How to Apply
Initially, the Office of Undergraduate Admission handles acceptance to the Honors Program for incoming students. However, current students who have an excellent academic record and are motivated to work at the Honors level may apply for admission to the Honors Program. Applicants must have at least four semesters of their undergraduate program remaining at Bentley (excluding study abroad) and have maintained at least a 3.5 GPA while at Bentley. If admitted, students must complete their Honors course work, including any required honors courses in their major, and a Capstone/Pathway research project or class. In addition, students must adhere to the required overall GPA throughout their undergraduate studies. Admission is at the discretion of the Honors Leadership Team.
If you wish to apply for admission to the program after a full semester at Bentley, please do the following:
- Write a 500-word statement describing a challenge you have faced and what you learned as you responded to this situation. Please discuss how your personal experience has shaped your values and goals, and how this relates to your interest in the Honors Program.
- Academic research can be defined as the process of original discovery, or original interpretation or revision of existing research or knowledge in a society. As an honors student, we expect our students to embark on research projects either individually or in group. Write a 600 - 850 word original essay describing a research project that you have developed either individually or in group throughout your academic years. What was the outcome? What lessons did you learn? How did this research project impact your experience as a student? In addition to these questions, please share any research topics that are of great interest for you.
- Provide the Director of the Honors Program with the names and contact information of two faculty members. At least one, but preferably both, should be full-time faculty members.
- Be sure to include your name, email address, class standing, student ID number, and major.
- Applications will be accepted between December 1 to December 15 for spring admission and between May 1 to May 15 for fall admission. Send to GA_HonorsProgram@bentley.edu.
Program Requirements
Students in the Honors Program must meet complete honors sections of the following:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Honors Requirements | ||
| Three courses from Foundations for Success | 9 | |
| Falcon Discovery Seminar 1 | ||
| Critical Reading and Writing 2 | ||
| Multimodal Communication 3 | ||
or HNR 201 | Honors Seminar: Gateway Course | |
| Five additional honors courses (some majors have unique requirements - see details below) | 15 | |
| One Service Learning Experience: | 1 | |
| Service-Learning | ||
| Service-Learning-Business | ||
Or other service learning experience approved by Honors Director | ||
| Capstone Experience | 3 | |
| Total Credits | 28 | |
Footnote 1: Students who join the Honors Program with Falcon Discovery Seminar completed or who are waived from FDS 100 will have this honors requirement waived.
Footnote 2: Students who join the Honors Program with Critical Reading and Writing already completed will be required to complete an additional honors elective in lieu of EMS 101 honors.
Footnote 3: Students who enter the Honors Program without EMS 104 credit must take EMS 104 as an honors course. Bentley students who are in their second semester or beyond may enter the program as long as they have four semesters left for completion of the undergraduate degree and must take HNR 201, then choose a pathway. Transfer students are also eligible to enter the Honors Program as long as they have at least four semesters left for completion of the undergraduate degree and after the completion of HNR 201, they must choose a pathway.
The following majors have required honors courses:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting or Information Technology in Accounting (ITA) | ||
| AC 201 | Preparing and Interpreting Financial Statements | 3 |
| or AC 215 | Performance Measurement | |
| Business Economics, Economics-Finance, or Quantitative Economics | ||
| EC 224 | Intermediate Microeconomics | 3 |
| or EC 225 | Intermediate Macroeconomics | |
| Finance or Finance and Technology | ||
| FI 306 | Financial Markets and Investment | 3 |
| Corporate Finance and Accounting | ||
| FI 307 | Advanced Managerial Finance | 3 |
Honors Capstone Pathways (3-4 credits)
During the second year, the Honors Program Director will document each student's declared Honors Pathway. Students must choose a pathway that will lead them to complete the Honors Capstone Experience from the list below:
- Corporate Immersion Pathway
- DEI Pathway: Business for Positive Change
- Creative Project Pathway
- Research Project Pathway
- Service-Learning Pathway
- The Economics Pathway
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Capstone Requirements | ||
| Corporate Immersion Pathway | ||
| HNR 440 | (H) Honors Capstone Project | 3 |
| DEI Pathway: Business for Positive Change or Service-Learning Pathway | ||
| HNR 445 | (H) Honors Capstone Course | 3 |
| Creative Pathway or Research Pathway | ||
| HNR 450 | Honors Capstone: Project Proposal | 1 |
| HNR 460 | Honors Capstone Project | 2 |
| Economics Pathway: Business Economics | ||
| EC 431 | Research in Business Economics | 3 |
| Economics Pathway: Quantitative Economics | ||
| EC 483 | Applied Econometrics | 3 |
Corporate Immersion Pathway
The Corporate Immersion pathway will offer the opportunity to honors students to truly partake in experiential learning. Students will gain hands-on experience by delivering business solutions to a real-world corporation. Students will present their work to corporate leaders.
The Corporate Immersion will enable students to:
- Analyze quantitative and qualitative data and articulate results through oral presentations and written deliverables to real world corporations.
- Utilize quantitative and qualitative data, as well as creativity and critical thinking, to shape corporate strategy for partner companies.
- Create a more inclusive business model by addressing real world diversity, equity, and inclusion issues affecting profit and non-profit organizations.
- Practice their business acumen by challenging relevant issues in the workplace.
Suggested courses: Students should complete an honors business elective course before taking HNR 440 (3 credits).
DEI Pathway: Business for Positive Change
The DEI Pathway will allow students to work on projects that address relevant and important topics in diversity, equity, and inclusion such as racial equity, anti-racism, and gender equality, to name a few. Students choosing this pathway should plan to take a course from the Content and Perspectives theme Race, Gender, and Inequality, tagged as honors. Students will have the flexibility to choose a topic they are passionate about to complete their culminating Honors project. For example, a student can design business solutions that address topics in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The DEI Pathway will enable students to:
- Assess diverse and intersectional perspectives, including their own, in order to recognize the complexity that results from a variety of viewpoints.
- Identify social, political, and historical movements that influence and challenge systems of power, privilege, and oppression.
- Cultivate a business environment that embraces the power of diversity and inclusion as a source for creativity and cooperation.
- Take an equity lens approach when drafting the culminating Honors project.
Suggested Courses: Students should take their Content and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality course as honors before completing the Capstone with HNR 445 (3 credits).
Creative Pathway
The Creative Pathway is an opportunity for students to bring together the threads of personal, intellectual, and creative interests and weave them into a final product that demonstrates original research and exploration of the creative and conceptual. This is an opportunity to investigate and/or embrace unexplored or unexamined areas of interest. The Creative Capstone can vary in form, content, and execution, but unlike the traditional research capstones, the Creative Capstone offers a student the opportunity to envision, plan, and construct their own Honors experience, and in doing so, pushes at established parameters of academic scholarship.
The Creative Pathway will enable students to:
- Explain and understand that their creative activities are not individual, isolated, and isolating, but social activities, and that they and their work are part of a much larger conversation and discursive field.
- Explore creative ways of expression by distinguishing a variety of interdisciplinary approaches.
- Design a project that expresses unexplored or unexamined areas of interest.
Suggested Courses: Students should plan take one of the Content and Perspective courses listed below before completing the Capstone with HNR 450 (1 credit) and HNR 460 (2 credits).
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Race, Gender, and Inequality | 3 | |
| Writing for Drama/Screen | ||
| Culture, Change, and Behavior | 3 | |
| Introduction to Media Production | ||
| Introduction to Video Production | ||
| Writing Poetry | ||
| Writing Fiction | ||
Research Project Pathway
The Research Project Pathway allows students to work with a faculty advisor to complete a scholarly research project. Scholarly projects should aim to make an original contribution to the academic literature. The Capstone research project can be multidisciplinary or using a singularly focused lens. There will not be any required course for the Research Pathway.
The Research Project Pathway will enable the students to:
- Demonstrate the ability to perform applied research in various contexts and use research conventions and technologies suitable to their research question and purpose to which the projects aim to address.
- Evaluate and compare the existing literature in the field(s) that their projects belong to.
- Assess and analyze quantitative and/or qualitative data and formulating solutions to the research questions their projects will address.
Suggested Courses: No set suggested courses.
Service-Learning Pathway
The Service-Learning Pathway will allow the students to participate in civic and service-learning opportunities that impact change outside of the classroom. It will also allow the students to lead, as well as foster their ability to be effective team members. Prior to working on their Service-Learning Honors project, students will take a one-credit service-learning course approved by the Honors Director that will prepare them to the culminating phase.
The Service-Learning Pathway will enable students to:
- Develop skills that enable them to work collaboratively and creatively on problem solving through experiential learning.
- Describe citizenship and one’s own sense of civic duty and commitment to social justice.
- Use community engagement experience to inform their own academic studies.
Suggested Courses: No set suggested courses; students will take a required one-credit service learning course approved by the Honors Director.
The Economics Pathway
Open only to Quantitative Economic (QE) and Business Economic (BE) majors, the Economics Pathway allows the students to work on a scholarly project related to their major. These projects are focused on students developing skills working with data and econometric analysis. Similar to the Scholarly Project Pathway, students write a proposal the semester before the project. Students then complete their Capstone project in either the Research in Business Economics (BE major, EC 431) or Applied Econometrics (QE major, EC 483) course. These courses are built into the Business Economics (BE) and Quantitative Economics (QE) majors, respectively.
The Economics Pathway will enable the students to:
- Develop a research question and determine its contribution to an area of Economics literature.
- Gather the appropriate type of data to answer a research question and determine an econometric strategy.
- Demonstrate the ability to apply highly rigorous econometric methods to economics research questions.
Courses: Capstone process will be EC 431 for BE majors and EC 483 for QE majors. These courses have prerequisites as stipulated by each major.
Overall GPA Requirements
End of the first full semester at Bentley University: 3.3
End of the second full semester at Bentley University: 3.3
End of the third full semester at Bentley University: 3.4
End of the fourth full semester at Bentley University: 3.4
End of the fifth full semester at Bentley University to graduation: 3.5
All Honors students must graduate with at least a 3.5 overall GPA, regardless of circumstances.
Honors Probation
If a student does not achieve the required GPA at the end of a semester (fall, spring, or summer), the student will be placed automatically on academic probation within the Honors Program and be given the subsequent semester after the term in which they fell below to raise their overall GPA to the required standards. Students who are on academic probation must meet with an academic advisor and the Director of the Honors Program to develop a plan to support their academic success. If a student fails to meet the minimum Honors Program GPA requirement at the end of their first semester on academic probation, the probationary period may be extended for another semester if the student’s GPA improves substantially. In order to obtain this extension, the student must meet with the Director of the Honors Program. If a student’s GPA does not improve substantially after the subsequent semester in which they fell below the required GPA and/or does not meet the required GPA after an extended probation period, the student will be dismissed from the Honors Program. If the student is on a leave of absence from the University or studying abroad the subsequent semester, the first semester in which the student returns to campus will apply in raising their overall GPA to the required standards. Students who fall below the required overall GPA more than once will be dismissed from the Honors Program.
Students who have been dismissed from the Honors Program do have the option to submit an appeal. The Honors Leadership, in tandem with the Honors Faculty Council, will evaluate whether or not the extenuating circumstances directly and clearly adversely affected the student’s academic performance as well the student’s potential for satisfying the program requirements for graduation. Students whose appeals are granted will receive one additional probationary semester to meet the required GPA minimum. No other grounds for appeal will be considered.
Honors Program Academic Integrity Guidelines
These guidelines are a supplement to the Academic Integrity (AI) policy, which can be found in the Undergraduate Handbook and the Faculty Manual. The AI policy applies to all Bentley students, as well as the Bentley Honor Code, which reads as follows:
As a Bentley student, I promise to act honorably in my courses and my professional endeavors, adhering to both the letter and spirit of Bentley’s academic integrity system. I will neither take advantage of my classmates nor betray the trust of my professors. My work will be honest and transparent, and I will hold myself and my peers accountable to the highest ethical standards.
Participation in the Honors Program is a privilege and, as such, students are subject to removal from it for breaches of AI policy. In addition to the university-wide AI policy, the following specific rules apply to Honors students:
1. Whenever an Honors student is determined to have committed a violation via the AI process, case materials are submitted to the AI Council for review. Each Council member then votes as to whether the violation warrants a Level I or Level II designation. In all instances, the student is still subject to any sanctions proposed by the submitting faculty and the normal review process (Level I or Level II) will thereafter ensue.
- If a majority of respondents deem the incident a Level I violation, the student may remain in the program.
- If a majority of respondents deem the incident a Level II violation, the student will be removed from the Honors Program.
- In instances where votes are evenly divided, the student may remain in the program and the incident designated Level I.
2. Any finding of a second violation through the normal AI process will result in removal from the Honors Program, regardless of violation level.
3. After a Level determination has been made by the Academic Integrity Council, an Honors student retains the right to take their case to an AI Hearing just as they would if they were not enrolled in the program. In these instances, the Hearing Panel will perform the normal duties of determining whether a violation occurred and the appropriate sanction.
4. If a Hearing Panel finds that the circumstances described in the incident report submitted to the Academic Integrity Council differ materially from those discovered during the Hearing, the Director, in consultation with the Panel, will refer the case back to the Academic Integrity Council for further review and a new vote regarding the violation level.
Additional procedural notes:
- When a finding requiring removal occurs, the student and the Honors Program Director are notified by the Office of Academic Integrity. When a pending incident report may impact graduation privileges, the Office of Academic Integrity will inform the Honors Director of its existence without any details.
- There will be no appeal of removal under any circumstances except, as specified in the university AI policy, to the Provost.
- Confidentiality will be maintained throughout this process. Faculty, staff, and students will only be notified of the violation on a need-to-know basis.
- A student removed from the program after receiving a medallion and Honors Program certificate must return both before graduation upon request by the Honors Director.
- If a student falls below the required Honors GPA as a result of an AI sanction, they will be automatically removed from the Honors Program.