These changes impact the application process in 2015 to establish the 2015-16 cohort of participants.

2015  --

Applications will be open to all disciplines within COTS.

To maintain cohesiveness within the program, all proposals/projects must be framed in a common manner consistent with the stereotypical "scientific method", containing three elements --

                   1) Proposal of one (or more) hypothesis(es)

                   2) Design and conduct experiment(s), or otherwise collect data

                   3) Analyze data using statistics to support or refute the hypothesis(es)

The 2015-16 cohort will be the FINAL cohort of SHRP as we have know it since 2005.

2016 and following --

Beginning with next year's 2016-17 cohort, the classwork, thesis and honors portion of the program will be integrated into the Douglas Honors College (DHC) Upper Division Honors Program (Empirical Track), whereas the summer intensive research experience will continue as a separate program run out of COTS.  Students would be able to apply to either or both programs, but neither program would require participation in the other.

Sophomores can apply to the two-year, 18 credit, upper-level DHC honors program in their spring quarter, or juniors and transfer students can apply in their fall quarter. Application consists of GPA and two essays. The DHC curriculum will be comprised of a 5 credit History of Science Course, a 2-credit seminar course focused on proposal development (taken winter quarter of the student's junior year), a minimum of 8 credits of undergraduate research in the mentor's department, a winter-quarter, 2-credit, senior-year seminar course focused on drafting the thesis, and 1 credit spring quarter for writing the thesis.  Faculty mentoring DHC students will obtain workload for the student's research credits, plus an additional 1 WLU for the thesis. Students obtain a partial tuition waver, graduate from the Honors College (shown on transcript) and are eligible for other benefits.  For more information, see the DHC webpages.

The COTS summer research experience will first run in its new form the summer of 2016, with applications at the beginning of spring quarter 2016.  This program is currently in development, but will include a stipend for students and compensation for faculty.