TO: Baccalaureate Committees of My Senior Project Students

FROM: John Newman, New College Humanities

RE: Senior Projects

I think the Senior Project is an important part of our students’ undergraduate education, but I have long been troubled by aspects of the ‘thesis culture’ at New College. I have yet to read a 100 (or 150!) page senior project that would not have been at least fifty percent better if it had been fifty percent shorter. (We allow our undergraduates to produce sprawling texts that exceed the maximum page length of master’s theses.) I am constantly confronted with ‘thesis anxiety’ and thesis dysfunction worse than anything I or my classmates experienced writing our doctoral dissertations. I am saddened and ashamed to be part of an institution where too many students take unnecessary additional years or never finish their bachelor’s degree because they do not complete a senior paper.

In an attempt to address some of these issues, I have established the following guidelines for myself and my senior project advisees:

1) I refuse to discuss the project in any detail until the second half of the semester preceding the student’s final year.

2) Over the summer preceding their final year, the student should do some reading and start to delineate their project.

3) During their penultimate semester, along with three regular classes, the student constructs a thesis tutorial in which the project is more clearly defined, bibliographical research and reading is done, and a couple of drafts of the outline are produced.

4) During their final semester, the student takes two non-thesis related classes, with the project taking up the equivalent of about fifty percent of their academic work.

5) The senior project has a page limit of around 50-60 pages.

I believe these guidelines are in keeping with the practices of our peer institutions, that they foster a less neurotic process, and that they will lead to the senior project being a more valuable part of our students’ educational experience.