JMU HONORS PROGRAM

251 Warren Service Drive
MSC 1501
Harrisonburg, VA 22807

Hillcrest House

540.568.6953
540.568.7728 
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E-mail:  honors@jmu.edu

Office hours:
Mon.-Fri., 8:00am-5:00pm

 


School of Engineering

 

GUIDE FOR JUNIOR/SENIOR CAPSTONE HONORS PROJECT: ENGR 499A, 499B and 499C


James Madison University • March 23, 2011

 

Purpose of this Document


This document contains guidelines to help you through the process of your Junior/Senior Capstone Honors project. It is designed to supplement information on the JMU Honors Program's website.

Contents of the Capstone Project


You will follow the guidelines set forth by the Engineering Design instructors. Although your Capstone Design Project is a group effort, your written individual Honors thesis will be completed without others’ help or participation. Your final thesis will mirror the attributes and deliverables detailed for the Capstone Design Project, but will be separate from your group’s thesis.

Honors Project Committee

  • ENGR 499A students must meet with their project advisor no later than the first week of class to define their topic and establish a committee.
  • Honors thesis committees are comprised of three faculty members. The project advisor will serve as the committee chair and must be a member of the School of Engineering faculty. In most cases, readers will also be members of the School of Engineering faculty. With the approval of the project advisor, one reader may be from another department.
  • The project advisor will be responsible for ensuring that committees include faculty members with expertise appropriate to the thesis topic. It is particularly important that the committee chair have expertise that will allow the student to successfully complete his/her research. It is acceptable (and, in fact, often helpful) if one member of the committee does not have expertise in the subject and is able to view the material as an "outsider."
  • Department faculty are expected to serve on honors thesis committees when asked to do so by the honors project advisor (unless they can provide reasonable justification for refusing). In making these requests, the honors project advisor will be sensitive to the number of thesis committees to which each faculty member is already committed.

 

Deliverables


In all cases, students must complete and submit a properly formatted written document (see information on the Honors Program website.).