Guidelines for Seniors
Fall Semester
In the fall of your senior year, you will enroll in a four-credit, graded course: JUPS 303, Senior Seminar. There are three fundamental and mutually-supportive goals in the course:
1. The seminar instructor will assist you in understanding good thesis writing techniques and completing a draft of the thesis by the end of the semester. He or she will work with you during all of the stages of developing a draft of your thesis. You will receive frequent responses to your writing and have the opportunity for several individual conferences.
2. The class will engage books and articles that assist the kind of interdisciplinary inquiry that marks the work of Justice and Peace studies. The particular focus of the seminar's reading will change from year to year, and you should consult the course description on the web for details about the seminar in which you will be enrolled.
3. You will work with other students (peer review, responding to and critiquing one another's papers) to foster a sense of collaboration marking advanced scholarly inquiry. As a general principle, students should come to the seminar with a commitment to reading and responding to the work of others in the course. Ideally, each student will, at some point in the semester, read the writing of all other members of the class and offer suggestions for ways to improve the project. When feasible, an online posting system will be established to make this process as convenient as possible.
In addition to your work in the seminar, you should speak regularly with your thesis mentor who will read your work-in-progress and suggest revisions.
Spring Semester
In the fall of your senior year, you will enroll in a four-credit, graded course: JUPS 303, Senior Seminar. There are three fundamental and mutually-supportive goals in the course: 1. The seminar instructor will assist you in understanding good thesis writing techniques and completing a draft of the thesis by the end of the semester. He or she will work with you during all of the stages of developing a draft of your thesis. You will receive frequent responses to your writing and have the opportunity for several individual conferences. 2. The class will engage books and articles that assist the kind of interdisciplinary inquiry that marks the work of Justice and Peace studies. The particular focus of the seminar's reading will change from year to year, and you should consult the course description on the web for details about the seminar in which you will be enrolled. 3. You will work with other students (peer review, responding to and critiquing one another's papers) to foster a sense of collaboration marking advanced scholarly inquiry. As a general principle, students should come to the seminar with a commitment to reading and responding to the work of others in the course. Ideally, each student will, at some point in the semester, read the writing of all other members of the class and offer suggestions for ways to improve the project. When feasible, an online posting system will be established to make this process as convenient as possible. In addition to your work in the seminar, you should speak regularly with your thesis mentor who will read your work-in-progress and suggest revisions.
While we will provide opportunities for all senior thesis-writers to meet with one another and with the fall seminar instructor, your primary contact will be with your individual thesis mentor. You should be prepared to meet regularly with your mentor and provide him/her with drafts and revisions as required. You should consult with your mentor to determine when in advance of the submission date (April 1, 2007), he or she will need to receive the completed thesis.
Your mentor will assess, comment on, and provide a grade for your thesis. That assessment along with the evaluation of the seminar instructor will form the basis for the final grade for this project, and this final grade will be awarded retroactively to the senior seminar (JUPS 303) taken in the fall.
Finally, you will be required to attend a final seminar session scheduled for late April or early May, where you will present your project and discuss it with faculty and students in the program.
