Honors

Dive deep into your major

The Art Department Honors program offers highly qualified students the opportunity to take specialized, interdisciplinary art honors courses and to pursue creative or scholarly research projects tailored to their particular interests and professional aspirations. By pursuing Art Honors, highly motivated students will have the unique opportunity to work closely with faculty in conceiving, developing, and bringing to completion a body of work that will position them well for graduate studies and/or professional opportunities in their chosen field of study.

To attain the designation of Honors in Art, students complete a total of nine credit hours: six credit hours of honors courses in the department and a Senior Honors Thesis (ART 4510). The six credits of coursework may include ART 4515, Junior/Senior Honors Seminar, and/or 3000- or 4000-level courses in the major with an additional honors contract. The Senior Honors Thesis consists of an independent thesis project designed by the student in consultation with the student’s art honors thesis committee, and can take multiple forms depending on the student’s major within the department.

Examples of recent honors theses from all majors, including art, can be found at NCDocks.

For more information on Honors in Art, contact the Art Department Honors Director, Dr. Mira Waits, at waitsmr@appstate.edu.

If you're interested in completing the four-year University Honors program in addition to doing honors in your art major, see honors.appstate.edu.

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Students at Islamic Symposium

Students at Islamic Art Symposium at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Detail from Past Bleeds Present exhibition

Detail from Past Bleeds Present, a thesis exhibition by Jarrod Mayes

Honors seminar on Museums and Heritage Studies students tour Cone Manor in Blowing Rock

All my faculty were wonderful and intelligent. Dr. Bentor was fantastic at pushing us and encouraging us to work hard (not to mention he was an amazing African Arts and Honors Masks instructor).

Baylee Werline, Art History Alumna

Honors Thesis Exhibition

Graphic Design student Jarrod Mayes’ Honors Thesis, Past Bleeds Present, offered a retrospective glance at our country’s history of mass racial conflict between African-American and White populations and directly illustrated ways in which this past influences current racial tensions.