ECE James Scholar Program

James Scholar Program: Summary | Rules | Contracts | Advisors
                                         College of Engineering James Schlolars

Summary of ECE James Scholar Program

Who?

• Entering freshmen are in the top 1% of their high school class or have a 33 ACT composite or 1450 SAT (approx).
  • To stay in the program ECE students must have a 3.5 GPA (top 25%). The rest of the College of Engineering uses a 3.3 cutoff.
• To enter the program after arriving, students must have a 3.5 GPA and register with Professor Ravaioli - ONLY during the first two weeks of each term.

What?

• James Scholars are assigned ECE James Scholar Advisors who become their faculty mentors and help them with honors contract development.
• Sophmores must develop an honors contract online --- See College of Engineering James Scholar Program for a description of honors contract.
  • Subject area for honor contracts is wide open -- research, advanced coursework, foreign study, archaeology, ...
  • All minors will count.

When?

• Freshmen take one per year of an honors course or section --- these are indicated by an "H" in the section designation in the Class Schedule.
• Sophomores take either one honors course or section, or one course from their honors contracts during their second year on campus.
• Freshmen and sophomores can take "honors credit learning agreements" where the instructor agrees to assign honors credit to a regular course if the student does agreed upon extra work.
• Contracts must be submitted by the end of the second year on campus (e.g. sophomores -- but not first year "sophomores" who have lots of AP credit).
• Contracts may be modified at any time.
• Contracts are completed over the junior and senior years.

Record Keeping and Validation

• Professor Ravaioli checks GPAs in the summer and dismisses students whose GPAs are low.
• The contract is entered on the database as if it were a minor. Students can access their "degree audit" online at https://darsweb.admin.uillinois.edu/darswebadv_uiuc/servlet/LoginServlet
• Formally, the College Honors Council must approve all contracts and acts as a coordinating body. It is unlikely it will veto anything approved by an honors adviser, but it will help by issuing guidelines as it reviews contracts.

Perks

• Preregister first!
• Stack pass to the main library
• Notation on transcript

ECE Special Rules

• 3.5 GPA instead of 3.3.
• Scholars must take ECE 200 once per year, sophomore through senior -- the goal is to expose them to a variety of ECE topics more frequently and earlier in their careers.
• Oral / poster report for those doing research, at the spring ECE Undergrad Research Symposium

Observations

• The challenge for sophomores is to envision what they can and want to do while they are still taking basic classes.
• They should be encouraged to modify the contract as needed.

Range of Contracts

• College of Engineering and the ECE Department recognize all minors.
• ECE Honors Advisors believe that the proposed course work should be capped with an ECE 396 project or an ECE 496/499 thesis.
• Guidelines for honors contracts can be found at:
  https://my.ece.illinois.edu/myjames/james.asp