Director: Malcolm Watford, Lipman Hall, 848-932-7418 (watford@aesop.rutgers.edu)
The George H. Cook Scholars Program is a senior-year honors thesis program administered by the Honors Committee and available to students who have completed a minimum of 24 credits at Rutgers by the end of their junior year. To be eligible, students must have achieved a cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 (top 15 percent of their class) in the junior year or be recommended to the honors committee by a faculty member in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
This program is designed to develop and encourage interest in scientific research or creative projects in all curricula. Interested students should contact the program director and discuss the program with their faculty adviser prior to preregistration for courses for the second semester of the junior year. With the adviser's help, students find an instructor willing to aid in the definition of a project and to supervise the work. In consultation with the honors project adviser, students decide how many credits (from 3 to 6) to assign to each semester of the honors course. Students submit written and oral project proposals for the approval of the Honors Committee at the end of the junior year.
Students who successfully complete the two-semester honors course (11:015:497,498), prepare a thesis or other presentation based on these studies, present their work at an open seminar attended by interested faculty members and others, and maintain a satisfactory academic record through the senior year are designated as George H. Cook Scholars at graduation. Honors theses are kept in the permanent collection of the Chang Science Library.
