Leveling Up With Your Thesis
How students and faculty can cooperate to produce better undergraduate research
Every year, the two of us—Paul and Nick—work with undergraduate students on their honors theses. We think these projects are important and valuable. By engaging in the thesis process, students become active learners—not just note-takers in a lecture hall but participants in scholarly conversations.
Yet the process of writing a thesis can be intimidating to students. And why shouldn’t it be? A thesis is a long, independent piece of work—it is intimidating! Adding to the intimidation is the fact that completing a thesis isn’t just like writing a longer version of a course essay. Theses require learning many different discrete skills, from finding academic resources to crafting theories to carrying out and reporting tests of hypotheses. Each section of the document is almost distinctive enough to count as its own sub-document.
After working with dozens of students to complete this journey, however, we’re confident that the skills that students need can be taught. Nobody can just write a thesis, but just about everyone can learn how to perform better at each of the component parts. In this newsletter, we’ll share our tips and research about how to level up with each of these skills—and how to put them all together to produce theses that really matter.
In the meantime, tell your friends!