Departmental Honors

Spanish and Portuguese majors and second majors are eligible to earn the honors designations cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude by participating in Departmental Honors. Departmental Honors allows a student to work more closely with individual faculty members, enrich their academic experience, and pursue individual interests in depth, building better preparation for graduate or professional school. Earning departmental honors will take between one and two semesters and culminates in a Research Paper (or equivalent project) during a student’s senior year.

The honors application must be turned in to the Undergraduate Advisor.

For a student to be officially considered a candidate for Departmental Honors, they must turn in a completed honors application, with all of the required signatures, to the Undergraduate Advisor.

To be eligible for Honors in Spanish or Portuguese, you must have:

  1. An overall GPA of at least 3.2 (including transfer credits) and a GPA of 3.5 or better in Spanish or Portuguese courses taken at UNM;
  2. Completed 75 hours of college credit that includes a minimum of 9 hours of credit in Spanish or Portuguese courses taken at UNM at or above the 300 level.

To earn departmental honors, students complete the following components:

  1. Field Work or Professional Experience - Examples of this may include: teaching with a facultymentor, field research with a faculty mentor, work or service in a Spanish or Portuguese speaking community, service learning experience, specialized study abroad tasks/experiences.
  2. Research Paper - A research paper of 5500 – 6500 words (approximately 20 – 25 pages) written in Spanish or Portuguese following either MLA, LSA, or APA style (per the faculty mentor’s advisement). The research paper will be based on the student’s field work or professional experience or on a proposed academic topic appropriate to literary, cultural, or linguistic studies within the Luso-Hispanic world.

Getting started:

  1. Before applying to the program - students should consider what topics they wish to focus on, obtain a faculty mentor who will advise them on their research paper, and review options for where to complete the Field Work or Professional Experience.
  2. Apply for Departmental Honors by completing the honors application in its entirety.
  3. Turn in the completed application, with required signatures, to the Undergraduate Advisor. Be sure to attach your transcripts with the Spanish and/or Portuguese courses highlighted.

For more information on completing the requirements and for the Departmental Honors Application – see the pdf version of this document.