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Washington and Lee University

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Honors Program

The Honors Program in Computer Science is intended to be an enrichment opportunity for students who demonstrate superior achievement in computer science. Honors work consists of research for and preparation of an honors thesis, which is supervised by a departmental advisor. The topic of the thesis must be approved by the Department as a whole.

Honors topics have included Emergent Behaviors in Artificial Life, Position-Aware Wireless Networking, and Modeling Complex Surfaces Using Dynamic Meshing. Preliminary reading and study in the thesis subject will begin prior to the senior year. In the senior year, on the completion of the thesis project, six credits will be awarded. An honors candidate is required to make an oral presentation of the completed thesis to a departmental seminar to which the public is invited. Preliminary reports on progress will be made periodically to the candidate's thesis advisor. Deadlines for the phases of honors projects can be found in the University Catalogue.

A typical honors candidate will be pursuing the Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science, but, at the discretion of the Department, a student pursuing the Bachelor of Arts degree may be admitted to the program.

To be eligible for admission to the honors program, a student must

  • Demonstrate the independence, self-discipline, and perseverance necessary for a successful candidacy.
  • Have an overall grade point average of 3.0 and an average in computer science courses of 3.5 by the end the winter term of junior year. 
  • Choose a thesis adviser and discuss a thesis topic with the adviser.
  • Submit a brief (one-page) proposal to the Department Head by the end of spring term of the junior year.

The student will defend the honors thesis during the winter term of senior year. At least one week before the defense, the student will submit a draft of the thesis to the Department Head.

Questions should be directed to the Department Head.

Honors Thesis Topics

  • Camille Cobb '12
    Exploring Text-Based Analysis of Test-Case Dependencies of Web Applications
    Faculty Advisor: Sara Sprenkle
  • Daniel Thornton '10
    Connectivity: Initial Data and Analysis
    Faculty Advisors: Dr. Wayne Dymàček and Simon Levy
  • Alex Jackson '09
    A Parallel Algorithm for Fast Edge Detection on the Graphics Processing Unit
    Faculty Advisor: Rance Necaise
  • Pasko Paskov '09
    A Parallel Algorithm for Derivation of Regression Coefficients on the Graphics Processing Unit
    Faculty Advisor: Rance Necaise
  • Aleksandr Khasymski '07
    Evolving Languages for Robotic Foraging Tasks
    Faculty Advisor: Simon Levy
  • Andrew West '07
    Bound Optimation for Parallel Quadrantic Sieving using Large Prime Variations
    Faculty Advisor: Rance Necaise
  • Elizabeth Davis '06
    Lexical Disambiguation in Machine Translation with Latent Semantic Analysis
    Faculty Advisor: Simon Levy
  • Andrew White '06
    Evaluating Parallel Techniques for Solving Sparse Linear Systems
    Faculty Advisor: Rance Necaise
View All