Guidelines for Mathematics Honors Students
Students seeking an honors designation in mathematics must meet all requirements for Senior Honors as described in the Honors College Handbook. In addition, students must meet the departmental requirements as set forth below. Please be particularly attentive of deadlines for the completion of the comprehensive exam, the prospectus, the thesis, and the thesis defense. A timeline is available to assist students in planning their course of study.

Departmental Honors Committee
The Mathematics Department Honors Committee is comprised of 4 members of the mathematics faculty. The committee is responsible for designing and administering the Honors Comprehensive Examination, reviewing the Prospectus, and hearing the defense of the Honors Thesis.

Comprehensive Examination
Honors students are expected to demonstrate a mastery of

• calculus,
• linear algebra,
• discrete mathematics, and
• differential equations

on the Comprehensive Examination. In case of an unsatisfactory performance, the committee may reschedule the examination once. At least one semester should elapse before the examination is rescheduled. The Comprehensive Examination should be taken soon after the student has completed the core mathematics course work. Normally this should occur no later than the first semester of the junior year. In any case, the comprehensive examination should be succesfully completed before the Prospectus is submitted for approval. A Comprehensive Examination will be designed and administered each semester that there are candidates for the examination. The examination will be given on a date set by the committee chair. Students intending to take the Comprehensive Examination during a semester should notify the committee chair in writing no later than the first week of that semester.

Thesis Advisor
Once the Comprehensive Examination has been succesfully completed, the student should select a mathematics faculty advisor who will direct the research work for the Honors Thesis.

Prospectus
A student who has succesfully completed the Comprehensive Examination may present a Prospectus for approval. The student should obtain a copy of the Guide for Writing the Prospectus from the Honors College. Note that the Honors College requires Senior Honors students to complete HON 301 (Prospectus Writing), and recommends that it be completed during the first semester of the junior year. In order to allow adequate time for writing the thesis, it is normally assumed that the Prospectus wil have been approved by the end of the first semester of the junior year. The Prospectus should be prepared under the direction of a thesis advisor.

Each student presenting a Prospectus in mathematics during a semester, along with his or her thesis advisor, will meet with the departmental Honors Committee. The purposes of this prospectus review are to establish realistic objectives for the Honors Thesis and to determine appropriate prerequisites. It is not the intent of the committee to impose inflexible guidelines for the thesis. The prospectus review should occur no later than four weeks prior to the end of the semester in which the Prospectus will be submitted to the Honors College.

Thesis (Senior Project)
After the Prospectus has been approved, two complete semesters should be allowed for writing the thesis (noramlly the 2nd semester of the junior year and the 1st semester of the senior year). A first draft would be presented to the faculty advisor by the end of the first semester. The student should obtain a copy of the Guide for Writing the Senior Thesis from the Honors College. (The Honors College requires that a draft of the thesis be approved no later than the five weeks before the end of the semester in which the student will graduate.)

Thesis Defense
After the thesis advisor has approved the thesis, the student should provide a copy of the thesis to each member of the mathematics honors committee. The committee will review the thesis, and within the next two weeks of regularly scheduled classes, will approve the scheduling of an oral defense, or else will return written comments detailing aspects of the thesis that need to be addressed prior to the scheduling of that defense. If a thesis is returned for further work, the process will repeat until the thesis is deemed acceptable by the committee.

Once the committee accepts the thesis, the student, in conjunction with his or her advisor, will schedule an oral defense of the thesis. During this defense, the student will present his or her results to the committee, and the student will be expected to answer questions pertaining to the thesis. If the committee still feels further work is needed, the student will be given detailed advice by the committee, and upon the completion of the committee's recommendations, another oral defense can be scheduled if the committee deems it desirable. Upon successful completion of the oral defense, the committee will provide the chair of the department with written notice that the thesis has been approved, and that the thesis may be signed.

The Honors College requires that a draft of the thesis must be submitted to the thesis advisor and to the Senior Honors Coordinator at least five weeks prior to the end of the semester of graduation, and that the completed thesis be submitted to the thesis advisor at least three weeks prior to the end of the semester. In order for the departmental honors committee to have adequate time to review the thesis, the department requires that the student deliver a draft of the thesis to the thesis advisor, and with the advisor's approval, to the committee at least seven weeks prior to the end of the semester in which the student will graduate.

In addition to style manuals recommended by the Honors College, the following manuals which are specifically concerned with mathematical manuscripts should be consulted

• Mathematical Writing, Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, and Paul M. Roberts, Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D.C. (1990); and,
• Writing Mathematics Well, Leonard Gilman, Mathematical Assocation of America, Washington, D.C (1987).

Students are strongly encouraged to type their theses using LaTeX, Lyx, or a similar document preparation system that makes it easy to typeset mathematics. The following texts contain references and/or tutorials for LaTeX.

• First steps in LaTeX, George Grätzer, Birkhäuser, Boston (1999)
• The LaTeX Companion, Michel Goossens, Frank Mittelbach, and Alexander Samarin, Addison, Reading, Mass. (1994);
• Learning LaTeX, David Griffiths and Desmond Higham, SIAM, Philadelphia (1997); and,
• Math into LaTeX, 3rd Edition, George Grätzer, Birkhäuser-Springer, Boston (2004).