research at the Human Biology Honors Symposium in May.

Faculty calendar

Honors calendar