College is a time for making ever-lasting friendships and memories, but it is also a time for students to explore a field they are passionate about. Many students feel the same excitement of their first major class, their first interview and their first job offer. The Honors Tutorial College, or HTC, at Ohio University allows students to further explore their field with expert support.
The Honors Tutorial College is a program for dedicated students to independently explore their fields with one-on-one support from staff, according to the OU Website.
“I get to work one-on-one with professionals in the industry,” Austin Amburgey, a senior studying media arts in HTC, said. “I get to kind of decide my own course load and course focus.”
Students learn and apply their knowledge through semesterly tutorials and a thesis completed during their senior year.
Tutorials vary depending on the student’s major, but they are one-on-one or small group classes with an expert in the field, according to OU’s website. Some tutorials are required, while others are determined by the student.
“Tutorials are like the main component of the Honors Tutorial College education,” Luvina Cooley, a senior studying Anthropology in HTC, said. “You kind of meet one-on-one or in a small group with the faculty. You'll have one of those each semester.”
A thesis is an independent project that covers everything the students have learned in college and the HTC, according to Amburgey.
“An HTC thesis is supposed to be a summation final project,” Amburgey said. “So, that kind of recaps and recontextualizes all the things you've learned over the four years in your various tutorials and in your classes.”
Theses vary depending on students’ field of study. Some forms of a thesis include a traditional paper, a publication piece and a creative project.
“The HTC thesis can take a number of different forms,” Cooley said. “There is a more traditional thesis which is kind of like a paper format. You can also submit a kind of a smaller piece of paper for publication within a scholarly journal, which is kind of the same method but it's a much more condensed version. And then, the third component that you could choose to do is a creative project.”
The projects are designed to further prepare HTC students for their future career and assist in obtaining a job or graduate school acceptance, according to OU’s Website.
“The programs in general through the HTC encourage that self-study,” Rachael Puls, a senior in HTC studying music and philosophy, said. “I've heard from current and past law students that that's the top priority to have under your belt when going into any kind of law program.”
This project can seem challenging for many students in the HTC program, however, Thesis Thursdays were created to make this project less intimidating.
Thesis Thursdays are videos on the HTC’s Instagram page made by seniors. These short videos explain the various projects that different seniors are doing and how they are completing them.
“It kind of helps to make the process seem a lot less daunting,” Cooley said. “(The purpose of Thesis Thursday is) just to kind of help kind of get the word out, talk about what they're doing, normalize it and make it seem like less of a bigger deal than it is because like, it is a big deal, but also there are a lot of steps along the way that are designed to help.”
All parties interested in viewing the Thesis Thursday videos should visit the HTC Instagram.
“I love the HTC,” Puls said. “They give me the opportunity to go to other colleges at OU to kind of gather information from different departments to get a better idea of what I'm actually pursuing.”
