Honors Research
Research is about creating new knowledge. When you ask questions that others have not asked, when you recognize that rigorous research can take you where you had not thought to go, you find and create new knowledge. Research is a well-trained and independent mind approaching new territory, and it will find new paths to explore that territory. Others will follow and branch off to yet new paths and territories. It is a process that feeds itself and spins off all sorts of important data, answers, questions, and methods that no one could have anticipated.
For all its excitement and its mystery, however, research demands a very painstaking commitment to a rigorous methodology. To be useful to others, research requires that others be able to replicate it, that they recognize its intellectual honesty. Whether asking questions about the human condition or the human body, students cannot decide to do research unless they have begun to master a methodology. This is not a short process in any of the disciplines of the Arts and Sciences.
Students, therefore, should begin to acquaint themselves with the research of faculty very early. They should take every opportunity to learn the techniques of a methodology, and they should be prepared to serve an apprenticeship period while they learn the fundamentals of a discipline.
We realize that not every student will have the time to enter candidacy for graduation with distinction and complete a full research and thesis project, although all of you should have that as a goal. But if you cannot enter candidacy for graduation with distinction, you at least should discuss a significant one- or two-quarter research project with your major-area adviser or another faculty member with whom you have worked. Most of the significant undertakings in your life will involve the intellectual processes and discipline that are a part of research, and you owe it to yourself to be fully equipped to succeed in those ventures.
Reminder: Research numbers for senior honors projects leading to graduation with distinction are available in all departments as H783. Some, as is the case in the Department of Psychology, are actual courses in a sequence and require prior planning. In all cases, permission of a faculty member and approved candidacy for graduation with distinction are required. Research preparatory to senior honors research or unrelated to such a project is available as 693.xx.
Honors Theses
An index, abstracts, and copies of past honors theses completed for graduation with distinction are available for examination in room 210 of the Main Library. They are valuable not only as examples of research undertaken in various disciplines but also as sources of information.
