meaning of honors thesis

Honors Theses

What this handout is about.

Writing a senior honors thesis, or any major research essay, can seem daunting at first. A thesis requires a reflective, multi-stage writing process. This handout will walk you through those stages. It is targeted at students in the humanities and social sciences, since their theses tend to involve more writing than projects in the hard sciences. Yet all thesis writers may find the organizational strategies helpful.

Introduction

What is an honors thesis.

That depends quite a bit on your field of study. However, all honors theses have at least two things in common:

• They are based on students’ original research.
• They take the form of a written manuscript, which presents the findings of that research. In the humanities, theses average 50-75 pages in length and consist of two or more chapters. In the social sciences, the manuscript may be shorter, depending on whether the project involves more quantitative than qualitative research. In the hard sciences, the manuscript may be shorter still, often taking the form of a sophisticated laboratory report.

Who can write an honors thesis?

In general, students who are at the end of their junior year, have an overall 3.2 GPA, and meet their departmental requirements can write a senior thesis. For information about your eligibility, contact:

• UNC Honors Program
• Your departmental administrators of undergraduate studies/honors

Why write an honors thesis?

Satisfy your intellectual curiosity This is the most compelling reason to write a thesis. Whether it’s the short stories of Flannery O’Connor or the challenges of urban poverty, you’ve studied topics in college that really piqued your interest. Now’s your chance to follow your passions, explore further, and contribute some original ideas and research in your field.

Develop transferable skills Whether you choose to stay in your field of study or not, the process of developing and crafting a feasible research project will hone skills that will serve you well in almost any future job. After all, most jobs require some form of problem solving and oral and written communication. Writing an honors thesis requires that you:

• ask smart questions
• acquire the investigative instincts needed to find answers
• navigate libraries, laboratories, archives, databases, and other research venues
• develop the flexibility to redirect your research if your initial plan flops
• master the art of time management
• hone your argumentation skills
• organize a lengthy piece of writing
• polish your oral communication skills by presenting and defending your project to faculty and peers

Work closely with faculty mentors At large research universities like Carolina, you’ve likely taken classes where you barely got to know your instructor. Writing a thesis offers the opportunity to work one-on-one with a with faculty adviser. Such mentors can enrich your intellectual development and later serve as invaluable references for graduate school and employment.

Open windows into future professions An honors thesis will give you a taste of what it’s like to do research in your field. Even if you’re a sociology major, you may not really know what it’s like to be a sociologist. Writing a sociology thesis would open a window into that world. It also might help you decide whether to pursue that field in graduate school or in your future career.

How do you write an honors thesis?

Get an idea of what’s expected.

It’s a good idea to review some of the honors theses other students have submitted to get a sense of what an honors thesis might look like and what kinds of things might be appropriate topics. Look for examples from the previous year in the Carolina Digital Repository. You may also be able to find past theses collected in your major department or at the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Library. Pay special attention to theses written by students who share your major.

Choose a topic

Ideally, you should start thinking about topics early in your junior year, so you can begin your research and writing quickly during your senior year. (Many departments require that you submit a proposal for an honors thesis project during the spring of your junior year.)

How should you choose a topic?

• Read widely in the fields that interest you. Make a habit of browsing professional journals to survey the “hot” areas of research and to familiarize yourself with your field’s stylistic conventions. (You’ll find the most recent issues of the major professional journals in the periodicals reading room on the first floor of Davis Library).
• Set up appointments to talk with faculty in your field. This is a good idea, since you’ll eventually need to select an advisor and a second reader. Faculty also can help you start narrowing down potential topics.
• Look at honors theses from the past. The North Carolina Collection in Wilson Library holds UNC honors theses. To get a sense of the typical scope of a thesis, take a look at a sampling from your field.

What makes a good topic?

• It’s fascinating. Above all, choose something that grips your imagination. If you don’t, the chances are good that you’ll struggle to finish.
• It’s doable. Even if a topic interests you, it won’t work out unless you have access to the materials you need to research it. Also be sure that your topic is narrow enough. Let’s take an example: Say you’re interested in the efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and early 1980s. That’s a big topic that probably can’t be adequately covered in a single thesis. You need to find a case study within that larger topic. For example, maybe you’re particularly interested in the states that did not ratify the ERA. Of those states, perhaps you’ll select North Carolina, since you’ll have ready access to local research materials. And maybe you want to focus primarily on the ERA’s opponents. Beyond that, maybe you’re particularly interested in female opponents of the ERA. Now you’ve got a much more manageable topic: Women in North Carolina Who Opposed the ERA in the 1970s and 1980s.
• It contains a question. There’s a big difference between having a topic and having a guiding research question. Taking the above topic, perhaps your main question is: Why did some women in North Carolina oppose the ERA? You will, of course, generate other questions: Who were the most outspoken opponents? White women? Middle-class women? How did they oppose the ERA? Public protests? Legislative petitions? etc. etc. Yet it’s good to start with a guiding question that will focus your research.

Goal-setting and time management

The senior year is an exceptionally busy time for college students. In addition to the usual load of courses and jobs, seniors have the daunting task of applying for jobs and/or graduate school. These demands are angst producing and time consuming If that scenario sounds familiar, don’t panic! Do start strategizing about how to make a time for your thesis. You may need to take a lighter course load or eliminate extracurricular activities. Even if the thesis is the only thing on your plate, you still need to make a systematic schedule for yourself. Most departments require that you take a class that guides you through the honors project, so deadlines likely will be set for you. Still, you should set your own goals for meeting those deadlines. Here are a few suggestions for goal setting and time management:

Start early. Keep in mind that many departments will require that you turn in your thesis sometime in early April, so don’t count on having the entire spring semester to finish your work. Ideally, you’ll start the research process the semester or summer before your senior year so that the writing process can begin early in the fall. Some goal-setting will be done for you if you are taking a required class that guides you through the honors project. But any substantive research project requires a clear timetable.

Set clear goals in making a timetable. Find out the final deadline for turning in your project to your department. Working backwards from that deadline, figure out how much time you can allow for the various stages of production.

Here is a sample timetable. Use it, however, with two caveats in mind:

• The timetable for your thesis might look very different depending on your departmental requirements.
• You may not wish to proceed through these stages in a linear fashion. You may want to revise chapter one before you write chapter two. Or you might want to write your introduction last, not first. This sample is designed simply to help you start thinking about how to customize your own schedule.

Sample timetable

Avoid falling into the trap of procrastination. Once you’ve set goals for yourself, stick to them! For some tips on how to do this, see our handout on procrastination .

Consistent production

It’s a good idea to try to squeeze in a bit of thesis work every day—even if it’s just fifteen minutes of journaling or brainstorming about your topic. Or maybe you’ll spend that fifteen minutes taking notes on a book. The important thing is to accomplish a bit of active production (i.e., putting words on paper) for your thesis every day. That way, you develop good writing habits that will help you keep your project moving forward.

Make yourself accountable to someone other than yourself

Since most of you will be taking a required thesis seminar, you will have deadlines. Yet you might want to form a writing group or enlist a peer reader, some person or people who can help you stick to your goals. Moreover, if your advisor encourages you to work mostly independently, don’t be afraid to ask them to set up periodic meetings at which you’ll turn in installments of your project.

Brainstorming and freewriting

One of the biggest challenges of a lengthy writing project is keeping the creative juices flowing. Here’s where freewriting can help. Try keeping a small notebook handy where you jot down stray ideas that pop into your head. Or schedule time to freewrite. You may find that such exercises “free” you up to articulate your argument and generate new ideas. Here are some questions to stimulate freewriting.

Questions for basic brainstorming at the beginning of your project:

• What do I already know about this topic?
• Why do I care about this topic?
• Why is this topic important to people other than myself
• What more do I want to learn about this topic?
• What is the main question that I am trying to answer?
• Where can I look for additional information?
• Who is my audience and how can I reach them?
• How will my work inform my larger field of study?
• What’s the main goal of my research project?

Questions for reflection throughout your project:

• What’s my main argument? How has it changed since I began the project?
• What’s the most important evidence that I have in support of my “big point”?
• What questions do my sources not answer?
• How does my case study inform or challenge my field writ large?
• Does my project reinforce or contradict noted scholars in my field? How?
• What is the most surprising finding of my research?
• What is the most frustrating part of this project?
• What is the most rewarding part of this project?
• What will be my work’s most important contribution?

Research and note-taking

In conducting research, you will need to find both primary sources (“firsthand” sources that come directly from the period/events/people you are studying) and secondary sources (“secondhand” sources that are filtered through the interpretations of experts in your field.) The nature of your research will vary tremendously, depending on what field you’re in. For some general suggestions on finding sources, consult the UNC Libraries tutorials . Whatever the exact nature of the research you’re conducting, you’ll be taking lots of notes and should reflect critically on how you do that. Too often it’s assumed that the research phase of a project involves very little substantive writing (i.e., writing that involves thinking). We sit down with our research materials and plunder them for basic facts and useful quotations. That mechanical type of information-recording is important. But a more thoughtful type of writing and analytical thinking is also essential at this stage. Some general guidelines for note-taking:

First of all, develop a research system. There are lots of ways to take and organize your notes. Whether you choose to use note cards, computer databases, or notebooks, follow two cardinal rules:

• Make careful distinctions between direct quotations and your paraphrasing! This is critical if you want to be sure to avoid accidentally plagiarizing someone else’s work. For more on this, see our handout on plagiarism .
• Record full citations for each source. Don’t get lazy here! It will be far more difficult to find the proper citation later than to write it down now.

Keeping those rules in mind, here’s a template for the types of information that your note cards/legal pad sheets/computer files should include for each of your sources:

Abbreviated subject heading: Include two or three words to remind you of what this sources is about (this shorthand categorization is essential for the later sorting of your sources).

Complete bibliographic citation:

• author, title, publisher, copyright date, and page numbers for published works
• box and folder numbers and document descriptions for archival sources
• complete web page title, author, address, and date accessed for online sources

Notes on facts, quotations, and arguments: Depending on the type of source you’re using, the content of your notes will vary. If, for example, you’re using US Census data, then you’ll mainly be writing down statistics and numbers. If you’re looking at someone else’s diary, you might jot down a number of quotations that illustrate the subject’s feelings and perspectives. If you’re looking at a secondary source, you’ll want to make note not just of factual information provided by the author but also of their key arguments.

Your interpretation of the source: This is the most important part of note-taking. Don’t just record facts. Go ahead and take a stab at interpreting them. As historians Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff insist, “A note is a thought.” So what do these thoughts entail? Ask yourself questions about the context and significance of each source.

Interpreting the context of a source:

• Who wrote/created the source?
• When, and under what circumstances, was it written/created?
• Why was it written/created? What was the agenda behind the source?
• How was it written/created?
• If using a secondary source: How does it speak to other scholarship in the field?

Interpreting the significance of a source:

• How does this source answer (or complicate) my guiding research questions?
• Does it pose new questions for my project? What are they?
• Does it challenge my fundamental argument? If so, how?
• Given the source’s context, how reliable is it?

You don’t need to answer all of these questions for each source, but you should set a goal of engaging in at least one or two sentences of thoughtful, interpretative writing for each source. If you do so, you’ll make much easier the next task that awaits you: drafting.

The dread of drafting

Why do we often dread drafting? We dread drafting because it requires synthesis, one of the more difficult forms of thinking and interpretation. If you’ve been free-writing and taking thoughtful notes during the research phase of your project, then the drafting should be far less painful. Here are some tips on how to get started:

Sort your “evidence” or research into analytical categories:

• Some people file note cards into categories.
• The technologically-oriented among us take notes using computer database programs that have built-in sorting mechanisms.
• Others cut and paste evidence into detailed outlines on their computer.
• Still others stack books, notes, and photocopies into topically-arranged piles.There is not a single right way, but this step—in some form or fashion—is essential!

If you’ve been forcing yourself to put subject headings on your notes as you go along, you’ll have generated a number of important analytical categories. Now, you need to refine those categories and sort your evidence. Everyone has a different “sorting style.”

Formulate working arguments for your entire thesis and individual chapters. Once you’ve sorted your evidence, you need to spend some time thinking about your project’s “big picture.” You need to be able to answer two questions in specific terms:

• What is the overall argument of my thesis?
• What are the sub-arguments of each chapter and how do they relate to my main argument?

Keep in mind that “working arguments” may change after you start writing. But a senior thesis is big and potentially unwieldy. If you leave this business of argument to chance, you may end up with a tangle of ideas. See our handout on arguments and handout on thesis statements for some general advice on formulating arguments.

Divide your thesis into manageable chunks. The surest road to frustration at this stage is getting obsessed with the big picture. What? Didn’t we just say that you needed to focus on the big picture? Yes, by all means, yes. You do need to focus on the big picture in order to get a conceptual handle on your project, but you also need to break your thesis down into manageable chunks of writing. For example, take a small stack of note cards and flesh them out on paper. Or write through one point on a chapter outline. Those small bits of prose will add up quickly.

Just start! Even if it’s not at the beginning. Are you having trouble writing those first few pages of your chapter? Sometimes the introduction is the toughest place to start. You should have a rough idea of your overall argument before you begin writing one of the main chapters, but you might find it easier to start writing in the middle of a chapter of somewhere other than word one. Grab hold where you evidence is strongest and your ideas are clearest.

Keep up the momentum! Assuming the first draft won’t be your last draft, try to get your thoughts on paper without spending too much time fussing over minor stylistic concerns. At the drafting stage, it’s all about getting those ideas on paper. Once that task is done, you can turn your attention to revising.

Peter Elbow, in Writing With Power, suggests that writing is difficult because it requires two conflicting tasks: creating and criticizing. While these two tasks are intimately intertwined, the drafting stage focuses on creating, while revising requires criticizing. If you leave your revising to the last minute, then you’ve left out a crucial stage of the writing process. See our handout for some general tips on revising . The challenges of revising an honors thesis may include:

Juggling feedback from multiple readers

A senior thesis may mark the first time that you have had to juggle feedback from a wide range of readers:

• your adviser
• a second (and sometimes third) faculty reader
• the professor and students in your honors thesis seminar

You may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of incorporating all this advice. Keep in mind that some advice is better than others. You will probably want to take most seriously the advice of your adviser since they carry the most weight in giving your project a stamp of approval. But sometimes your adviser may give you more advice than you can digest. If so, don’t be afraid to approach them—in a polite and cooperative spirit, of course—and ask for some help in prioritizing that advice. See our handout for some tips on getting and receiving feedback .

Refining your argument

It’s especially easy in writing a lengthy work to lose sight of your main ideas. So spend some time after you’ve drafted to go back and clarify your overall argument and the individual chapter arguments and make sure they match the evidence you present.

Organizing and reorganizing

Again, in writing a 50-75 page thesis, things can get jumbled. You may find it particularly helpful to make a “reverse outline” of each of your chapters. That will help you to see the big sections in your work and move things around so there’s a logical flow of ideas. See our handout on  organization  for more organizational suggestions and tips on making a reverse outline

Plugging in holes in your evidence

It’s unlikely that you anticipated everything you needed to look up before you drafted your thesis. Save some time at the revising stage to plug in the holes in your research. Make sure that you have both primary and secondary evidence to support and contextualize your main ideas.

Saving time for the small stuff

Even though your argument, evidence, and organization are most important, leave plenty of time to polish your prose. At this point, you’ve spent a very long time on your thesis. Don’t let minor blemishes (misspellings and incorrect grammar) distract your readers!

Formatting and final touches

You’re almost done! You’ve researched, drafted, and revised your thesis; now you need to take care of those pesky little formatting matters. An honors thesis should replicate—on a smaller scale—the appearance of a dissertation or master’s thesis. So, you need to include the “trappings” of a formal piece of academic work. For specific questions on formatting matters, check with your department to see if it has a style guide that you should use. For general formatting guidelines, consult the Graduate School’s Guide to Dissertations and Theses . Keeping in mind the caveat that you should always check with your department first about its stylistic guidelines, here’s a brief overview of the final “finishing touches” that you’ll need to put on your honors thesis:

• Honors Thesis
• Name of Department
• University of North Carolina
• These parts of the thesis will vary in format depending on whether your discipline uses MLA, APA, CBE, or Chicago (also known in its shortened version as Turabian) style. Whichever style you’re using, stick to the rules and be consistent. It might be helpful to buy an appropriate style guide. Or consult the UNC LibrariesYear Citations/footnotes and works cited/reference pages  citation tutorial
• In addition, in the bottom left corner, you need to leave space for your adviser and faculty readers to sign their names. For example:

Approved by: _____________________

Adviser: Prof. Jane Doe

• This is not a required component of an honors thesis. However, if you want to thank particular librarians, archivists, interviewees, and advisers, here’s the place to do it. You should include an acknowledgments page if you received a grant from the university or an outside agency that supported your research. It’s a good idea to acknowledge folks who helped you with a major project, but do not feel the need to go overboard with copious and flowery expressions of gratitude. You can—and should—always write additional thank-you notes to people who gave you assistance.
• Formatted much like the table of contents.
• You’ll need to save this until the end, because it needs to reflect your final pagination. Once you’ve made all changes to the body of the thesis, then type up your table of contents with the titles of each section aligned on the left and the page numbers on which those sections begin flush right.
• Each page of your thesis needs a number, although not all page numbers are displayed. All pages that precede the first page of the main text (i.e., your introduction or chapter one) are numbered with small roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.). All pages thereafter use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.).
• Your text should be double spaced (except, in some cases, long excerpts of quoted material), in a 12 point font and a standard font style (e.g., Times New Roman). An honors thesis isn’t the place to experiment with funky fonts—they won’t enhance your work, they’ll only distract your readers.
• In general, leave a one-inch inch margin on all sides. However, for the copy of your thesis that will be bound by the library, you need to leave a 1.25-inch margin on the left.

How do I defend my honors thesis?

Graciously, enthusiastically, and confidently. The term defense is scary and misleading—it conjures up images of a military exercise or an athletic maneuver. An academic defense ideally shouldn’t be a combative scene but a congenial conversation about the work’s merits and weaknesses. That said, the defense probably won’t be like the average conversation that you have with your friends. You’ll be the center of attention. And you may get some challenging questions. Thus, it’s a good idea to spend some time preparing yourself. First of all, you’ll want to prepare 5-10 minutes of opening comments. Here’s a good time to preempt some criticisms by frankly acknowledging what you think your work’s greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Then you may be asked some typical questions:

• What is the main argument of your thesis?
• How does it fit in with the work of Ms. Famous Scholar?
• Have you read the work of Mr. Important Author?

NOTE: Don’t get too flustered if you haven’t! Most scholars have their favorite authors and books and may bring one or more of them up, even if the person or book is only tangentially related to the topic at hand. Should you get this question, answer honestly and simply jot down the title or the author’s name for future reference. No one expects you to have read everything that’s out there.

• Why did you choose this particular case study to explore your topic?
• If you were to expand this project in graduate school, how would you do so?

Should you get some biting criticism of your work, try not to get defensive. Yes, this is a defense, but you’ll probably only fan the flames if you lose your cool. Keep in mind that all academic work has flaws or weaknesses, and you can be sure that your professors have received criticisms of their own work. It’s part of the academic enterprise. Accept criticism graciously and learn from it. If you receive criticism that is unfair, stand up for yourself confidently, but in a good spirit. Above all, try to have fun! A defense is a rare opportunity to have eminent scholars in your field focus on YOU and your ideas and work. And the defense marks the end of a long and arduous journey. You have every right to be proud of your accomplishments!

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Atchity, Kenneth. 1986. A Writer’s Time: A Guide to the Creative Process from Vision Through Revision . New York: W.W. Norton.

Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. 2012. The Modern Researcher , 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Elbow, Peter. 1998. Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process . New York: Oxford University Press.

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. 2014. “They Say/I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing , 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Lamott, Anne. 1994. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life . New York: Pantheon.

Lasch, Christopher. 2002. Plain Style: A Guide to Written English. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Turabian, Kate. 2018. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, Dissertations , 9th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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All Honors Students end their program with an Honors Thesis: a sustained, independent research project in a student’s field of study. Your thesis must count for at least 4 credits (some majors require that the thesis be completed over 2 semesters, and some require more than 4 credits). The thesis is an opportunity to work on unique research under the guidance of a faculty advisor. It often provides a writing sample for graduate school, and is also something you can share with employers to show what kind of work you can do. 

What is an Honors thesis?

Most of your work in college involves learning information and ideas generated by other people. When you write a thesis, you are engaging with previous work, but also adding new knowledge to your field. That means you have to know what's already been done--what counts as established knowledge; what's the current state of research; what methods and kinds of evidence are acceptable; what debates are going on. (Usually, you'll recount that knowledge in a review of the literature.) Then, you need to form a research question that you can answer given your available skills, resources, and time  (so, not "What is love?" but "How are ideas about love different between college freshmen and seniors?"). With your advisor, you'll plan the method you will use to answer it, which might involve lab work, field work, surveys, interviews, secondary research, textual analysis, or something else--it will depend upon your question and your field. Once your research is carried out, you'll write a substantial paper (usually 20-50 pages) according to the standards of your field.

What do theses look like?

The exact structure will vary by discipline, and your thesis advisor should provide you with an outline. As a rough guideline, we would expect to see something like the following:

1. Introduction 2. Review of the literature 3. Methods 4. Results 5. Analysis 6. Conclusion 7. Bibliography or works cited

In 2012 we began digitally archiving Honors theses. Students are encouraged to peruse the Honors Thesis Repository to see what past students' work has looked like. Use the link below and type your major in the search field on the left to find relevant examples. Older Honors theses are available in the Special Collections & Archives department at Dimond Library. 

Browse Previous Theses

Will my thesis count as my capstone?

Most majors accept an Honors Thesis as fulfilling the Capstone requirement. However, there are exceptions. In some majors, the thesis counts as a major elective, and in a few, it is an elective that does not fulfill major requirements. Your major advisor and your Honors advisor can help you figure out how your thesis will count. Please note that while in many majors the thesis counts as the capstone, the converse does not necessarily apply. There are many capstone experiences that do not take the form of an Honors thesis. 

Can I do a poster and presentation for my thesis?

No. While you do need to present your thesis (see below), a poster and presentation are not a thesis. 

How do I choose my thesis advisor?

The best thesis advisor is an experienced researcher, familiar with disciplinary standards for research and writing, with expertise in your area of interest. You might connect with a thesis advisor during Honors-in-Major coursework, but Honors Liaisons  can assist students who are having trouble identifying an advisor. You should approach and confirm your thesis advisor before the semester in which your research will begin.

What if I need funds for my research?

The  Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research  offers research grants, including summer support. During the academic year, students registered in credit-bearing thesis courses may apply for an  Undergraduate Research Award for up to $600 in research expenses (no stipend).  Students who are not otherwise registered in a credit-bearing course for their thesis research may enroll in INCO 790: Advanced Research Experience, which offers up to $200 for research expenses.

What if I need research materials for a lengthy period?

No problem! Honors Students can access Extended Time borrowing privileges at Dimond Library, which are otherwise reserved for faculty and graduate students. Email [email protected] with note requesting “extended borrowing privileges” and we'll work with the Library to extend your privileges.

Can I get support to stay on track?

Absolutely! Thesis-writers have an opportunity to join a support group during the challenging and sometimes isolating period of writing a thesis. Learn more about thesis support here .

When should I complete my thesis?

Register for a Senior Honors Thesis course (often numbered 799) in the spring and/or fall of your Senior year.

This “course” is an independent study, overseen by your Thesis Advisor. Your advisor sets the standards, due dates, and grades for your project. It must earn at least a B in order to qualify for Honors.

What happens with my completed thesis?

Present your thesis.

All students must publicly present their research prior to graduation. Many present at the  Undergraduate Research Conference  in April; other departmentally-approved public events are also acceptable.

Publish your thesis:

Honors students are asked to make their thesis papers available on  scholars.unh.edu/honors/ . This creates a resource for future students and other researchers, and also helps students professionalize their online personas.

These theses are publicly available online. If a student or their advisor prefers not to make the work available, they may upload an abstract and/or excerpts from the work instead.

Students may also publish research in  Inquiry , UNH's undergraduate research journal.

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Honors Thesis Guide

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• Credit and Honors Experiences
• Style and Formatting
• Submit Your Thesis
• Submit to the Digital Conservancy
• Honors Advising
• Honors Reporting Center
• Get Involved
• University Honors Student Association
• UHSA Executive Board
• Honors Multicultural Network
• Honors Mentor Program
• Honors Recognition Ceremony
• Honors Community & Housing
• Freshman Invitation
• Post-Freshman Admission
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Faculty Fellows
• Faculty Resources
• Honors Faculty Representatives
• Internal Honors Scholarships
• Office for National and International Scholarships
• Letters of Recommendation
• Personal Statements
• Scholarship Information
• Honors Lecture Series
• Make a Donation
• UHP Land Acknowledgment
• UHP Policies

An honors thesis is required of all students graduating with any level of Latin honors. It is an excellent opportunity for undergraduates to define and investigate a topic in depth, and to complete an extended written reflection of their results & understanding. The work leading to the thesis is excellent preparation for graduate & professional school or the workplace.

• Sample timeline
• Requirements and evaluation criteria
• Supervision and approval
• Style and formatting
• Submitting your thesis
• Submitting to the Digital Conservancy

Thesis Database

The thesis database is a searchable collection of over 6,000 theses, with direct access to more than 4,000 full-text theses in PDF format. The database—fully searchable by discipline, keyword, level of Latin Honors, and more—is available for student use in the UHP Office, 8am–4:30pm, Monday–Friday.

Thesis Forms & Documents

• Thesis Title Page template
• Thesis work is reported using the "Thesis Proposal" and "Thesis Completion"  WorkflowGen processes found in the Honors Reporting Center.
• Summer Research Opportunities
• Global Seminars and LAC Seminars
• Honors Research in London - Summer 2024

Thesis Guidelines Published Theses

The Honors thesis represents the culminating project of your BYU Honors experience. A thesis is not just another research or term paper; it is a much more substantial piece of scholarship completed under the supervision of a faculty advisor and thesis committee. The Honors thesis represents independent, original research or creative work of superior quality that merits publication, presentation, or distribution beyond the campus community. This hallmark of academic excellence should exhibit high standards of quality in its ideas, methodology, accuracy, clarity, reasoning and presentation. The thesis should be the most developed research or creative effort of your undergraduate years.

Honors students typically complete the thesis requirement during their junior and senior years (2-4 semesters) after they have obtained sufficient training in their major to conduct research in a specialized academic field. The thesis process acquaints you firsthand and in depth with the type of scholarly work that characterizes the field you intend to pursue professionally. For these reasons, only under rare circumstances is an Honors thesis topic outside the major area approved. (In most cases, students who complete a thesis outside the major do so in a field cognate to their majors or in a minor.)

Many students report that writing their Honors thesis proved both the most rigorous and the most rewarding academic experience of their college years. Students learn to develop proficient research and rhetorical skills within their discipline while enhancing their academic or professional credentials and making an original contribution to their field.

Prerequisites: Approved Honors Thesis Prospectus

GE Credit: Together with HONRS 320, this course is certified to meet the University GE Advanced Writing & Oral Communication requirement.

While students are actively engaged in the research and writing stages of their thesis, they enroll and complete at least 3.0 and up to 6.0 credits of HONRS 499R, working under the direction of their thesis advisor. This is a variable credit (1-6 credits), independent, pass/fail course, and requires an approved thesis proposal prior to registration. Students receive a “T” (temporary) grade until after they have successfully defended their thesis (grade changes to a Pass) or have graduated without completing the thesis (grade changes to a Fail).

Honors Thesis Guidelines

(Click on Each Section for Details)

Benefits of an Honors Thesis

Essential elements of an honors thesis, creative or performance based projects, people involved, thesis timeline, steps in the thesis process, thesis funding, thesis proposal samples.

Writing an Honors Thesis

An Honors Thesis is a substantial piece of independent research that an undergraduate carries out over two semesters. Students writing Honors Theses take PHIL 691H and 692H, in two different semesters. What follows answers all the most common questions about Honors Theses in Philosophy.

All necessary forms are fillable and downloadable.

Honors Thesis Application

Honors Thesis Contract

Honors Thesis Learning Contract

Who can write an Honors Thesis in Philosophy?

Any Philosophy major who has a total, cumulative GPA of at least 3.3 and a GPA of at least 3.5 (with a maximum of one course with a PS grade) among their PHIL courses can in principle write an Honors Thesis. In addition, students need to satisfy a set of specific pre-requisites, as outlined below.

What are the pre-requisites for an Honors Thesis in Philosophy?

The requirements for writing an Honors Thesis in Philosophy include

• having taken at least five PHIL courses, including two numbered higher than 299;
• having a total PHIL GPA of at least 3.5 (with a maximum of one course with a PS grade); and
• having done one of the following four things:
• taken and passed PHIL 397;
• successfully completed an Honors Contract associated with a PHIL course;
• received an A or A- in a 300-level course in the same area of philosophy as the proposed thesis ; or
• taken and passed a 400-level course in the same area of philosophy as the proposed thesis .

When should I get started?

You should get started with the application process and search for a prospective advisor the semester before you plan to start writing your thesis – that is, the semester before the one in which you want to take PHIL 691H.

Often, though not always, PHIL 691H and 692H are taken in the fall and spring semesters of the senior year, respectively. It is also possible to start earlier and take 691H in the spring semester of the junior year and PHIL 692H in the fall of the senior year. Starting earlier has some important advantages. One is that it means you will finish your thesis in time to use it as a writing sample, should you decide to apply to graduate school. Another is that it avoids a mad rush near the very end of your last semester.

How do I get started?

Step 1: fill out the honors thesis application.

The first thing you need to do is fill out an Honors Thesis Application   and submit it to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) for their approval.

Step 2: Find an Honors Thesis Advisor with the help of the DUS

Once you have been approved to write an Honors Thesis, you will consult with the DUS about the project that you have in mind and about which faculty member would be an appropriate advisor for your thesis. It is recommended that you reach out informally to prospective advisors to talk about their availability and interest in your project ahead of time, and that you include those suggestions in your application, but it is not until your application has been approved that the DUS will officially invite the faculty member of your choice to serve as your advisor. You will be included in this correspondence and will receive written confirmation from your prospective advisor.

Agreeing to be the advisor for an Honors Thesis is a major commitment, so bear in mind that there is a real possibility that someone asked to be your advisor will say no. Unfortunately, if we cannot find an advisor, you cannot write an Honors Thesis.

Step 3: Fill out the required paperwork needed to register for PHIL 691H

Finally, preferably one or two weeks before the start of classes (or as soon as you have secured the commitment of a faculty advisor), you need to fill out an Honors Thesis Contract  and an Honors Thesis Learning Contract , get them both signed by your advisor, and email them to the DUS.

Once the DUS approves both of these forms, they’ll get you registered for PHIL 691H. All of this should take place no later than the 5th day of classes in any given semester (preferably sooner).

What happens when I take PHIL 691H and PHIL 692H?

PHIL 691H and PHIL 692H are the course numbers that you sign up for to get credit for working on an Honors Thesis. These classes have official meeting times and places. In the case of PHIL 691H , those are a mere formality: You will meet with your advisor at times you both agree upon. But in the case of PHIL 692H , they are not a mere formality: The class will actually meet as a group, at least for the first few weeks of the semester (please see below).

When you take PHIL 691H, you should meet with your advisor during the first 5 days of classes and, if you have not done so already, fill out an Honors Thesis Learning Contract  and turn in to the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) . This Contract will serve as your course syllabus and must be turned in and approved no later than the 5th day of classes in any given semester (preferably sooner). Once the DUS approves your Honors Thesis Learning Contract, they’ll get you registered for PHIL 691H.

Over the course of the semester, you will meet regularly with your advisor. By the last day of classes, you must turn in a 10-page paper on your thesis topic; this can turn out to be part of your final thesis, but it doesn’t have to. In order to continue working on an Honors Thesis the following semester, this paper must show promise of your ability to complete one, in the opinion of your advisor. Your advisor should assign you a grade of “ SP ” at the conclusion of the semester, signifying “satisfactory progress” (so you can move on to PHIL 692H). Please see page 3 of this document for more information.

When you take PHIL 692H, you’ll still need to work with your advisor to fill out an Honors Thesis Learning Contract . This Contract will serve as your course syllabus and must be turned in to and approved by the DUS  no later than the 5th day of classes in any given semester (preferably sooner).

Once the DUS approves your Honors Thesis Learning Contract, they’ll get you registered for PHIL 692H.

At the end of the second semester of senior honors thesis work (PHIL 692H), your advisor should assign you a permanent letter grade. Your advisor should also change your PHIL 691H grade from “ SP ” to a permanent letter grade. Please see page 3 of this document for more information.

The Graduate Course Option

If you and your advisor agree, you may exercise the Graduate Course Option. If you do this, then during the semester when you are enrolled in either PHIL 691H or PHIL 692H, you will attend and do the work for a graduate level PHIL course. (You won’t be officially enrolled in that course.) A paper you write for this course will be the basis for your Honors Thesis. If you exercise this option, then you will be excused from the other requirements of the thesis course (either 691H or 692H) that you are taking that semester.

Who can be my advisor?

Any faculty member on a longer-than-one-year contract in the Department of Philosophy may serve as your honors thesis advisor. You will eventually form a committee of three professors, of which one can be from outside the Department.  But your advisor must have an appointment in the Philosophy Department. Graduate Students are not eligible to advise Honors Theses.

Who should be my advisor?

Any faculty member on a longer-than-one-year contract in the Department of Philosophy may serve as your honors thesis advisor. It makes most sense to ask a professor who already knows you from having had you as a student in a class. In some cases, though, this is either not possible, or else there is someone on the faculty who is an expert on the topic you want to write about, but from whom you have not taken a class. Information about which faculty members are especially qualified to advise thesis projects in particular areas of philosophy can be found  here .

What about the defense?

You and your advisor should compose a committee of three professors (including the advisor) who will examine you and your thesis. Once the committee is composed, you will need to schedule an oral examination, a.k.a. a defense. You should take the initiative here, communicating with all members of your committee in an effort to find a block of time (a little over an hour) when all three of you can meet. The thesis must be defended by a deadline , set by Honors Carolina , which is usually a couple of weeks before the end of classes. Students are required to upload the final version of their thesis to the  Carolina Digital Repository  by the final day of class in the semester in which they complete the thesis course work and thesis defense.

What is an Honors Thesis in Philosophy like?

An Honors Thesis in Philosophy is a piece of writing in the same genre as a typical philosophy journal article. There is no specific length requirement, but 30 pages (double-spaced) is a good guideline. Some examples of successfully defended Honors The easiest way to find theses of past philosophy students is on the web in the Carolina Digital Repository . Some older, hard copies of theses are located on the bookshelf in suite 107 of Caldwell Hall. (You may ask the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) , or anyone else who happens to be handy, to show you where it is!)

How does the Honors Thesis get evaluated?

The honors thesis committee will evaluate the quality and originality of your thesis as well as of your defense and then decides between the following three options:

• they may award only course credit for the thesis work if the thesis is of acceptable quality;
• they may designate that the student graduate with honors if the thesis is of a very strong quality;
• they may  recommend  that the student graduate with highest honors if the thesis is of exceptional quality.

As a matter of best practice, our philosophy department requires that examining committees refer all candidates for highest honors to our Undergraduate Committee chaired by the Director of Undergraduate Studies. This committee evaluates nominated projects and makes the final decision on awarding highest honors. Highest honors should be awarded only to students who have met the most rigorous standards of scholarly excellence.

Department of Economics

Honors thesis.

• Undergraduate

Junior year is the time to start thinking about eligibility requirements, topics of interest, and potential advisors for an honors thesis.

An Honors Info Session is held each spring to answer junior’s questions about their senior year, and interested students must fill out the  honors thesis form  by the end of junior year.

We strongly encourage students to write an honors thesis. This is very valuable for students interested in graduate school or careers requiring independent research skills, as well as for students interested in tying together their academic experience with an in-depth investigation of one topic.

More than a good course paper

An honors thesis is more than a good course paper. It must represent a substantial effort in research and exposition. A thesis must be an original contribution to knowledge, beyond a simple replication exercise. The department does not specify page lengths, methods, or topics. Instead, an honors thesis candidate should establish his or her goals – and a timeline to meet those goals – in an understanding with the thesis advisor. To see the range of topics and methods prior students have pursued, take a look at  examples of past honor theses here  or by visiting the academic office in person. To find a faculty advisor who would be a good match for your topic of interest, see their research questions  here. 

Requirements

To graduate with honors, students must satisfy the following requirements  by the   end of junior year ,

• Complete at least 70% of the courses required for the concentration.
• Have earned a grade of “A” or “S with distinction” in at least 70% of grades earned in the economics concentration, or 50% in the joint concentrations in APMA-Econ, CS-Econ, and Math-Econ (excluding courses transferred to Brown without a grade, and those taken Spring 2020).
• Economics Concentrators  must find a faculty thesis advisor in the economics department.
• Joint Concentrators  must find a primary faculty thesis advisor in either economics or the partner department. CS-Econ concentrators must have a secondary reader in the other department by the fall of senior year. APMA-Econ and Math-Econ do not require a secondary reader, unless the primary advisor deems it necessary. Joint concentrators need to satisfy the honors requirements of the economics department if their thesis advisor is in the economics department; while they need to satisfy the honors requirements of the partner department if their thesis advisor is in the partner department.

During senior year , thesis writers must:

• Enroll in ECON 1960 in the fall & spring semesters (Note that 1960 does not count as a 1000-level elective for your concentration). A requirement of ECON 1960 will be attendance at one of two lab sessions each week. 
• Submit a thesis proposal to both your thesis advisor and the Undergraduate Programs Coordinator Kelsey Thorpe, [email protected]  (see below for due date).
• Submit their work in progress to their thesis advisor and Kelsey (see below for due date).
• Depending on the nature of the thesis work, the thesis adviser may require the student to successfully complete one or more courses from among the  data methods ,  mathematical economics  and/or  financial economics  course groups in the fall of senior year, if they have not already done so.
• Complete an honors thesis by the deadline agreed upon with their primary advisor and obtain the final approval of their advisor(s) (see below for due date).
• Thesis writers are encouraged, but not required, to participate in the departmental Honors Thesis Presentation session held in May, with a brief presentation of their work and findings.

For students graduating  Spring 2024 :

• Proposal - September 18, 2023
• Work in Progress - December 18, 2023
• Final Draft - April 19, 2024

For students graduating in  Fall 2024*:

• Proposal - February 2, 2024
• Work in Progress - April 25, 2024
• Final Draft - December 10, 2024

For students graduating  Spring 2025 :

• Proposal - September 16, 2024
• Work in Progress - December 16, 2024
• Final Draft - April 18, 2025

For students graduating  Fall 2025 *:

• Proposal - February 7, 2025
• Work in Progress - April 24, 2025
• Final Draft - December 9, 2025

*Note that for the Requirements listed above, "by end of senior year" means by the "end of Fall semester 2023" for Fall 2024 graduates and "end of Fall semester 2024" for Fall 2025 graduates.

More information

For students interested in finding out more, please attend the information session on honors theses that will be given in the middle of every spring semester. For students interested in undertaking research, but not wanting to pursue honors, the department offers  senior capstone options .

A Distinctive Achievement Honors Thesis

As a Schreyer Scholar, you are required to complete an undergraduate honors thesis as the culmination of your honors experience. The goal of the thesis is to demonstrate a command of relevant scholastic work and to make a personal contribution to that scholarship.

Your thesis project can take many forms — from laboratory experiments all the way to artistic creations. Your thesis document captures the relevant background, methods, and techniques and describes the details of the completion of the individual project.

Two Penn State faculty members evaluate and approve your thesis — a thesis supervisor and an honors adviser in your area of honors.

Planning is Key Project Guide

The thesis is, by design, your most ambitious undertaking as a Scholar.

A successful thesis requires a viable proposal, goal-setting, time management, and interpersonal skills on top of the disciplinary skills associated with your intended area of honors. This guide will walk you through the thesis process. Keep in mind, though, that your honors adviser and thesis supervisor are your key resources.

Planning A Thesis

An ideal thesis project should:

• Satisfy your intellectual curiosity
• Give you the opportunity to work closely with faculty
• Develop transferable skills
• Clarify your post-graduation plans

The single biggest factor in determining thesis quality is your level of interest in and engagement with the topic, so consider multiple possibilities rather than selecting the first one that seems attractive to you.

From the perspective of the Schreyer Honors College, the purpose of the thesis experience is to develop your intellectual and professional identity in the field and to help you think about your future.

Once complete, the purpose of the thesis is to advance knowledge, understanding, or creative value in its field.

Lab-Based Research Fields

We recommend avoiding the temptation to stick with your first lab placement merely out of convenience if the topic is not interesting to you. The quality of your thesis is truly dependent on the depth of your interest and the energy behind your curiosity. Your intellectual engagement is the thing that will carry you through what may at times feel like a long and sometimes difficult process.

A Thesis Needs A Thesis

A thesis is problem-oriented and identifies something of importance whose answer or best interpretation is not fully known or agreed-upon by people who make their careers in the field, and it proceeds towards the answer or best interpretation. Even with a creative or performance thesis, the purpose is not to demonstrate technical ability (writing, painting, acting, composing, etc.), but to express something you think is worth expressing and hasn't been fully expressed already.

Identifying a Topic

An interest can come from anywhere, but the problem that defines a thesis can only come from a thorough acquaintance with "the literature," the accumulated knowledge or creative value in your field.

By speaking with faculty (preferably more than one) and reading professional journals (again, more than one), you not only get a "crowd-sourced" sense of what is important, you also get a sense of what the open questions are. This is where you start to strike a balance between ambition and feasibility.

Feasibility & Realistic Ambition

You might want to come up with the definitive explanation for Rome's decline and fall, or the cure for cancer. There is strong evidence — several thousand prior theses — that your honors thesis will not accomplish anything on that scale. This realization might be disheartening, but it is an introduction to the reality of modern scholarship: Knowledge almost always moves incrementally and the individual units of knowledge production and dissemination (theses, journal articles, books, etc.) are only rarely revolutionary in isolation. This is part of what the thesis experience will test for you — whether or not you want to continue via graduate school in that kind of slow-moving enterprise.

The feasibility of a given thesis problem is bounded, as mathematicians might say, by several factors.

The honors thesis should not extend your time at Penn State by design. There are circumstances where you might defer graduation to complete your thesis, but that should not be your initial plan.

Resources are a potential issue in that even a comprehensive and well-funded university like Penn State does not have the physical infrastructure for every possible kind of research. The expense of ambitious off-campus research, such as a comparative study requiring visits to several countries, can easily exceed our funding abilities. If you expect to incur more than $300 in expenses, you should get commitments from your department and academic college before proceeding.

Proposal, Supervisor & Area of Honors

Thesis proposal.

The thesis proposal is due at the end of your third year, assuming you're on a four-year path to graduation. File your Thesis Proposal with the Schreyer Honors College via the Student Records System (SRS) . The end-of-third-year requirement is from the Honors College, but your major may expect a much earlier commitment so be sure to talk to your honors adviser as early as your second year about this. The thesis proposal needs the following things:

• Supervision
• A Working Title
• Purpose/Objective
• Intended Outcome
• How do you intend to earn honors credit?
• How often do you plan to meet with your supervisor?
• Will your thesis satisfy other requirements?
• Does your thesis involve working with human, animals, or biohazardous materials or radioactive isotopes?

The Honors College staff does not review the content of the proposal, so the intended audience is your thesis supervisor and the honors adviser in your intended area of honors.

Thesis Supervisor

Your thesis supervisor is the professor who has primary responsibility for supervising your thesis.

Ideally your thesis supervisor will be the single most appropriate person for your thesis in the whole university, or at least at your whole campus, in terms of specialization and, where relevant, resources. How far you can stray from that ideal depends on the nature of the thesis. If specific lab resources are needed then you cannot stray too far, but if general intellectual mentoring is the extent of the required supervision then you have more flexibility, including the flexibility to choose a topic that does not align closely with the supervisor's specialization.

Apart from a professor being unavailable for or declining your project, the biggest reason to consider bypassing the "single most appropriate person" is that you have doubts about whether you would get along with them. Do not put too much stock in second-hand information about a professor, but if after meeting him or her you have concerns then you should certainly consider continuing your search.

Area of Honors

Thesis honors adviser.

An honors adviser from the area in which you are pursuing honors must read and approve your thesis. If the thesis supervisor and thesis honors adviser are the same person, you must find a second eligible faculty member from your area of honors to read and approve your thesis.

Multiple Majors

If you have more than one major, you can do the following:

• Pick one major and write a thesis for honors solely in that major
• Pick a topic that can legitimately earn honors in both majors. This will be considered interdisciplinary .
• Write multiple theses, one for honors in each major

The first scenario is the most common, followed by the second depending on how closely related the majors are. You can also pick a non-major area of honors.

Second- and Third-Year Entrants (including Paterno Fellows)

If you were admitted to the Honors College after your first year or via the Liberal Arts Paterno Fellows program, you are expected to write your thesis for honors in your entrance major. You do have the right to pursue honors elsewhere, for instance in a concurrent major for which you were not admitted to the Honors College, but there is no guarantee of approval.

Topic, Not Professor

Typically, the area of honors suggested by the topic aligns with the professor's affiliation, as when you seek honors in history based on a history thesis supervised by a professor of history. But if the supervisor happens to be a professor of literature, you are still able to pursue honors in history based on the substance and methodology of the thesis.

This is especially worth remembering in the life sciences, where faculty expertise is spread among many different departments and colleges. As always, the honors adviser in the intended area of honors is the gatekeeper for whether a given thesis topic and supervisor are acceptable.

From Proposal to Thesis

Timetable & benchmarks.

The thesis proposal does not require a timetable, but you and your supervisor should have a clear idea of how much you should accomplish on a monthly basis all the way through completion. Not all of those monthly benchmarks will be actual written work; for many Schreyer Scholars the write-up will not come until toward the end. If you fall behind during the earlier part of the thesis timeline, it will be difficult if not impossible to make up that ground later.

Regular Meetings with Your Thesis Supervisor

You should take proactive steps against procrastination by making yourself accountable to someone other than yourself. Scheduling regular meetings (or e-mailing regular updates) with your thesis supervisor — even if you are working in the same lab routinely — is the best way to do that. You should also regularly update your thesis honors adviser.

Think ahead, preferably well before the time of your thesis proposal, about what your thesis work will mean for your fourth-year schedule. This is especially important if you have a significant capstone requirement like student teaching for education majors, or if you expect to do a lot of job interviews or graduate/professional school visits.

There are many reasons to plan to include the summer between third and fourth year in your research timeline: those mentioned above, plus the benefit of devoting yourself full-time to the thesis, whether it is in a lab on campus or in the field. Funding opportunities for full-time summer thesis research include Schreyer Honors College grants , the Erickson Undergraduate Education Discovery Grant , and funding via your thesis supervisor (especially in the sciences and engineering).

Department & College Thesis Guides

In addition to this guide, many departments and colleges have thesis guides with important information about their deadlines and expectations. If you do not see your college or department listed, consult with your honors adviser.

• College of Agricultural Sciences
• Smeal College of Business
• Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications
• Aerospace Engineering
• Biomedical Engineering
• Chemical Engineering
• Biobehavioral Health
• Communication Sciences and Disorders
• Hospitality Management
• Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management
• College of Information Sciences and Technology
• Comparative Literature
• Germanic & Slavic Languages and Literatures
• Global & International Studies
• Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• College of Nursing
• Astronomy & Astrophysics: Thesis 1
• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
• Chemistry: Thesis 1 | Thesis 2 | Thesis 3
• Mathematics: Thesis 1 | Thesis 2 | Thesis 3 | Thesis 4 | Thesis 5 | Thesis 6

Follow the Template Formatting Guide

The formatting requirements in this guide apply to all Schreyer Honors theses. Please follow the thesis templates provided below:

Information about using LaTeX is available from the University Libraries .

Formatting Requirements

Fonts & color.

All text should use the Times New Roman font.

Reduced type may be used within tables, figures, and appendices, but font size should be at least 11-point in size and must be completely legible.

The majority of your thesis document should be in black font, however, color is permissible in figures, tables, links, etc.

Organization

Begin each section on a new page. Do the same with each element of the front matter, the reference section, and the appendix.

Try to avoid typing a heading near the bottom of a page unless there is room for at least two lines of text following the heading. Instead you should simply leave a little extra space on the page and begin the heading on the next page.

If you wish you use a "display" page (a page that shows only the chapter title) at the beginning of chapters or appendices, be sure to do so consistently and to count the display page when numbering the pages.

Page Numbers

Excluding the title page and signatory page, every page in the document, including those with tables and figures, must be counted. Use lower case Roman numerals for the front matter and Arabic numbers for the text. The text (or body) of the thesis must begin on page 1. Follow the template provided at the top of this section.

Use the template provided as a pattern for creating your title page. Be sure all faculty members are identified by their correct professional titles. Check with the department for current information. Do not use such designations as "PhD" or "Dr." on the title page. (Ex. John Smith, Professor of English, Thesis Supervisor).

Electronic Approvals

Please submit your final thesis to your Thesis Supervisor and Honors Adviser at least two weeks prior to the final submission due date to allow them ample time for review and suggested changes. Also, please communicate with your professors to find out their schedule and preferred amount of time to review your thesis. Once your thesis is submitted, your committee will review the thesis one last time before giving their final approval.

Number of Approvals

A minimum of two approvals is required on each thesis. If one of the approvers has a dual role (e.g. Thesis Supervisor and Honors Adviser), then list both roles under the professional title. Do not list the same person twice. If the sharing of roles leaves you with fewer than the required number of approvals, an additional approver must be added (Faculty Reader).

Professional Titles

Be sure to identify all faculty by their correct professional titles. Check with the department for current information. Do not use such designations as "PhD" or "Dr." on the title page.

This is a one-paragraph summary of the content of your thesis that identifies concisely the content of the thesis manuscript and important results of your project. Some students like to think of it as an advertisement — i.e., when someone finishes reading it, they should want to examine the rest of your work. Keep it short and include the most interesting points.

The abstract follows the title page, must have the heading ABSTRACT at the top, and is always page Roman number i. There is no restriction on the length of the abstract, but it is usually no longer than one page.

Table of Contents

The table of contents is essentially a topic outline of the thesis and it is compiled by listing the headings in the thesis. You may choose to include first-level headings, first- and second-levels, or all levels. Keep in mind there usually is no index in a thesis, and thus a fairly detailed table of contents can serve as a useful guide for the reader. The table of contents must appear immediately after the abstract and should not list the abstract, the table of contents itself, or the vita.

Be sure the headings listed in the table of contents match word-for-word the headings in the text. Double check to be sure the page numbers are shown. In listing appendices, indicate the title of each appendix. If using display pages, the number of the display page should appear in the table of contents.

Formatting Final Touches

An honors thesis manuscript should replicate the appearance of professional writing in your discipline. Include the elements of a formal piece of academic work accordingly. For specific questions on organization or labeling, check with your thesis supervisor to see if there is a style guide you should use.

Acknowledgements (Optional)

Acknowledgements are not a required component of an honors thesis, but if you want to thank particular colleagues, faculty, librarians, archivists, interviewees, and advisers, here's the place to do it. You should include an acknowledgements page if you received a grant from the University or an outside agency that supported your research.

Tables & Figures

A table is a columnar arrangement of information, often numbers, organized to save space and convey relationships at a glance. A rule of thumb to use in deciding whether given materials are tables or figures is that tables can be typed, but figures must be drawn.

A figure is a graphic illustration such as a chart, graph, diagram, map, or photograph.

Please be sure to insert your table or figure. Do not copy and paste. Once the figure or table is inserted, you right click on it to apply the appropriate label. Afterwards, return to the list of tables or list of figures page, right click on the list, and "update table (entire table)" and the page will automatically hyperlink.

Captions & Numbering

Each table and each figure in the text must have a number and caption. Number them consecutively throughout, beginning with 1, or by chapter using a decimal system.

Style Guides

These parts of the thesis will vary in format depending on the style guide you are following. Your discipline will use a consistent style guide, such as MLA, APA, CBE, or Chicago. Whichever style you are using, stick to the rules and be consistent.

Appendices (Optional)

Material that is pertinent but is somewhat tangential or very detailed (raw data, procedural explanations, etc.) may be placed in an appendix. Appendices should be designated A, B, C (not 1, 2, 3 or I, II, III). If there is only one appendix, call it simply Appendix, not Appendix A. Titles of appendices must be listed in the table of contents. Appendix pages must be numbered consecutively with the text of the thesis (do not number the page A-1, A-2, etc.).

Bibliography/References (Optional)

A thesis can include a bibliography or reference section listing all works that are referred to in the text, and in some cases other works also consulted in the course of research and writing. This section may either precede or follow the appendices (if any), or may appear at the end of each chapter. Usually a single section is more convenient and useful for both author and reader.

The forms used for listing sources in the bibliography/reference section are detailed and complicated, and they vary considerably among academic disciplines. For this reason, you will need to follow a scholarly style manual in your field or perhaps a recent issue of a leading journal as a guide in compiling this section of the thesis.

Academic Vita (Optional)

The academic vita is optional, must be the last page of the document, and is not given a page number or listed in the table of contents. The title — Academic Vita — and the author's name should appear at the top. A standard outline style or a prose form may be used. The vita should be similar to a resume. Do not include your GPA and personal information.

The Final Step Submission Guide

Once your final thesis is approved by your thesis supervisor and honors adviser, you may submit the thesis electronically. This guide will provide the details on how to submit your thesis.

Public Access to Honors Thesis

Open access.

Your electronic thesis is available to anyone who wishes to access it on the web unless you request restricted access. Open access distribution makes the work more widely available than a bound copy on a library shelf.

Restricted Access (Penn State Only)

Access restricted to individuals having a valid Penn State Access Account, for a period of two years. Allows restricted access of the entire work beginning immediately after degree conferral. At the end of the two-year period, the status will automatically change to Open Access. Intended for use by authors in cases where prior public release of the work may compromise its acceptance for publication.

This option secures the body of the thesis for a period of two years. Selection of this option required that an invention disclosure (ID) be filed with the Office of Technology Management (OTM) prior to submission of the final honors thesis and confirmed by OTM. At the end of the two-year period, the work will be released automatically for Open Access unless a written request is made to extend this option for an additional year. The written request for an extension should be sent 30 days prior to the end of the two-year period to the Schreyer Honors College, 10 Schreyer Honors College, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, or by e-mail to [email protected] . Please note: No one will be able to view your work under this option.

Submission Requirements

Electronic submission of the final honors thesis became a requirement in spring semester of 2010. Both the mandatory draft submission and the final copy must be submitted online.

The "official" copy of the honors thesis is the electronic file (eHT), and this is the copy that will be on file with the University Libraries. Electronic submission does not prevent the author from producing hard copies for the department or for personal use. All copies are the responsibility of the author and should be made prior to submission. The Schreyer Honors College does not provide copies.

How to Submit

In order to submit your thesis, you must upload a draft in PDF format to the Electronic Honors Thesis (eHT) website .

What/When to Upload

• The initial submission, the Thesis Format Review, should be the textual thesis only and should be in a single PDF file (it may include image files such as TIFFs or JPEGs)
• The recommended file naming convention is Last_First_Title.pdf
• Failure to submit the Format Review by the deadline will result in removal from the honors graduation checklist. If this occurs, you must either defer graduation or withdraw/be dismissed from the Honors College

Uploading Video, Audio or Large Images

If your thesis content is such that you feel you need to upload content other than text to properly represent your work, upload the textual portion of your thesis first as a single, standalone PDF file. Then, add additional files for any other content as separate uploads.

If the majority of your thesis work is a multimedia presentation (video, slideshow, audio recording, etc.) you are required to upload these files in addition to your PDF.

Acceptable formats include:

Please do not upload any ZIP files. If uploading more than one file, keep individual file sizes for the supplementary material under 50 MB where possible. Large files will upload, but it may take a long time to download for future use.

Final Submission & Approval

Final submission.

In order to submit your final thesis:

• Refer to the thesis templates above to create your title page (no page number).
• Make sure you have correctly spelled "Schreyer Honors College".
• Be sure to include the department in which you are earning honors, your semester and year of graduation (Ex. Spring 2024, not May 2024), your thesis title and your name.
• List the name and professional title of your thesis supervisor and honors adviser (in the department granting honors). If your honors adviser and thesis supervisor are the same person, a second faculty reader signature from the department granting honors is required.
• Include your abstract following your title page (Roman numeral i).
• Make sure your thesis is saved in PDF format.
• Upload your final thesis on the eHT website .

Final Approval

When the final thesis is approved, the author and all committee members will be notified via e-mail of the approval. Your thesis will then be accessible on the eHT website within a month after graduation unless you have specified restricted access.

My favorite part of Schreyer is all the connections I've established and made. I've met so many awesome people. I feel like I fit in here. Blake Greenspan ' 22 Premedicine, Political Science

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• Earning Honors College Credits

Thesis Day December 8th, 2023  Program Schedule

Students completing the Distinguished Honors College Scholar Award or the Advanced Honors College Scholar Award are required to complete an Honors thesis.  This page provides an overview of the thesis process; students should download and review the Student Guide to Honors Theses for full details and policies.

What is a thesis?

A thesis project is an extended piece of independent student research typically completed during a student’s final year of undergraduate study. Theses draw on scholarly resources and follow the conventions of research/creative activity in their discipline. A thesis demonstrates a student’s ability to conduct research and write effectively. Students work closely with a faculty mentor to design a feasible topic and an appropriate plan for a thesis project, but the student is responsible for all aspects of the project’s planning and execution.

What is the thesis process like?

Completing a thesis is a multiple-semester process. Ideally, students will develop their thesis proposals by enrolling in HNRS 3500: Honors Thesis Proposal at least 2 semesters prior to graduation. (If this is not possible you can work with your faculty mentor to complete your proposal outside of this class.) After your thesis proposal is approved by your faculty mentor and their department chair, you submit it to the Honors College so you can be enrolled in an independent-study style course for thesis credit.

During the semester you are enrolled for thesis credit, you will meet with your faculty mentor regularly to review your progress and stay on track. At the end of the semester, you will defend your thesis at Honors College Thesis Day.

Each stage in the thesis process is reviewed in more detail below.

Find a faculty mentor.

Thesis projects must be supervised by a full-time, permanent UNT faculty member. Most students complete theses in their major and work with a faculty member in that department. Students often work with professors they have previously taken a course with. Use UNT’s Faculty Information System to find information about UNT faculty members’ research interests and try to take classes early in your undergraduate career with faculty whose research interests align with yours. You will need to identify one faculty member to serve as your primary mentor and a second to serve on your thesis committee. 

Prepare your Thesis Proposal.

The Thesis Proposal provides a roadmap for your research project. It tells your thesis committee and the Honors College what you will do for your Honors thesis project. Most students complete the proposal through HNRS 3500: Honors Thesis Proposal , though this document can also be written as an Honors contract, Mentored Research Experience, or independently (in consultation with your faculty mentor). Speak to an Honors advisor to discuss an appropriate pathway to completing a thesis proposal.

Your Thesis Proposal will include the following information:

• An abstract,
• An introduction that clearly articulates your research question/thesis statement,
• An overview of the most relevant scholarly literature that your project draws on,
• A discussion of the methods you will use to carry out your research,
• A work plan including regular meetings with your mentor and a time table for completing your thesis, and
• A preliminary list of references. 

If your research will utilize human subjects, you must request approval from the UNT Institutional Review Board before beginning your data collection. If your project requires IRB approval, you must submit a copy of your IRB application to the Honors College with your Thesis Proposal.

Complete your thesis project.

Once your Thesis Proposal is approved by the Honors College, you will be enrolled in an Honors thesis course (either HNRS 4951 or a department equivalent, e.g. BIOL 4951). The class will not have pre-assigned meeting times; you and your faculty mentor will meet according to the schedule provided in your Thesis Proposal.

There is no single correct format for a thesis. The norms of your field should guide the writing and presentation. Choose the style manual most relevant to your field of study and use it consistently. Thesis projects must use proper grammar and syntax.

Complete your project and submit it to your thesis committee by the Honors College deadline. Your committee members will review your work and identify revisions that need to be made before your thesis can be defended.

Defend your thesis.

If your faculty mentor approves your project for defense, you will present your research at Honors College Thesis Day. Thesis defenses are open to the public and mark the completion of a substantial academic achievement.

Thesis defenses typically take the following form:

• Presentation of your research findings (15-25 minutes)
• Opportunity for questions from thesis committee members
• Opportunity for general audience questions
• Committee deliberations regarding project (everyone else leaves the room)
• Student receives feedback (Pass, Pass with revisions, or Did not pass)

Thesis resources, including important dates and faculty and student guides, can be found on the Honors College Canvas page

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Honors Program

Thesis examples.

• Thesis Supervisor
• Online Submission Instructions
• Online Approval Instructions
• Thesis Extensions
• Publishing in Open Commons

At this point in your college career you are probably most used to projects that can be completed in the span of one semester. Your thesis project will likely span multiple semesters and may be larger than any project you’ve taken on in the past. For those reasons alone, it’s important to look at examples.

Examples can also help you:

• Learn about potential topics
• Think creatively and reflectively about your interests and how you will contribute to your field
• Determine scope and scale of an Honors thesis (as opposed to a Master’s thesis or Doctoral dissertation)
• Identify potential thesis supervisors
• Understand methods that may be beneficial in completing your thesis

There are two ways to search:

• UConn’s Open Commons contains many recent Honors theses.
• by author’s last name
• by author’s major
• by thesis supervisor
• by the thesis supervisor’s department

If a thesis is available in Open Commons, the title will be hyperlinked within the above PDF files.  Hard copy theses from and 2019 are currently stored in the Honors Program office but are moving soon to the Archives.  Theses from 2018 and older are in the University Archives located at the Dodd Research Center. If you wish to see an older thesis, you must make arrangements through Betsy Pittman at the University Archives Office.

Thesis from 2020 and newer are not available for viewing. They would only be available if the author posted it to Open Commons and it was linked in the PDF’s above.

Note: Questions about the PDFs may be directed to the Honors Program Office .

Honors Thesis

The honors thesis is an opportunity to undertake original thinking and to work closely with faculty members on advanced research topics or creative endeavors.

The Honors Thesis is a substantial study of a carefully defined question or problem that’s important to you. This problem may be critical, experimental, applied, or creative in nature.

Every Honors Thesis will take the form of a written document that demonstrates critical thinking, a mastery of disciplinary material, and the communication of complex ideas. For the Creative Portfolio, your document will be accompanied by an artifact such as a musical score, film, computer program, or invention that embodies the work done for the thesis. The completion of an honors thesis concludes with a final presentation.

Why do an Honors Thesis?

The Honors Thesis is a comprehensive effort of original scholarship and is the culminating experience of your Commonwealth Honors College academic journey. 

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The Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards

Senior Honors Thesis

The undergraduate Senior Honors Thesis Program at the University of Houston is a two-semester, six-credit-hour capstone research experience completed under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Students of all majors can participate and membership in the Honors College is not required.

The Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards collaborates with the Honors College and the college of the student’s major to oversee the thesis process and approval. Students who successfully complete the Senior Honors Thesis program will graduate with an Honors designation noted on the official transcript. Students will also receive 3 points towards the Honors in Co-Curricular Engagement transcript designation . Students should speak with their academic advisor to determine if and how the thesis course hours might count toward their degree plan.

Significant coordination occurs between the student’s major department, the college of their major, and the Honors College. The Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards (OURMA) coordinates these efforts. It is therefore essential that the student communicate early and often with OURMA staff prior to beginning the thesis and maintain communication with OURMA throughout the thesis year. Students should also review the College-Specific Information for additional details specific to their college.

Eligibility requirements include GPA considerations as well as departmental and Honors College approval. Application and preparation occur the semester prior to beginning the thesis course hours. A student’s registration in thesis course hours does not guarantee enrollment in the Senior Honors Thesis Program. Please carefully review the How to Apply page for details.

Questions about the Senior Honors Thesis Program may be directed to Dr. Rikki Bettinger or the Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards .

How to Apply

College-specific information, defense and graduation, info for thesis directors, graduate with an honors in major designation.

Students who successfully complete the Senior Honors Thesis program graduate with the "Honors in Major" designation on their official transcript. Visit the Honors College's website to learn more about UH Honors designations.

Read past Senior Honors Thesis submissions

Review past theses in the Senior Honors Theses collection in the University of Houston Institutional Repository.

Check out outstanding thesis work

Celebrate the accomplishments of Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis Award recipients!

Expand All Collapse All

Am I eligible for the senior honors thesis?

Thesis students should be prepared to undertake rigorous, self-paced research. Students must meet GPA eligibility requirements, secure a thesis director, and gain approval from both the department and the Honors College. There are several documents required for participation. Visit the How to Apply page for details.

I do not have any research experience. Can I participate in the thesis program?

The Senior Honors Thesis program does not require the student to have any formal research experience. Instead, it offers an opportunity for students to gain this experience, undertaking an in-depth, mentored research project, and honing their skills in research, analysis, and writing. A student should reflect on the kind of preparation they have developed in previous coursework and speak with a faculty mentor about their confidence in undertaking the research year.

I do not meet the GPA requirements. Can I still enroll in the thesis program?

Please review the eligibility requirements on the How to Apply page and note the fine print on the Verification of Eligibility (VOE) form . It asks that when the student is ready to submit the VOE to the director of undergraduate studies of their major department, a separate email of support is also sent by the proposed thesis director on behalf of the student to both the director of undergraduate students and to Dr. Rikki Bettinger .

My department registered me for the class, but I've never corresponded with OURMA. Do I still need to apply to participate in the program?

Yes. Students should not be registered in thesis coursework until after their participation is approved by both their department and the OURMA. Registration in thesis course hours does not guarantee enrollment in the Senior Honors Thesis Program. This program is coordinated by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards on behalf of the Honors College and students will not receive an Honors Reader or an Honors designation without collaboration through OURMA. The first step is completing the Verification of Eligibility form . Review the How to Apply page to learn more.

My prospective thesis director is not a professor in the department of my major. Can they still be my thesis director?

In most cases, students pursue a thesis working with a professor in their major department, sometimes receiving credit towards their degree (not in all cases, check with your academic advisor). In a small number of circumstances, a student might have clear reasons to pursue a thesis with a director outside of their major department. This will have implications on their course registration procedure, their thesis committee makeup, and their degree plan. Students in this case should reach out to Dr. Rikki Bettinger directly, providing their PSID, major, prospective thesis director, and their reasons for pursuing a thesis outside of their major department.

Will I receive credit hours for my thesis? How many?

The standard senior honors thesis course is courses 3399 and 4399. Each are three hours for a total of six credit hours over two semesters. *Architecture students: please note there is a different course sequence in CoAD.

How many professors are on my thesis committee? Can I pick my Honors Reader?

Three, and No. Prior to beginning the senior honors thesis coursework, the thesis student develops their prospectus under the mentorship of their thesis director. They also seek out a Second Reader to join their thesis committee. The thesis director and the second reader both approve of the prospectus prior to the semester start, signing the Prospectus Approval Form . OURMA then assigns an Honors Reader to the students’ committee following receipt of the prospectus and approval form. Honors Readers are assigned to students’ committees based on discipline, topic, and availability.

How long does my thesis need to be?

Please review the College-Specific Information page for details specific to your discipline.

Who is my college contact?

When do i need to contact my college.

You should review the College-Specific Information page prior to beginning your thesis to familiarize yourself with the expectations and procedures specific to your college. We recommend you revisit this information at the start of the second thesis semester to confirm your college’s filing deadline. Finally, you will reach out to your college thesis liaison following your defense when you are ready to submit your final thesis for college approval. Each student is responsible for tracking their own college submission deadline.

What deadlines do I need to know?

There are several deadlines at different stages of the thesis process, from the semester prior to beginning the thesis all the way through a student’s graduation. These deadlines are explained in detail in the sections above and students should take care to review each stage thoroughly. Broadly answered, the deadlines include:

• Submitting the Verification of Eligibility by December 1 or May 15 of the semester prior to beginning the thesis.
• Submitting to OURMA the prospectus, Prospectus Approval Form signed by the first and second reader, and the Thesis Checklist , prior to the start of the semester in which the student begins the thesis coursework.
• Submitting the defense-ready thesis to the committee a minimum of two weeks prior to the defense.
• Submitting the Final Defense and Evaluation Form to OURMA following the successful defense.
• Submitting the revised and final thesis and the Final Defense and Evaluation Form to the college thesis liaison by the college-specific filing deadline.
• Submitting the final thesis to the electronic submission portal by the end of the term.

Do I have to pay for a bound copy of my thesis?

The Honors College does not require a printed and bound copy of your thesis, but some colleges or departments do. Please follow the guidance of your college thesis liaison. If you participated in the Writing Studio program, you will receive an email with instructions for how to use your $150 voucher toward printing and binding costs. This voucher can be used toward personal or university copies!

Do I have to be a member of the Honors College to receive the Honors in Major designation?

No. Prior membership in the Honors College is not required to be a part of the Senior Honors Thesis Program. Students who successfully complete the thesis program graduate with an Honors designation and are invited to the Honors College Medallion Ceremony held in May. Students should monitor their university email for an invitation from the Honors College to the Medallion Ceremony and be prepared to RSVP no later than mid-April.

Who do I contact if I have a question about the thesis program?

WRITING AN HONORS THESIS IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

Updated January 2022

Honors English students, following Schreyer Honors College requirements, compose a thesis of significant scholarly research or creative writing. The thesis is completed in close consultation with a thesis supervisor during the semester before the student’s graduation semester, while the student is enrolled in English 494H.

In the graduation semester, students polish and submit their theses for approval by the thesis supervisor and the honors advisor and then submit them to Schreyer Honors College. Dates of final submission vary; please consult your honors advisor and the Schreyer website .

An Honors Thesis in English

An English honors thesis in scholarly research and interpretation should be an ambitious, well-researched, in-depth study focused on a topic chosen by the student in consultation with the thesis supervisor.

An English honors thesis in creative writing should be a sophisticated and well-crafted creative project written in consultation with the thesis supervisor, a project that demonstrates the student’s increasing proficiency of their chosen creative genre(s).

The Critical/Literary Studies Thesis

A critical / literary studies thesis might arise from a range of possibilities: a course paper you would like to extend; an interest you were unable to pursue in class; a connection between two classes that you’ve made on your own; an author, set of works, or theme you want to explore in greater depth; a critical question that has been puzzling you; a body of literature that you want to contextualize; a topic relevant to post-graduate plans (e.g., law school, graduate school, marketing career, writing career, and so forth). Consider also your skill sets, your workload and experiences, and the timeline for completion. The questions you’re asking should be open to productive analysis, questions worth asking.

The topic should challenge you, so that you’re neither summarizing nor skimming the surface of the primary and secondary work under consideration. Chapters within the thesis should build upon each other and connect to an overarching theme or argument. The thesis should be as clear and concise as possible. Make sure the argument is structured, with each chapter and each paragraph having a clear role to play in the development of the argument.

Because the thesis is a scholarly product, it will demonstrate good research skills and effective use of secondary readings. It will also be grammatically correct. Your work will be entering existing critical conversations with other scholarship, so your research should be sufficiently completed prior to your finalizing the thesis plan. Your work should have properly formatted notes and bibliography, whether in Chicago, MLA, or APA style.

Note length stipulations: Honors theses in critical / literary studies may be as short as 8,000 words but no longer than 15,000 words. If the thesis is shorter or longer than these advised limits, explain your thinking and decision-making in the introduction of your thesis.

The Creative Thesis

The creative thesis will be an innovative, stylistically sophisticated work, attentive to language and voice. The work should develop a sustained narrative or theme. Most students who write creative theses produce a collection of short stories or personal essays, a novella, a memoir, a research-based piece of creative nonfiction or a collection of poems. It is very, very difficult to write a novel in one semester, so unless you already have a novel underway, writing a novel is probably not a realistic thesis project. Creative works should be unified (by theme, by topic, or in some other way).

Students should already have taken a 200-level creative writing workshop in the chosen genre(s) and a 300- or 400-level workshop in this same genre(s). (You can be signed up to take the 400-level workshop in 494H semester.) Ideally, students will have studied creative writing with the faculty member who will serve as supervisor, but note that this is a suggestion and not a requirement. Schedule an initial meeting with your prospective thesis supervisor to discuss your plans for the execution of your creative work.

Note this requirement! Creative works will offer an introductory reflective essay (five to eight pages) outlining the project’s aims and placing the project into the context of the style and/or themes of work by other authors. The introductory reflection should address how your creative project complements or challenges work done by others. It should 1) explain the goals of the project and 2) place it into the context of relevant creative or critical texts. Any works referred to in this essay should be documented using Chicago, MLA, of APA style.

Note length stipulations: Honors theses in creative writing may be as short as 8,000 words but no longer than 15,000 words. If the thesis is shorter or longer than these advised limits, explain your thinking and decision-making in the introductory reflective essay. 

The Thesis Supervisor

Schreyer Honors College requires thesis proposals to be submitted in early April of the year before graduation. For this reason, you must have a thesis supervisor by March, so that you can draft your proposal under the supervisor’s direction.

The first step in finding a thesis supervisor is having a meeting with your honors advisor in order to talk through your thesis interests. When identifying a thesis supervisor, consider professors with whom you have a good rapport; professors whose creative or scholarly interests seem like they might dovetail with your own; professors willing to oversee experimental work. You do not need an exact match with any given professor’s work or interests. For instance, a professor’s methodology might fit yours, even if the focus of their research differs.

Before approaching a potential thesis supervisor, meet with your honors advisor to confirm that this would be an appropriate fit for you. After meeting with your honors advisor, you will be making an appointment to meet with the potential thesis supervisor. During that meeting, you will offer some plans with concrete ideas. Be open-minded. Be prepared to listen to alternatives. Discuss the professor’s willingness to supervise the thesis. (Sometimes faculty are already committed to other projects.) If a faculty member cannot agree to supervise, use the opportunity to ask for further suggestions about your topic and a potentially appropriate supervisor, then check back in with your honors advisor.

Crafting the Thesis Proposal

For students graduating in the spring semester of any given year, thesis proposals are due in early April of the prior year. As with other deadlines, the Schreyer Honors College will prompt you to complete the thesis proposal form on the SRS site. Start planning the thesis as soon as a supervisor has been identified. Look at other proposals and at completed theses for good models. Read one or two award-winning theses to get a sense of the scope and depth of a successful thesis: < https://honors.libraries.psu.edu/search/ >.

Critical / literary studies thesis proposals will articulate the questions being asked, identify the primary and secondary materials to be used, and hypothesize about a general argument to be made. You might not have specified your conclusions yet, but a well formulated set of questions is key.

Creative thesis proposals will identify the genre(s) of writing, identify the writing method and approach, and situate the work within the critical context of that genre.

Both kinds of theses require, at the proposal stage, a bibliography (in standard documentation format) of sources consulted. This will reveal how your project is in conversation with other relevant work.

Once you have drafted the thesis proposal, consult with your proposed thesis supervisor and your honors advisor, allowing them sufficient time to offer suggestions. Do not submit a proposal without getting the approval of your thesis supervisor and honors advisor! Expect to get feedback on your plans. Give your thesis supervisor and your honors advisor time to respond to your proposal draft, because it’s complicated to make changes once you submit the form for them to sign off on.

Planning the Project

One semester prior to the ENGL 494 semester, consult with your thesis supervisor to develop a reading list to be completed before you start writing. For theses written in the fall (for May graduation), this will be summer reading; for theses written in the spring (for December graduation), this reading will have to be compacted over the holiday break.

For critical / literary studies theses, read in both primary (the literature, films, authors, or evidence you are analyzing) and secondary materials (articles and books about your topic).

For creative theses , read primary texts in your chosen genre, along with such secondary sources as reviews of these works and articles and books about writing and the writer’s life.

Finding primary materials. The primary materials you’re using should extend beyond what you’ve done in classwork, but do not take on too much. In the end, the quality of the analysis matters much more than pages generated. If you can sustain an analysis of a single novel for fifty pages, offer a thorough account of the secondary criticism on that novel and make a real contribution to that criticism. Note, however, that a twenty-five page plot summary of a single novel is not worthy of honors in English.

Finding secondary materials. Look for important secondary studies offering fresh and provocative approaches to your topic or genre as well as studies that articulate the relationship between your topic and general literary history.

Library and internet databases will assist your work . Library databases of both primary and secondary writings can assist your background research. Think flexibly about useful keywords for searching databases. Also, consider using the resources found in the notes of scholars whose work you have discovered. Using other scholars’ resources will assist your work in identifying pertinent additional primary and secondary sources. If two or three very current articles cite the same older work, you have probably found a foundational critical study.

Look into possible grants to assist your work. Schreyer Research Grants, Erickson Grants, and Liberal Arts Enrichment Grants are available. Consult with the Schreyer Honors College about summer research funding, research travel funding, and other ways to support ambitious research projects. Erickson grants and Liberal Arts Enrichment Grants are available to rising seniors who will incur expenses for their research. If you are a Paterno Fellow, ask the fellows assistant if grants might be available to assist your work. Also consult this link: https://la.psu.edu/beyond-the-classroom/research/

Preliminary Research/Writing and the 494H Semester

During the semester and/or break before the 494H semester, set a rigorous schedule for reading and note-taking. Of course, you will continue to read while you are writing during that semester. But concentrate now on getting the foundation for what you want to say.

Work on developing connections and ideas across your readings. Take the time to take notes! As you continue reading, you might find that your ideas and goals change. That’s a success! Be aware that if your original idea isn’t going anywhere, you need to keep pushing to find a new idea. If your sources aren’t helping you develop new ideas, find new sources.

Try putting findings or notes or creative materials into a preliminary outline of your thesis chapters, so that you can construct a fuller outline before you formally start writing during the 494H semester. Writing is a form of thinking, so start writing and see where your ideas go. Drafting helps refine both ideas and purpose.

Keep in contact with your thesis supervisor. You can use email for this, or zoom, if your professor prefers. Let your supervisor know about how your reading is going and any new ideas you have.

Strategies for success in the 494H semester

Remember you are getting three honors course credits for ENGL 494, so treat this time commitment seriously! Three credits total 135 hours, so use your time wisely. Incorporate time into your schedule for the multiple drafts of each section.

Set aside time each week for your thesis preparation and writing.

Plan to meet with your thesis supervisor on a regular basis (every other week is typical) throughout the semester. Set up a schedule and keep to it. Remember that the thesis supervisor has agreed to help you with your work, so respect your supervisor’s time. Don’t miss meetings or have nothing to show. Set deadlines for the submission of each chapter with your thesis supervisor.

Be responsible: Aim to allow your supervisor two weeks to read and respond to your written work. Be in regular communication with your thesis supervisor. Also, don’t make your thesis supervisor or the honors advisors track you down. Arrive at meetings promptly. If the honors advisor or thesis supervisor drops you a line by email, answer it promptly. Even if – especially if – you fall behind, stay in communication with thesis supervisor and with the honors advisor.

Remember that advice is given to you to help you improve. Listen to your thesis supervisor’s advice and suggestions. If your honors advisor, your second reader, offers suggestions, listen to these suggestions, too! Follow the advice or else respond in a mature and informed way. If you disagree with suggestions offered you, or if you wish to go in another direction, initiate a fruitful dialogue with your supervisor or honors advisor about the project. Let your supervisor and honors advisor know that you are listening.

The Graded Thesis Draft Submitted During the 494H Semester

A complete draft of your thesis is due at the end of the 494H semester.

The thesis supervisor evaluates your consistent progress toward completion, your regular communication about your work, and your effort to acknowledge and use the supervisor’s feedback. Your supervisor is the one who determines your grade, even though the honors advisors are the professors of record for the 494H course. Remember that the grade for 494H evaluates your draft, not the final thesis.

The grade for 494H evaluates the student in the following areas: 1) consistent progress in thesis planning, research, and writing; 2) regular communication with the thesis supervisor through the 494H semester; 3) attention, in revision, to the supervisor’s advice. Thesis supervisors will take into account any additional expectations particular to a thesis topic, the ambition and originality of the developing project, and, in the case of critical / literary theses, the student’s growing skills in employing secondary sources in original ways.

Revision and Submission of Thesis

The final thesis is due according to the Schreyer Honors College’s deadline, near the middle of the student’s final semester. The Schreyer Honors College’s deadlines are firm. The first Schreyer deadline is for formatting approval. Students are responsible for making sure to follow the most up-to-date formatting and submission guidelines on the Schreyer website. See the guidelines: shc.psu.edu/academic/thesis/formatting.cfm

At the time the thesis is submitted to Schreyer for format approval, submit the final draft to your thesis supervisor and honors advisor. The honors advisor might require revisions concerning the clarity of presentation to non-specialist readers, grammar and usage errors, and so forth. You must have the approval of your supervisor and your honors advisor for your thesis to be approved by Schreyer, so be sure to take seriously the feedback offered at this point.

The second Schreyer deadline is for final submission, at which point your thesis supervisor and your honors advisor must approve your thesis. Follow the Schreyer guidelines for submitting the final version of your thesis and getting the digital signatures of approval from your thesis supervisor and your honors advisor.

For questions, please contact the English Honors Co-Advisors, Professors Claire Colebrook and Carla Mulford .

The Biological Sciences major is offered in both the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Arts & Sciences . The major is administered by The Office of Undergraduate Biology.

Biological Sciences

Honors Thesis Format

Thesis format.

The Honors program encourages candidates to format their thesis following a journal in their field. Most journal websites will have Instructions for Authors that provide detailed formatting guidelines. The thesis should include the following sections with separate headings. Except for the title page, all the text should be double spaced, with a font size of 12. Consult with your research mentor

The title page should use the template provided by the Honors program and specified by the candidate’s college. It should show the title, the student author, and the mentor’s name and departmental affiliation. See template at the end of this document.

(250 words maximum) The abstract should be on its own, separate page. The abstract should summarize the results and conclusions of the paper, including the broader significance of the research. In the abstract, as well as elsewhere in the thesis, the author should use active voice and the first person singular (“I”) -- not the first person plural (“we”), except for those experiments or results that were truly obtained in collaboration with someone else. You may switch to passive voice (e.g. “xxx was measured…” as opposed to “I measured…”) only if the authorship has been clearly established in an earlier sentence, usually in the same paragraph by use of “I”. Note that the suggested use of the first person singular is in contrast to modern scientific publications, which almost invariably have multiple authors and thus use the first person plural “we”.

Introduction

The introduction should state the reason for conducting the research, the nature of the problem and/or hypotheses addressed in the paper, and outline essential background from the field. The introduction should provide enough background for a reader who is knowledgeable in modern biology, but not expert in this particular field, to understand the thesis research and the results. The introduction should explain any field-specific concepts, methodologies, or assumptions necessary to understand why the study was undertaken, and what the objective(s) of the study were (or what hypotheses were being tested). Writing a good introduction usually requires citing perhaps twenty or more published papers. Note that introductions are not comprehensive literature reviews, but rather discuss the most relevant work.

Materials and Methods

This section should explain in detail the source of the starting materials and the experimental design (i.e. how the experiments were done, data were collected, and results were analyzed). Also included in the Materials and Methods should be a paragraph explaining what statistical tests were used to analyze the data and to gauge their statistical significance. This section, which can be placed either after the Introduction and before the Results, or at the end after the Discussion (varies across journals), should be detailed enough so that someone in a different lab but with the same equipment and reagents could repeat the results. Rather than a detailed description of some experimental approaches, papers that fully describe the methods that you used may be cited. However, it is almost always appropriate also to summarize in a couple of sentences the most important methods. For example: “Proteins were purified after expression in E. coli as described in ref X. Briefly, after induction of protein expression, lysates were fractionated by ultra centrifugation to remove ribosomes and debris, and then submitted to ion exchange chromatography, with XX assay used to identify the purified protein.”

This section is the meat of the thesis. It should be organized with separate headings for the different experiments or measurements that were carried out, perhaps with one or a few paragraphs each. Every paragraph should have an easily understandable topic sentence (usually the first sentence) telling the reader what the paragraph is about. Paragraphs should not be longer than about one page (double spaced).

This section may be combined with the Results section (“Results and Discussion”) if this type of presentation makes the data and interpretations easier to follow. The Discussion often is the most challenging to write. Frequently in scientific papers the first short paragraph of this section briefly again summarizes what the Results have shown, but this is not required. The Discussion should not repeat what has already appeared in the text of the Results, but instead should take up the bigger issues raised by the data that are presented. For example: How firm are the interpretations, or what are their limitations? Are other interpretations possible, and if so, what experiments might address this in the future? How do the data and the conclusions fit with other published work? If the results contradict something that was published earlier, how could the contradictions be resolved? At the end of the Discussion, it is often suitable to write a paragraph describing how this work could be continued profitably by others. It will strengthen the thesis if the candidate spends time discussing results with lab members in advance of writing, and/or presents the results in a lab meeting and asks for feedback on the validity of conclusions.

Figures and/or Tables

These present the data collected. As the results are described, the text should refer to each figure or table. Every figure and table must be referred to at least once some place in the text, usually in the Results but perhaps also in the Materials and Methods or Discussion. The order in which the figures are mentioned in the text determines the numbering of the figure. For example, as in journal articles, one cannot refer to “Figure 4” before one has described “Figure 3”. Graphs should have error bars or some other way of indicating statistical significance. Each Figure should have a legend that describes what is in the figure. The legend should include a short sentence about statistics. For example: “Error bars indicate standard deviation from the mean, N = 6”. In some cases, e.g. pictures such as fluorescence images of a cell, it will be necessary to say that this picture is a representative example of N such pictures that were taken. The pixel size of pictures should be reduced so that they are not unnecessarily large, to keep the megabytes of the thesis to a reasonable value. The figures or tables, with their legends, may be integrated with (interdigitated with) the text, or they may be placed after the text at the end of the thesis. In most journals, figures and tables are provided at the end of the manuscript submission. However, if you choose, you can integrate figures and tables throughout the manuscript if it makes it easier for the reviewers to read.

Acknowledgements

This short paragraph after the Discussion should give credit to those who helped in the research, including financial support, technical support, and intellectual support.

Citations (Bibliography or Reference List)

Any of a variety of styles can be used for references, but the list should include all of the authors of every paper (not only the first one or two authors followed by “et al”), the date published, the full title, and of course the journal name, volume and page number. Generally it is best to use a referencing style that is common in journals in which this kind of research would be published. Whatever citation style is used, it should be the same throughout the thesis. It will be highly advantageous to use a reference manager application like EndNote or one of the similar open access applications (Mendeley or Zotero). See [http://guides.library.cornell.edu/c.php?g=412004&p=2807644 ] or the Mann workshops calendar for training sessions. Most theses have approximately two dozen or more citations, although the number may vary a lot depending on the scientific field. One common style for the reference list is that the papers appear alphabetically by first author (e.g. starting with “1. Adamson, …, and then “2. Bailey…”, etc.) Then the text refers to the paper by its number (e.g. “Cells were grown in DMEM medium as described in [3]”. Another common style is to number the references by the order in which they appear in the text. Still another common style is not to use numbers at all, e.g. “Cells were grown in DMEM medium as described in [Smith et al 2006].” Once you pick the style, the Citation Manager application will do all the formatting for you.

Submission of the thesis

The f irst submission of your thesis should be by email to your honors group leader both as a Word document and as a PDF. Please use the following convention for naming the files: “LASTNAMEfirstname thesis”, for example: “SMITHjudy thesis”. Using this convention facilitates any manual sorting of the theses. If the file size is too large for Cornell email, please use Cornell DropBox. The final version of thesis, after making revisions suggested by reviewers, should be submitted to the honors Canvas site as a PDF file using Canvas' Turnitin function.

Contribution of others to the thesis

Theses authored by more than one student are not acceptable. The thesis may include some figures or tables or diagrams from other people’s work (either published or unpublished), if the purpose is clarity of presentation of the student’s own results. But in each such case it is critically important to write an attribution in the legend, i.e. who is the author of the data and where was this published, e.g. “This figure is reproduced from Figure 2 [or perhaps ‘modified from Figure 2’] in reference 6”; or “This diagram was modified from one drawn by Nancy Smith”; or “This experiment was done by Paul Jones”; or “These data were obtained with help from Paul Jones”.

Honors Thesis General Formatting

8.5 x 11 inch pages with 1 inch margin on left side and sensible page numbering.

Title Page:

The title of each honors thesis should include the following items, centered from side to side and spaced on full page:

Thesis Title

Honors Thesis Presented to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (or Arts and Sciences), Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Biological Sciences Honors Program

[ author's name , Note: the author’s name should appear as it does in the university’s official records. ] [ date , e.g., May 2020]

[ research faculty mentor name ]

Note: If you want to include your thesis in Cornell’s digital repository, eCommons, your thesis must meet accessibility standards. Use this guide to learn how to make your thesis accessible. eCommons is a great way to allow other researchers to access your work in addition to future employers, graduate schools, and friends and family.

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