Honors Program
HON301: Junior Seminar
Fall 2006
Dr. Stephen Herschler
Lupton 303
404 364-8519
sherschler@oglethorpe.edu
Course Description
In this seminar each student will choose a topic for their Honors Thesis. Choosing a good topic for an honors thesis is rather more complicated that choosing an essay topic for a research paper in a typical course. A good topic is one that is chosen in terms of the available research done on related topics, the possibility of making some kind of contribution to the discourse already established in the field, establishing a reading committee of at least three faculty members willing to support you in your project, and the possibility for examining or generating primary source material and producing a quality thesis by the end of Spring semester 2008.
Before you commit to a specific topic you will mark out the parameters of your fields of interest, find the types of scholarly questions and lines of inquiry that interest you within those fields, determine what available resources you can access to pursue those questions. This will take you farther than the Oglethorpe Library and the World Wide Web. For each discipline and even each question within a given discipline, those resources will vary. So, you will need to establish regular communication with your Reading Committee as they will prove to be one of the most valuable resources you have here.
If you pick a topic interesting to you and you ask the right question, the rest of the journey will be relatively easy.
Course Schedule
Tuesday September 19,
Getting Started
Goals:
Choosing a Topic & Writing a Prospectus
Important Issues:
Choosing a Chairperson &
Committee
Picking a Topic
Knowing how your topic
relates to published work
Writing a Prospectus
Important Dates:
Chairperson should already
be established
Topic approved by Chair by
end of 301
Committee on board by end
of 301
Formal Prospectus approved
by Committee by end of 302
Complete Rough Draft by
end of 401
Final Draft completed and
approved by March 30th
Presentation of Thesis on
Awards Day
Tuesday September 26,
Survey of current literature in
your fields of interest
Choose 3 of the topic
journals in your field. Look through the last 4-5 years to determine:
Trends in Research and
Publishing
Your own interests – what
are you drawn to?
Conventional writing
styles for your field
Pick one article from each
of the three journals, write a brief abstract/description of them (a total
of 2 pages for the three articles) and come prepared to discuss what you
learned.
Tuesday October 17,
Survey of academic institutions in
your field
Find 5 programs (in the
academic field of your topic area) that you
might apply to. You may not intend to go to graduate school; do this
anyway. The programs may be graduate schools
Characterize the research
and teaching interests of Faculty in your field(s)
Find out what
Dissertations have been written in your field in the last 4-5 years
Get application materials
for at least three programs that interest you (you will not have to fill
these out….)
Tuesday October 31,
Methodology
Present Tentative Topics.
We will discuss how to take a general topic area and focus into an
answerable question.
Present Tentative
Methodological Approach.
Tuesday November 14,
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Tuesday November 28,
Readership / Audience
Committee
Oglethorpe University
Scholarship Conference
Other Conferences
Graduate School
Applications
Job Applications
Publication
Written Assignment
Tuesday December 12,
Hand in a Topic Description signed
by your Reading Committee