Program on Justice and Peace
Students who are intending to complete a minor or certificate in the Program on Justice and Peace are required to complete a thesis. Part of this process is enrolling in the senior seminar offered in the fall of their senior year. These guidelines are designed to help you begin work on this project during the spring semester of your junior year.
It is hoped you will have a faculty mentor to assist you in developing your thesis proposal. The following guidelines assume as much. But it is occasionally the case that a student has trouble identifying a mentor or securing a mentor's advice and approval in a timely fashion. Be assured that, though not desirable, it is possible to submit a proposal without a mentor. If you feel you need guidance in finding, choosing, and/or approaching a possible mentor, please schedule a meeting with the Program Director as soon as possible.
You should have three goals for the second semester of your junior year. These goals will help to provide more structure to your efforts to prepare for the seminar class and write a thesis.
1. As early as possible in the spring semester, you should consider possible mentors, approach one or several, and discuss your project with one of them or with a trusted academic advisor. (Again, if you need help in this process, contact the Program Director.) A short explanation of the program and the role of the mentor is available on this web page; hard copy can be procured from the PJP office. This document should be provided to your mentor and used as a basis for exploring how you will work together. In approaching a possible mentor, you should provide a list of relevant courses taken in preparation for the project, a draft of a proposal for your thesis, a tentative working bibliography, and an explanation of why you think he or she can be most helpful to your work.
2. Once you have talked with an advisor about your thesis, you should develop a strong thesis proposal. Your proposal, which should run 3-4 double-spaced pages, should include a statement of the question or problem the thesis will investigate; the reasons why that investigation is important; a sense of how you will address the question or problem in a feasible way; and a working bibliography of the primary documents and key scholarship you will need to review to undertake the project. Hard copy of the proposal should be submitted in both hard copy and by email to the Director of PJP no later than May 6, 2007. Please note the extended deadline. While consultation with your chosen thesis mentor is recommended, the signature of a designated mentor is NOT required.
3. The last goal of the spring semester is for you to do preliminary research on the topic of the paper. This could include: investigating/reading key items on your working bibliography, gathering data which may be used in the argument of the paper, working with your mentor to discuss the process of thesis writing, and possibly reading previous theses completed by previous PJP students (available from the PJP office).
Ideally, once all the proposals have been submitted and reviewed, they can be distributed to every other student who will be enrolled in the seminar so that everyone in the class can see what his/her colleagues are working on.
During the preregistration period of the spring semester, you should register for JUPS 303 (Senior Seminar).