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School of Psychology

College of sciences, search form, senior thesis.

Doing a senior thesis is the ideal way to put your course work to use, but it is up to the student to find a faculty member to supervise his or her thesis. Some theses are based on hypotheses that undergraduates develop from course work or other readings but more often they are based on other research taking place in a faculty member's lab. Because research is time consuming, students should plan on thesis research and writing taking at least 2 semesters.

A faculty member nominates a student to do a senior thesis by filling out the Senior Thesis Nomination form (download for fillable form) and turning it in to the Undergraduate Coordinator. This does not preclude a student from initiating this process by approaching a faculty member and asking the faculty member if he or she is willing to supervise a thesis. The nomination form must be signed by the nominator – who presumably will be the supervisor of the thesis – as well as a second reader. The nomination should take place the semester before the student would take Psyc 4601 (Senior Thesis).

A faculty member can withdraw his or her nomination prior to the semester in which Psyc 4601 would begin if the nominator believes the student is not prepared to carry out the thesis. A student may also elect to drop Psyc 4601.

Readers of Senior Thesis

There must be two readers of a senior thesis; the first reader must be the supervisor of the thesis. The supervisor and second reader must be regular or adjunct faculty in the School of Psychology. The grade for Psyc 4601 is determined by the supervisor of the thesis as long as the second reader agrees that the thesis deserves at least a "D."

The second reader must be given the thesis document at least two weeks prior to the end of the term (in which the student is taking Psyc 4601) to read the thesis and provide feedback for possible revisions that would need to be completed before the end of the term.

Credit Hours for Senior Thesis

Students are advised to make their senior thesis a two-semester sequence.

For the first (typically, Fall) semester, the student would register for 3 hours of Psyc 4600 (Senior Thesis). The product of Psyc 4600 is a research proposal for the work to be completed in Psyc 4601 (Senior Thesis II).

For the second (typically, Spring) semester, the student would register for 4 hours of Psyc 4601 (Senior Thesis).

This approach would recognize the reality of the time involved in preparing and carrying out a senior thesis. It would also allow for the possibility that a student might be assigned an incomplete or a failing grade for Psyc 4601 (for example, for not completing the thesis) while still receiving credit that recognizes the preparatory work (by presumably receiving a passing grade in Psyc 4600).

Thesis Content and Format

A senior thesis will ordinarily be an empirical study although in certain cases it can be an integrative review paper. Theses must be written in APA format.

Collecting Senior Theses

A PDF copy of the thesis must be given (e.g., via e-mail) to the Undergraduate Coordinator. The PDF copy will be uploaded to the School of Psychology web page and will become part of the repository of senior theses that can be accessed by interested people – especially psychology majors and their advisors – who wish to get a sense of what might constitute a reasonable senior thesis.

Certificate of Approval

A Certificate of Senior Thesis Approval  form must be completed by the student and signed by the two readers of the thesis and the Undergraduate Coordinator.

The readers will not sign the form until both are satisfied with the thesis document. The Undergraduate Coordinator will sign the form after the form has been signed by the readers and the Undergraduate Coordinator has received a PDF copy of the final version of the thesis. The original signed form is kept by the supervisor of the thesis and a copy is kept by the Undergraduate Coordinator.

A grade will be turned in for Psyc 4601 (by the supervisor of the thesis) when the approval form has been signed by both readers and the Undergraduate Coordinator.

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Senior Thesis Projects

Senior theses are independent research projects that students complete in close collaboration with a faculty mentor.  Students who complete a senior thesis project select their own research topic, meaning that they have the opportunity to find answers to the research questions they find most compelling.

Who can complete a senior thesis?

Any student in the department may elect to complete a senior thesis project, provided that they have a Psychology faculty mentor who agrees to supervise their work.  Students with GPAs that are 3.0 and above may be invited to apply to complete a Dietrich Senior Honors Thesis in the second semester of their junior year ( Learn more about the Dietrich Honors Thesis ). 

Students who do not meet this GPA requirement can still complete a departmental thesis.

What does a senior thesis project entail?

Senior thesis projects vary depending on the student’s research interests, but they always involve the direct application of the skills that students learn in their Research Methods courses.  To complete their project, students typically:

• Conduct a literature search in which they review and synthesize previously published research on their chosen topic
• Generate a hypothesis
• Collect and design experimental stimuli
• Collect data (often including recruiting and testing participants)
• Analyze data
• Write an APA-style research paper describing their hypotheses, methods, and findings

Many students who complete a senior thesis also present their work at Meeting of the Minds , a university-wide research symposium held each May on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus.

How long does a senior thesis take to complete?

Students typically spend one academic year (two separate semesters) planning, conducting, analyzing, and writing up the results of their research projects.  Students typically apply in the spring semester of their junior year and begin work on their projects in the fall semester of their senior year.

What kinds of projects do students complete?

Students often work on thesis projects that complement the research that their faculty advisor is currently conducting.  Learn more about faculty research .

Below are some of the senior thesis projects of recent graduates.

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Senior Honors Thesis

Completing a year-long Senior Honors Thesis is one of the most rewarding, time-consuming and challenging endeavors a Psychology major can undertake. The process requires designing, executing, and analyzing the data from an original empirical research investigation, writing a comprehensive APA-format report, and presenting and defending this work before a committee of two faculty members (one of whom, the committee chair, must be from the Psychology Department). Because chairing a Senior Honors Thesis requires a great deal of time and effort on the part of faculty members, only a small number of seniors can complete a thesis in a given year. Students are therefore encouraged to contact potential thesis chairs  no later than the end of their junior year , and preferably even earlier. Because of the high demand for thesis supervision, some faculty may only agree to supervise theses for students who have spent multiple previous semesters working in their lab.

Students interested in independent study (including Senior Honors Thesis) must find a supervising faculty member before registering for the course via  SIS . Those registering for a Senior Honors Thesis (PSY 199) must also fill out and submit by early October the  Thesis Honors Candidate form .

Undergraduate research assistants and students completing a senior honors thesis in all labs that are conducting human subjects research are required to take the Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI). Please contact the faculty supervisor of the lab for more details.

Per Tufts policy, students must appear on the Dean's List for at least two semesters in order to be eligible to complete a thesis. As mentioned above, our faculty often have additional requirements for thesis students, including previous experience in their research lab (PSY 91/92 or PSY 191/192). For students already registered to complete a thesis, additional information regarding expectations for your project and the bases on which it will be evaluated are best obtained from your committee chair.

Students who complete an honors thesis receive a letter grade for their two semesters of work in PSY 199, as well as a determination of thesis honors. The letter grade is not assigned until the end of the second semester and is determined by the thesis chair; students are therefore encouraged to discuss their progress with their chair at various points during the year. This grade is intended to reflect a student's lab performance and consistency of effort over the course of seeing a research project through to completion. The thesis committee makes the determination of thesis honors, choosing from among the following designations: no honors, honors, high honors, and highest honors. This assessment is based on the final written product and oral defense, and is intended to reflect the quality, originality, independence, and potential impact of the work.

Review the departmental rubric for evaluating  senior honors theses .

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Class of 2023 /  2022 /  2021 /  2020  / 2019  /  2018 /  2017 /  2016 /  2015 /  2014 /  2013 /  2012 2011  /  2010  /  2009 /  2008 /  2007 /  2006  /  2005  /  2004  /  2003  /  2002 2001  (PDF)/  2000  (PDF) /  1999  (PDF) List of Prize-Winning Theses, 2001 - Present

Reading Sample Theses

As you prepare for your thesis, you might want to get a sense of what you can accomplish in your finished product. Reading past theses can show you the scope and nature of well-done undergraduate projects. Because theses in different areas of psychology often look quite different, it will help you to examine several in the same general area you plan to conduct your research in.

The Psychology Undergraduate Office has hard copies of several prize-winning theses from the past five years that you may sign out to see what the best undergraduate work looks like. Above, you can browse the titles of past undergraduate theses to give you an idea of the topics of theses students typically write.

Only hard copies of recent prize-winning theses are currently available.

Please note: Recent theses stored in the Social Relations Library (which recently closed) are unavailable. Inquirers needing a thesis that is not listed in HOLLIS should contact the authors of theses directly to attempt to obtain a copy.  

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Psychology 195: Senior Thesis

A senior thesis project is a major independent research project carried out under the supervision of a UCSC Psychology Faculty Member (faculty sponsor). Completing a senior thesis project typically takes about one year. At the end of that year, students submit a copy of their thesis to the Psychology Undergraduate Office, their faculty sponsor and a second reader, who is also a UCSC faculty member.

Students interested in doing a thesis project should follow these steps:

• Speak with your potential faculty sponsor about proposing a senior thesis project (keep in mind that faculty members are unlikely to sponsor projects that are outside their area of expertise). In some cases, students bring an idea for a senior thesis to their potential faculty sponsor. In many other cases, however, students develop ideas for a senior thesis project in collaboration with a faculty member they already know, typically from working in a lab. Start the conversation about your senior thesis project no less than a year before you intend to graduate (typically spring of your junior year).
• Discuss expectations with your potential faculty sponsor. Sponsors may expect you to have completed some coursework or gained other expertise, before starting or completing your thesis project. You should also ask for their specific guidelines regarding your thesis proposal (e.g. content, length, formatting) prior to writing it.
• Draft a title and proposal. Once you have secured a faculty sponsor and developed an idea for a thesis project, draft a title and thesis proposal. The proposal should describe the topic, main questions/hypotheses, and if appropriate, the proposed research methods. Proposals are typically 1-2 pages, but you should adhere to the guidelines provided by your faculty sponsor.
• Find a second reader. Your second reader may be a faculty member from the Psychology Department or another UCSC department. In some cases, your faculty sponsor may suggest another faculty member who can serve as a second reader for your thesis. 
• Complete the Senior Thesis Application via DocuSign . The application will require you to supply the following information: names and emails of your faculty sponsor and second reader, the specific quarters in which you’d like to enroll in PSYC 195 Senior Thesis , the tentative title of your thesis and a description of your relevant skills, experience and coursework (either already completed or that you expect to complete prior to submitting your thesis). You will also be required to attach copies of your most recent transcript and your thesis proposal--recommended formats for these attachments are Adobe (PDF) and Word (DOCX). Note: The Psychology Undergraduate Office will automatically receive a copy of your application and submitted documents for record-keeping purposes.
• Enroll in PSYC 195 Senior Thesis. Once all parties have e-signed the application, you will receive a class number which will allow you to enroll in the course. This number can be found in the completed form you receive from DocuSign. Note : For each subsequent quarter in which you plan to work on your thesis, you will need to obtain a class number from the Psychology Undergraduate Office ( [email protected] ). Please email to request this in advance of your scheduled enrollment appointment.
• Set a due date. Early in the final quarter of the thesis project, ask your faculty sponsor and second reader when they would need to receive an electronic copy of the thesis in order to read and approve it prior to the grade deadline. 
• Submit your finished project. Email your thesis to your faculty sponsor, second reader and the Psychology Undergraduate Office ( [email protected] ) by the agreed-upon date. 
• Complete your Thesis Signature Page via DocuSign to obtain approval signatures. The cover page will require you to supply the following information: the names and emails of your faculty sponsor and second reader, the title of your thesis, your full name and the quarter in which you are submitting the thesis (e.g. Spring 2024).
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Senior Thesis

A senior thesis is one option for the Psychology major's capstone requirement. As described in the catalog, you write an empirical paper with an American Psychological Association (APA) format.

Why do a Thesis?

It's an opportunity to explore a topic in depth, honing skills that you've learned in many previous classes and learning new skills as well. Unlike a term paper for a class, the thesis is a substantive work that you create over an extended period of time.

Who Should Consider a Thesis?

• Anyone considering applying to a graduate program that has a research requirement (Ph.D., Psy.D., Ed.D., M.S., etc.). It will enhance your experience, your candidacy, and may even help you decide whether to pursue graduate studies.
• Anyone who is intrigued by a psychological question and wishes to seek an answer through individualized research, rather than through the formal structure of a senior-level class.

Overview of the Thesis Process

• During the Fall semester, the student conducts a literature review and prepares a research proposal, with substantial guidance from the faculty thesis chair
• The student gives an oral presentation (colloquium) of the proposal to a committee of two Psychology faculty during which time the project is evaluated and critiqued.
• If necessary, you submit a protocol to Davidson's Human Subjects (IRB) or Animal Subjects (IACUC) Research Committee for an ethical review and approval of the proposed work.
• The student gathers data and analyze your results.
• The student submits a complete APA style research manuscript as well as gives an oral presentation of the project to a committee of three Psychology faculty. Revisions may be requested.
• Upon completion of final draft, the thesis is placed in the Psychology department's permanent collection.
• The thesis is presented as a poster at the annual Miller-Case Symposium for Research and Creative Works (typically the day before Reading Day, spring semester) in order to share results with fellow majors, faculty, and the community at large.
• For honors candidates, the committee chair will review the student's academic record, and poll the faculty for a vote.

How to Get Started?

Contact Psychology faculty (typically in Spring of junior year) to discuss the possibility of doing a thesis. Faculty are happy to talk about research and whether or not a thesis would be possible given student interests, faculty time, and available resources.

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Princeton University Library

Psychology junior paper and senior thesis guide.

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Senior Thesis Guidelines

Senior thesis requirements.

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Current guidelines for Psychology Senior Theses can be found on the Department of Psychology's website .

Students can conduct an experimental thesis, a computational thesis, or a theoretical thesis. All formats require a review of the literature .

• An experimental thesis should include a comprehensive literature review, findings from at least one original research study (an experiment or a field study) with appropriate statistical analyses, and a general discussion of the findings.
• A computational thesis should include a review of the literature and description and discussion of the computational models that the student has completed.
• A theoretical thesis should include a comprehensive review of the research literature on a psychology topic of importance, including an extensive evaluation of the findings and original interpretations, theoretical proposals, or a proposed program of research to add further scientific knowledge.
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Department of Psychology

Senior honors thesis, why do a senior honors thesis.

Honors research can be among the most significant and rewarding activities of any undergraduate career. Successful completion of honors research requires a substantial, sustained effort, but can repay that effort many times over. In carrying out an honors project, a student has a chance to make good use of a great many skills acquired in classrooms, laboratories and libraries. An honors project also gives the student a chance to acquire many new, valuable skills, including (1) knowledge of how to manage a large, in-depth study of a single, challenging problem; (2) an understanding of what it means to work as part of a research team; (3) sharpened organizational and communication skills; and (4) an appreciation of how real scientific inquiry is carried out.

Most students who successfully complete honors in psychology report that this process was the most valuable part of their academic training at Brandeis. The following is meant to explain honors' prerequisites and mechanics.

Qualifications for Undertaking Honors

Psychology majors who wish to do honors research must have a psychology concentration GPA of 3.3 at the end of their junior year. PSYC 51a (Statistics, or MATH 36b or ECON 83a) and PSYC 52a (Research Methods) should be completed by the end of their junior year. To be awarded honors, students must have a Psych grade point average of 3.3 by the end of their senior year. PSYC, NPSY, some LING and cross-listed courses are used in the computation of the psychology GPA. Psychology courses listed in the 90s are not included in the computation.

Procedures for Undertaking Honors

Typically, more students want to do honors than there are professors available to advise them. Therefore, students should start their search for an advisor early. It is wise to find a potential primary advisor by the end of the sophomore year and identify a topic by the end of the junior year. In this way, students can begin their literature reviews in the summer and start work on the project early in the senior year. A student who has found a willing advisor should sign up for PSYC 99d both semesters of their senior year by completing an add/drop form found on the  Registrar's website  (advisor's signature required) or by obtaining a consent code from their major advisor. Additionally the student will need to obtain a second psychology faculty member as a second reader who will serve on the final evaluation committee. On rare occasions, a primary advisor outside the Psychology Department is approved; however, a psychology professor must be willing to chair the honors committee.

Honors projects must be empirical studies. A research proposal and a blank Evaluation of Honors Proposal Form  must be submitted by November 15 of the senior year to a committee comprised of the two department faculty members whom the student has chosen as readers. The proposal includes journal-style introduction and methods sections. Both members of the committee must approve the project as a viable honors study before data collection can proceed. Failure to obtain such approval will automatically terminate the honors project. The major advisor and second reader will complete and sign the Evaluation of Honors Proposal Form and submit it to the Psychology Office by December 15. 

Before collecting data from human subjects, honors students must work with their advisor on a human subject protocol that will be reviewed by the IRB BCPHS (Brandeis Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects). In addition, completion of Citi training must be completed prior to the submission of the human subject protocol. Forms are available online at the Office of Sponsored Programs, including a link to the appropriate Citi training document. IRB training workshops are available (and strongly encouraged) through the Human Subjects in Research program at Brandeis University.

Additional Timetable Guidelines

Funding may be available through the Dean of Arts & Sciences  and through the Provost's Undergraduate Fund. Interested students should plan ahead if they anticipate any research costs. The psychology budget does not support honors research.

Students who wish to participate in the Greater Boston Research Conference must submit brief reports of their research by March 15.

Students should allow at least one month before the thesis due date for data analysis and thesis writing. This means that data collection should be completed as early as possible in the spring semester. The first draft of the written thesis is due to the advisor by April 1. The final thesis must be completed and submitted to your advisor and second reader by the day before final exams begin, usually the first week of May (please see the academic calendar ). It must be written in APA journal style.

Evaluation of Honors Thesis

The final thesis is evaluated by the student's thesis committee of two Brandeis psychology professors. Each of the readers should be given a Reader's Report on Senior Honors Thesis Form to complete, according to the assessment that each reader is asked to make. In addition the major advisor must complete the Rating of Initiative of Honors Work Form .

The letter grade for the honors work will be determined by the major advisor, who will take into account the entire year's work, as well as the letter grade assigned by the psychology department reader.

The level of honors (honors, high honors, or highest honors) will be determined by the psychology faculty in a special meeting after the oral presentation.

As a minimum requirement, a GPA in psychology courses of 3.3 is required for honors, a GPA of 3.5 for high honors, and a GPA of 3.7 for the highest honors. (Psychology courses listed in the 90s are not included in the computation.)

Major Advisor

• Comments on each section of the thesis
• Ratings of the overall quality of the thesis
• Letter grade for the honors work
• Rating of initiative in the student's work
• Recommendation of the level of honors (if honors is recommended)

Second Reader in the Department

• Letter grade for the thesis

In addition to having the option of submitting a paper copy of their honors theses to the University Archives, seniors now submit a digital copy to the Brandeis Institutional Repository. All theses submitted to the repository are viewable by the public and searchable by Google as well as other search indexes.

We have put together instructions for students, who will upload their final theses into the Institutional Repository. Those instructions appear on a page of the Library Guide for Undergraduate Thesis Writers . Please make sure you format the cover sheet for your thesis correctly. The template of a cover sheet proposed by various members of the faculty can be downloaded on that site or you can find a template here . If you have students who would like to digitally submit their theses with an embargo, they may request it with the Petition for Thesis Embargo Form.

Directions for submitting paper copies are included in the Libguide for Thesis Writers mentioned above.

Oral Presentation

As a culminating experience for all honors students, each student will give a conventional PowerPoint presentation of the thesis to the entire faculty immediately after finals. Each student will usually be allotted 20 minutes; 10-15 minutes will be allotted for their presentation with the remaining time for answering any questions from the audience. Students and faculty will be notified when a date for presentations is chosen.

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We encourage students who wish to do senior honors research to get involved in a faculty laboratory as early as possible.

View a list of important deadlines .

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Senior Thesis

The psychology major offers senior psychology majors the option to complete a senior thesis that consists of a two-semester sequence:

Prerequisite: To qualify for this track students need to be endorsed by a psychology faculty member.

Fall Semester: Student enrolls in the faculty advisor’s section of PSY 47809 and participates in a series of self-organized workshops that provide/enable peer-review and support. Workshops would focus on introduction of topics/elevator pitches (September), peer-review of drafts of literature review and methods sections (October and November)

Spring Semester: Student enrolls in the faculty advisor’s section of PSY 47809 and participates in a series of self-organized workshops that provide/enable peer-review and support. Workshops would focus on peer-review of results sections (February), peer-review of completed manuscripts (March), and practice for the symposium presentations (April).

Departmental Honors in Psychology.

The honors designation in psychology is awarded by completing the following:

Fall Semester: Achieving an A grade in PSY 47809 and a passing grade in PSY 40210 Advanced Statistics.

Spring Semester: Achieving an A grade in PSY 47809. A nomination by the faculty advisor and an evaluation of the thesis as worthy of the honors designation by a faculty committee.

PSYX 499: Psychology Senior Thesis: Welcome

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Psychology Senior Thesis Research Guide

Welcome to the Research Guide for Senior Thesis Topics.

This guide is designed to help psychology students enrolled in Senior Thesis find the information sources they need to complete a high-quality Senior Thesis. Library staff are eager to help you find the best information possible. Please contact a Reference Librarian at 406-657-1662 for any assistance. Happy researching!

Use the tabs above to find links to journals, databases, APA citation style, and Interlibrary Loan. 

Visit our guide for Distance Learners   to find more information especially for online students. 

Created by Nicole Bernard (B.S. Psychology) and advised by Dr. Kameron Nelson.

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College of Letters & Science Psychology

Senior thesis.

In addition to providing research apprenticeships and field placements in psychology, the Department allows especially talented seniors to complete a thesis. Completion of Psych 698: Senior Thesis, allows a student to demonstrate his or her ability to formulate a research idea and pursue independent and original investigation. Students who complete a thesis are in a very competitive position with respect to graduate admission.

Procedures for Completing a Senior Thesis

• Undergraduate theses should be supervised by a psychology faculty member. Students must have a 3.5 overall GPA in order to do a thesis.
• The following procedures for completing a thesis are guidelines. Consult your intended thesis advisor about the expectations for completing your thesis.
• Students should form a thesis committee consisting of their primary research advisor and at least one other UWM faculty member.

Before conducting the thesis research, students are strongly encouraged to write a thesis proposal and orally defend it at a meeting of the thesis committee. After the research is completed, students are required to write a thesis and orally defend it at a meeting of the thesis committee.

Writing a Senior Honors Thesis & Graduating With High/Highest Honors

Graduating with Honors requires a qualifying GPA. The GPA cutoffs represent the top 8-16% of UCD students in the College of Letters & Science. Check the most recent GPA cutoffs HERE .

To graduate with High Honors or Highest Honors, you must complete these steps.

1. Check that you meet the GPA criteria for Honors in the College of Letters & Science.

2. Find a faculty sponsor.

3. Take PSC 194HA and 194HB . During this time, conduct your research and write your thesis.

4. Submit your thesis.

PSC 194HA - 194HB Application Honors Thesis Cover Sheet Variable Unit Form (PSC 199)  

How do I find a faculty sponsor?

• If you are a research assistant , ask your Primary Investigator (PI).
• Consider PSC courses that you loved and who taught them.
• Read about faculty research interests and approach a faculty member who shares your interests.

How do I get units for my thesis?

I don’t meet the honors criteria. can i still write a thesis.

• You and your potential sponsor should discuss your research interests, why you desire to do write a thesis, and the level of commitment involved to determine if a thesis is right for you.
• If you and your sponsor agree to proceed, you would earn units via PSC 199 , instead of PSC 194HA/HB.
• If you do not do a thesis, check out the Undergraduate Research Center (URC) for ideas about other ways to present your research, such as the Undergraduate Research Conference.

What kind of research does a thesis involve?

• It’s more than a literature review
• It should emulate a scientific journal article (e.g. the APA journal)
• Collaboration is permitted, but you must be the first author and primary investigator
• Only one person can gain credit for a single thesis
• Your thesis should be primarily your contribution and ideas
• Using a grad student’s existing project is NOT appropriate
• Basing a new experiment on existing work is permitted and must show evidence of your input and ideas

Honors vs. High/Highest Honors

• Students can graduate with honors based solely on their GPA. Check the most recent GPA cutoffs HERE .
• High or Highest Honors is based on the quality of your thesis, see below.
• If a thesis is unacceptable, or if no thesis is submitted at all, and you meet the Honors GPA, you will earn Honors.

Who will be reading my thesis?

When is my thesis due and how do i submit it.

• Save your thesis as a PDF. The file name should be [Last Name]HonorsThesis.pdf (e.g. GarciaHonorsThesis.pdf).
• Complete an Honors Thesis Cover Sheet , and save as a PDF. The file name should be [Last Name]CoverSheet.pdf (e.g. GarciaCoverSheet.pdf).  Your sponsor’s comments and recommendation should be sent separately by your sponsor directly to Joy Geng ( [email protected] ).
• Submit BOTH your thesis and cover sheet via email to the Honors thesis advisor, Joy Geng at [email protected] .

How will my thesis be graded?

Attributes of a “highest honors” thesis:.

• Well-written with a clearly described problem that is addressed throughout the thesis
• Ample evidence of original work in the form of new data collection and/or new analyses addressing a problem in the literature
• A statistical approach suitable for the problem at hand
• Sufficient quality of data and sample size to show convincing positive or negative effects, with many appropriate controls
• The data should provide clear and unambiguous support for the main conclusions in the discussion
• Findings reported in context of relevant literature
• Final product should be at least 70% ready for submission to a respected low- to mid-impact journal in your field
• Sample theses that received Highest Honors are available online here: 2006; 2011.

Attributes of a “High Honors” thesis:

• Some of the “Highest Honors” thesis qualities remain true, but not all.
• Thesis addresses an interesting and novel problem but some relevant control conditions are lacking, thereby complicating interpretations
• Evidence of new data collection and/or analyses but insufficient in quality or sample size, thereby complicating interpretations
• Analyses make use of appropriate statistical techniques some of the time
• The data supports some aspects of the interpretation but not all
• Findings sometimes reported in context of relevant literature, but other work may be missing or overlooked
• Final product should be compelling and novel, but may not be ready for publication any time soon

Not High/Highest Honors quality:

• Significant flaws
• No evidence of original data collection and/or analyses
• Poorly defined problem with minimal controls and analyses to address it
• Insufficient data quality or sample size to address the problem in any meaningful way
• Misunderstanding of issues basic to the field that renders the thesis difficult to interpret and problematic
• Final product is not a passable thesis

I read everything and am still confused.

• Contact an academic advisor
• Contact the thesis advisor, Dr. Joy Geng
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PSY 401 Psychology Senior Thesis: Course Resources

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Psychology & Social Science Databases

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Finding Journal Articles

Often your professor will ask you to use scholarly articles, academic articles, or peer-reviewed articles. These are generally all the same thing. They are written by scholars who are experts in their fields and are usually tied to a college or university. They are great for:

• Credible and trustworthy information
• Recent findings and research topics in the field
• Research studies, tables, and data
• Bibliographies and reference lists.

Find  J ournal Articles about your topic:

• Dissertations &Theses Global This link opens in a new window ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global (PQDT Global) is the world's most comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses. Find cutting edge topics, lists of relevant references, and investigate ways researchers frame their topic. more... less... coverage: Updated continuously

• PubMed This link opens in a new window Contains citations and abstracts for more than 28 million articles in medicine. more... less... coverage: 1950 to present
• Taylor & Francis Social Science & Humanities Library This link opens in a new window Over 1,400 journals featuring key research across 14 Social Sciences and Humanities subject areas. Includes a large number of important journals in the field of psychology.
• Alt HealthWatch (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window Provides access to over 180 publications, including peer-reviewed journals, on complementary, holistic, and integrated approaches to health and wellness. more... less... coverage: Varies

• Coronavirus Research Database This link opens in a new window Including coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak, this database curates openly available content related to coronaviruses. It includes thousands of open-access articles from the world’s leading publishers as well as current research from pre-print repositories such as arXiv and will continue to grow and evolve as more is learned about the pandemic.
• Health Source (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window Contains 550 scholarly full-text journals with a focus on many medical disciplines, as well as 80 full-text publications on consumer health and 130 health reference books. more... less... coverage: Varies
• National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives.

Statistics & Online Resources

Are you researching a specific age group or locale find out more about the people by using statistical resources like the ones below..

• U.S. Census Bureau This resource provides a wealth of demographic information about people, geography, and businesses. Enter a state, city, county, or zip code into the Community Facts box at the top of the page and then take a look at some of the options in the left-hand column to find out about a community's population, age, education, income, and other data.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy.

Finding Books and Ebooks

Bowman Library has a large variety of books and ebooks that are chosen for their relevance to the courses offered. You can access ebooks directly from the library website whether your off or on campus. Books and ebooks are good for finding overviews and history of your topic. ​ You don't need to read the whole book to get the information you need for your project; often one chapter of a scholarly book will cover the information you need.

Search the Bowman Library Catalog

Submit your thesis to bowman library archives.

Submit your thesis to Bowman Library through this form .

View past theses here .

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Use “quotation marks” to search for a phrase

Use boolean operators – and, or, not .

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• Bachelor's Thesis

The Bachelor’s Thesis is a formal report and the culmination of your independent research. The thesis is written as part of your  PSYC 494   (Advanced Research in Psychology), the  Psychology Honors Program , or the Capstone Program . Students writing a thesis as a PSYC 494 participant may submit their report for Psychology  Departmental Distinction .  Psychology Honors students' theses are automatically submitted for distinction.

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50+ Research Topics for Psychology Papers

How to Find Psychology Research Topics for Your Student Paper

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

• Specific Branches of Psychology
• Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy
• Human Cognition
• Human Development
• Critique of Publications
• Famous Experiments
• Historical Figures
• Specific Careers
• Case Studies
• Literature Reviews
• Your Own Study/Experiment

Are you searching for a great topic for your psychology paper ? Sometimes it seems like coming up with topics of psychology research is more challenging than the actual research and writing. Fortunately, there are plenty of great places to find inspiration and the following list contains just a few ideas to help get you started.

Finding a solid topic is one of the most important steps when writing any type of paper. It can be particularly important when you are writing a psychology research paper or essay. Psychology is such a broad topic, so you want to find a topic that allows you to adequately cover the subject without becoming overwhelmed with information.

I can always tell when a student really cares about the topic they chose; it comes through in the writing. My advice is to choose a topic that genuinely interests you, so you’ll be more motivated to do thorough research.

In some cases, such as in a general psychology class, you might have the option to select any topic from within psychology's broad reach. Other instances, such as in an  abnormal psychology  course, might require you to write your paper on a specific subject such as a psychological disorder.

As you begin your search for a topic for your psychology paper, it is first important to consider the guidelines established by your instructor.

Research Topics Within Specific Branches of Psychology

The key to selecting a good topic for your psychology paper is to select something that is narrow enough to allow you to really focus on the subject, but not so narrow that it is difficult to find sources or information to write about.

One approach is to narrow your focus down to a subject within a specific branch of psychology. For example, you might start by deciding that you want to write a paper on some sort of social psychology topic. Next, you might narrow your focus down to how persuasion can be used to influence behavior .

Other social psychology topics you might consider include:

• Prejudice and discrimination (i.e., homophobia, sexism, racism)
• Social cognition
• Person perception
• Social control and cults
• Persuasion, propaganda, and marketing
• Attraction, romance, and love
• Nonverbal communication
• Prosocial behavior

Psychology Research Topics Involving a Disorder or Type of Therapy

Exploring a psychological disorder or a specific treatment modality can also be a good topic for a psychology paper. Some potential abnormal psychology topics include specific psychological disorders or particular treatment modalities, including:

• Eating disorders
• Borderline personality disorder
• Seasonal affective disorder
• Schizophrenia
• Antisocial personality disorder
• Profile a  type of therapy  (i.e., cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, psychoanalytic therapy)

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Cognition

Some of the possible topics you might explore in this area include thinking, language, intelligence, and decision-making. Other ideas might include:

• False memories
• Speech disorders
• Problem-solving

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Human Development

In this area, you might opt to focus on issues pertinent to  early childhood  such as language development, social learning, or childhood attachment or you might instead opt to concentrate on issues that affect older adults such as dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Some other topics you might consider include:

• Language acquisition
• Media violence and children
• Learning disabilities
• Gender roles
• Child abuse
• Prenatal development
• Parenting styles
• Aspects of the aging process

Do a Critique of Publications Involving Psychology Research Topics

One option is to consider writing a critique paper of a published psychology book or academic journal article. For example, you might write a critical analysis of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams or you might evaluate a more recent book such as Philip Zimbardo's  The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil .

Professional and academic journals are also great places to find materials for a critique paper. Browse through the collection at your university library to find titles devoted to the subject that you are most interested in, then look through recent articles until you find one that grabs your attention.

Topics of Psychology Research Related to Famous Experiments

There have been many fascinating and groundbreaking experiments throughout the history of psychology, providing ample material for students looking for an interesting term paper topic. In your paper, you might choose to summarize the experiment, analyze the ethics of the research, or evaluate the implications of the study. Possible experiments that you might consider include:

• The Milgram Obedience Experiment
• The Stanford Prison Experiment
• The Little Albert Experiment
• Pavlov's Conditioning Experiments
• The Asch Conformity Experiment
• Harlow's Rhesus Monkey Experiments

Topics of Psychology Research About Historical Figures

One of the simplest ways to find a great topic is to choose an interesting person in the  history of psychology  and write a paper about them. Your paper might focus on many different elements of the individual's life, such as their biography, professional history, theories, or influence on psychology.

While this type of paper may be historical in nature, there is no need for this assignment to be dry or boring. Psychology is full of fascinating figures rife with intriguing stories and anecdotes. Consider such famous individuals as Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, Harry Harlow, or one of the many other  eminent psychologists .

Psychology Research Topics About a Specific Career

​Another possible topic, depending on the course in which you are enrolled, is to write about specific career paths within the  field of psychology . This type of paper is especially appropriate if you are exploring different subtopics or considering which area interests you the most.

In your paper, you might opt to explore the typical duties of a psychologist, how much people working in these fields typically earn, and the different employment options that are available.

Topics of Psychology Research Involving Case Studies

One potentially interesting idea is to write a  psychology case study  of a particular individual or group of people. In this type of paper, you will provide an in-depth analysis of your subject, including a thorough biography.

Generally, you will also assess the person, often using a major psychological theory such as  Piaget's stages of cognitive development  or  Erikson's eight-stage theory of human development . It is also important to note that your paper doesn't necessarily have to be about someone you know personally.

In fact, many professors encourage students to write case studies on historical figures or fictional characters from books, television programs, or films.

Psychology Research Topics Involving Literature Reviews

Another possibility that would work well for a number of psychology courses is to do a literature review of a specific topic within psychology. A literature review involves finding a variety of sources on a particular subject, then summarizing and reporting on what these sources have to say about the topic.

Literature reviews are generally found in the  introduction  of journal articles and other  psychology papers , but this type of analysis also works well for a full-scale psychology term paper.

Topics of Psychology Research Based on Your Own Study or Experiment

Many psychology courses require students to design an actual psychological study or perform some type of experiment. In some cases, students simply devise the study and then imagine the possible results that might occur. In other situations, you may actually have the opportunity to collect data, analyze your findings, and write up your results.

Finding a topic for your study can be difficult, but there are plenty of great ways to come up with intriguing ideas. Start by considering your own interests as well as subjects you have studied in the past.

Online sources, newspaper articles, books , journal articles, and even your own class textbook are all great places to start searching for topics for your experiments and psychology term papers. Before you begin, learn more about  how to conduct a psychology experiment .

What This Means For You

After looking at this brief list of possible topics for psychology papers, it is easy to see that psychology is a very broad and diverse subject. While this variety makes it possible to find a topic that really catches your interest, it can sometimes make it very difficult for some students to select a good topic.

If you are still stumped by your assignment, ask your instructor for suggestions and consider a few from this list for inspiration.

• Hockenbury, SE & Nolan, SA. Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers; 2014.
• Santrock, JW. A Topical Approach to Lifespan Development. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 2016.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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The Senior Thesis at 100: Back to the Future

Photo: Sameer A. Khan h’21

As Princeton marks the 100th anniversary of the senior thesis, what anchors one of the University’s most revered — and arguably, most daunting — traditions is the belief that each and every student can surprise themselves if given the chance. Patricia Fernández-Kelly, who has taught sociology at the University since 1997, is one member of this thought camp. Having advised upward of 80 theses, one of Princeton’s most prolific thesis advisers claims “that a senior thesis does fulfill an extraordinary purpose.” It allows students, she says, “to discover things that they never thought that they’d discover.”

Discovery comes in many forms. Most of the time, it is a personal affair, a point of growth. On the rare occasion, it might make headlines. In early 2023, Edward Tian ’23 was in the news after launching an AI-detecting application derived from his thesis-in-progress. GPTZero, a tool that discerns whether a text was produced by ChatGPT based on its “burstiness,” or the degree to which its language and sentence structures are unpredictable to machines, was viewed by a quarter of a million people within its first 20 days on the internet, according to Tian.

Tian, a B.S.E. graduate of Princeton’s computer science department, didn’t have to write a thesis. (The thesis is mandatory for all seniors except those pursuing B.S.E. degrees in computer science, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and operations research and financial engineering.) But his interest in writing and journalism pushed him to produce something public facing. “There’s a lot of worlds colliding where the work needs to be done,” says Tian, who had spent a year between his sophomore and junior years with the BBC using data tools to investigate misinformation. When he told his former professor John McPhee ’53 — whose sentences Tian fed into GPTZero to demonstrate how the tool worked — about what he had accomplished, McPhee’s exhortation was surely and unsurprisingly “bursty,” Tian recalls: “He said, ‘Go dazzle the cyberzone.’”

It’s exactly the kind of thing any undergraduate would want to hear as they launch themselves into the rest of their lives. Because the Princeton senior thesis is no mean feat — nor is it a static event. Eleven years ago, PAW published a retrospective of the tradition with testimonies from a range of alumni. But with the advent of AI technologies and the coronavirus pandemic, the decade since has already pushed the thesis beyond what it has historically been. And what it has been is a blueprint for a young person coming of age in their intellectual and creative journey; an example of the extraordinary things Princeton students can do, given the right support; and an exercise requiring focus, persistence, and a dash of good humor, virtues that feel more timeless now that a hundred years have passed.

A NEW TRADITION

In recent years, students have started taking photographs with their senior thesis in front of nassau hall. these alumni shared their photos with paw. .

1. Camden Olson ’19, “Service Dog Tales: A Tri-fold Study Investigating Diabetic Alert Dog Accuracy, the Use of Animal-Assisted Therapy to Address Executive Functioning Skills, and the Function of Calming Signals in Service Dog Puppies”; 2. Evan Saitta ’14, “Paleobiology of North American stegosaurs: Evidence for sexual dimorphism”; 3. Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15, “Early to Rise? The Influence of School Start Times on Adolescent Student Achievement in the Clark County School District, Nevada”; 4. Connor Pfeiffer ’18, “Britain and the ‘German Revolution’: The European System and British Foreign Policy During the Franco-Prussian War”; 5. Brandon McGhee ’18, “The Blacker the Berry: The Black Church, Linked Fate, Marginalization, and the Electability of Black Candidates”; 6. Jimin Kang ’21, “Tales from Indigenous Brazil: A Translation of Daniel Munduruku’s Chronicles of São Paulo & The Lessons I’ve Learned from the Portuguese”; 7. Victoria Pan ’21, “Are Lockdown Orders Driving Job Loss? Characterizing Labor Market Weakness During the COVID-19 Recession”; 8. Daniella Cohen ’22, “Inter-Subject Correlation Analysis Reveals Distinct Brain Network Configurations for Naturalistic Educational Stimuli”; 9. Juliana DaSilva ’23, “Investigating the role of Hh signaling during embryonic germ cell migration in Drosophila melanogaster”; 10. Devin Kilpatrick ’19, “Sojourners from Central America: A Study of Contemporary Migrants & Migration from Guatemala to the United States”; 11. Alice Xu ’20, “Pretty, and The Promises and Compromises of Happiness: Idealism, Realism, and Choice in Jane Austen’s Novels.” 

The idea for the senior thesis was born in the immediate aftermath of World War I when Luther Pfahler Eisenhart, an effervescent math professor who quickly rose through the ranks to become Princeton’s dean of the faculty, proposed slashing the traditional five courses in an undergraduate curriculum to four. The resultant free time would go toward independent study of the student’s choosing, a policy that, at most other schools, had only ever been reserved for those seeking honors. (To this day, the pattern holds: Though some seniors at other U.S. universities write theses, the task is optional for those hoping to graduate with extra laurels.)

With the pedagogical magnanimity that Eisenhart was known for, he fervently believed that grades achieved in the first two years of one’s time at Princeton “did not constitute a reliable test of a student’s ability to qualify for honors,” writes Alexander Leitch 1924 in A Princeton Companion . Rather, only when given the chance to “function freely” on their own would students prove their academic mettle. 

It is this sense of possibility that renders the thesis a subject of enduring fascination for generations of alumni. Testimonies of the thesis-writing experience abound, both online and elsewhere: in the archives of this very magazine; the dozens of reflections collected in Nancy Weiss Malkiel’s 2007 anthology The Thesis: Quintessentially Princeton ; on bookcases across campus but most notably in the Mudd Manuscript Library, where thousands of theses — especially those submitted prior to the digitization of theses in 2013 — are kept. 

Then there are the senior theses about the senior thesis. Most readers of this article will open the work of Melissa Gracey DeMontrond ’00 to find themselves in the dedication. “First and foremost,” it begins, “I would like to dedicate this thesis to every individual who has ever gone through the torturous and merciless process of writing a senior thesis at Princeton University. I know your pain.” A handful might even find themselves in DeMontrond’s photographs of seniors burrowed away in Firestone’s metal carrels, metallic 3-by-8 boxes that thesis writers used as a kind of office, or in the stories of “cubby hole parties” that took place among these carrels, which Kelly Ehrhart ’97 describes in her own thesis about the thesis. (The carrels were removed in 2012, except for three that have been preserved in Firestone Library. By the time I arrived at Princeton, one couldn’t hide behind a sliding door, but they could overhear other people’s conversations on the other side of the open-air carrels.) 

Both DeMontrond and Ehrhart were anthropology majors fascinated by the thesis as a rite of passage. How a student might enter Princeton as a child but emerge, after being shepherded through a series of challenges within a community of like-minded peers, a worldly adult. “The thesis process has altered my state in the world and made me aware of what is to come in the way of responsibility and behavior,” Ehrhart writes in her conclusion. “However much it is complained about and however despised it may be, the thesis is one of the most integral events that I will ever endure.”

It’s true: The thesis calls upon young people for an ingenuity that emerges from no source but themselves. Often, the results become astounding contributions to society. The list and lore of “famous theses” are well-known: John C. Bogle ’51 created Vanguard, one of the world’s largest providers of mutual funds, from his thesis; Wendy Kopp ’89, Teach for America, which has impacted more than 5 million students across the United States; Jonathan Safran Foer ’99, his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated , which was adapted into a 2005 film and launched his writing career. 

There are dozens of other examples besides. One of the lesser known is how Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi ’00 — whose 2023 biopic Nyad was nominated for two Oscars — launched her filmmaking career with a documentary she made in Kosovo to fulfill part of her thesis requirement in comparative literature.

Co-directed with Hugo Berkeley ’99, A Normal Life , which follows a group of five remarkable young people building their lives under the shadow of war, won best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2003. Fifteen years later, Vasarhelyi and her partner, Jimmy Chin, won an Oscar for their nail-biting documentary Free Solo , which follows professional climber Alex Honnold as he climbs a 3,000-foot-tall summit in California’s Yosemite Valley without any harnesses or ropes.

Vasarhelyi decided to major in comparative literature because of her fascination with “representing the unrepresentable,” she tells PAW. As the child of parents who emigrated from their respective countries due to religious and political persecution, she wanted to explore the tensions between people’s identities and their political contexts. Her project thus became not only her version of film school, but the culmination of four years spent pondering a question that she had really been asking all her life. “Finding the space academically to nurture this curiosity of mine was really meaningful,” she shares. “It defined my whole career. I’ve made films ever since.”

Importantly, most of Princeton’s star-studded theses are works-in-progress that later grow to become much more.

Vasarhelyi edited A Normal Life from her parents’ basement for another two years after graduation. Jordan Salama ’19, whose thesis was the first to become a University Pre-read for incoming freshmen, spent the pandemic rewriting what would become Every Day the River Changes , his nonfiction debut about the communities that live along Colombia’s Magdalena River. Ask him for the full story and you’ll learn that the real work took even longer than that. Salama, a Spanish and Portuguese concentrator, was first inspired to write about the river while pursuing an internship in Colombia after his freshman year. It took multiple returns and the encouragement of his adviser, Christina Lee *99, to create the final submission, which he presented at a fateful journalism colloquium where he was connected to an agent who sent a PDF of Salama’s thesis to some of the nation’s largest publishers.

But trace the story further back, and much like Vasarhelyi’s case, you’ll find that Salama’s story began long, long before he set foot in Old Nassau. Salama’s family is Argentine on his father’s side, and his great-grandfather — the main subject of his most recent book, Stranger in the Desert (2024) — emigrated there from Syria to work as a traveling salesman. Salama only became fluent in Spanish when he came to Princeton, where his experience was one of “opening [his] eyes to Latin America,” he says.  

These days, Salama looks back on his Princeton trajectory not only with wonder, but a great deal of humility. “Nobody’s an expert in anything when you’re a senior in college,” he says. And so, throughout the many conversations he shared with strangers and the funny encounters he had — my personal favorite: Salama unexpectedly hearing his rendition of Oasis’ “Wonderwall” played on the sound system in a bar in Puerto Boyacá — he “leaned into it.” 

At the end of the day, perhaps that’s what a thesis is: an impressive feat, yes, but also little more than an honest testament to who a young person is and a proof-of-concept for how they mean to go on.

Though all theses are pioneering in their own ways, some are more pioneering than others. Given the immense range of senior theses produced each year, it’s difficult for any single thesis to jump out — or earn a legendary status — as soon as it’s written. But ask any Princeton math major from the past decade about the most fabled thesis they know, and you’ll surely hear about Mason Soun ’15. Inspired by the work of math writer Danica McKellar, Soun wanted a way to explore the trials and tribulations of studying math while championing what inspires people, as he writes in his introduction, “to fall in love with this subject in the first place.”

Combining his passions for math education and creative writing, he went on to produce something exceptional: a thesis composed of comical short stories — featuring fictionalized versions of Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye West — whose plots revolve around linear algebra and the experience of working with numbers. The first story, “To Beliebe,” follows an earnest and somewhat pitiable version of Bieber as he attempts to become a knife-seller with a company called Vector Marketing. 

In one archetypal scene, the Canadian superstar attempts to sell knives — which can be lengthened or fastened together, like vectors — to an old man surnamed Gomez, whose adamant refusal prompts the singer to respond, winking: “Never say never.”

“It was very much an outlier in the math department,” recalls his adviser Jennifer Johnson, who says she enjoyed working with Soun. “He was very serious about the idea of looking for ways to make math less frightening and to share his enthusiasm for mathematics with young students.” (Though it was an “interesting experiment,” she adds, she doesn’t think she “would want to try anything like this again.”)

Sometimes, it is not will but circumstance that calls for seniors to get inventive. Arguably, some of the most exceptional seniors in recent years — and I relinquish any bias — belong to the Class of 2021, who had to evacuate campus just as they were submitting proposals for their senior theses. 

Chris Gliwa ’21, a civil and environmental engineering graduate from East Rutherford, New Jersey, had anticipated research at a global scale. Instead, he found himself walking around his neighborhood amid a pandemic that had unexpectedly brought him home.

“It was during these walks that I became more perceptive of the industrial character of my neighborhood,” Gliwa says. In addition to exploring a nearby industrial complex that had once housed a bleachery during the American Civil War, he had socially distanced conversations with elderly neighbors who would share stories about the health problems that had proliferated in the area since the industrial boom in the 1960s. “They said that mysterious illnesses were common, but the companies and local leaders always assured them that there was nothing to worry about.”

Upon scouring a 1980s site assessment and decades-old news articles, Gliwa was compelled by a key culprit: benzene, a highly carcinogenic chemical used in industrial processes. With this discovery, a thesis was born. In the months that followed, Gliwa estimated airborne benzene concentrations using historical site data, then used wind records to build a model demonstrating how benzene would travel into the areas where his neighbors have lived for generations. Though his intention was “not to find conclusive evidence of wrongdoing,” Gliwa explains, his study’s confirmation of environmental pollution in East Rutherford was enough to vindicate his neighbors, whose response made Gliwa “very emotional.” 

“They are like family to me,” he reflects, three years on. “People from my community rarely go to schools like Princeton, so to exercise my education and research skills in this way was truly a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

Though Gliwa chose not to publish his thesis due to the possibility of legal concerns, he continues to build upon the skills that made his project possible with a long view toward tangible policy change. These days, he is fulfilling his third year as part of the University’s Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI). His first rotation was with a team working on climate and environmental issues at the White House.

Despite its reputational charge, the senior thesis isn’t immune to change. (Nor is it immune to critique: In the 1990s, a debate on its potential abolition made it to The New York Times .) As each generation of Princetonians paints new strokes on the hallowed portrait of this timeless tradition, the University has had to reframe the assignment. Creative theses — in which seniors produce novels, films, plays, and dance performances, among other things — are a fantastic case in point. Since Edward T. Cone ’39 submitted the first creative thesis in the form of a self-composed string quartet, hundreds of Princetonians have followed suit, giving rise to “hybrid” theses in which students (in certain majors such as English and comparative literature) fulfill their thesis requirement with a creative project supplemented by a critical essay. Online records of creative writing submissions since 1995 document a rising trend: Since 2013, there have been consistently more than 20 seniors each year submitting creative theses, while the preceding class years are patchier, with anywhere between one and 18 theses on record.

In the early 1950s, the University granted Robert V. Keeley ’51 *71 permission to become the first student to submit a novel as a senior thesis. Less than a decade later, there were six seniors writing novels to graduate.

Looking forward to the next 100 years, what might we expect of the senior thesis? Will it continue in the same way it has, or become an entirely different affair altogether? Perhaps the most salient question hovering over the thesis’s future concerns the rise of new technologies, including the widespread availability of digital data and AI. 

“I have the impression that students are increasingly looking at small topics as opposed to trying to engage large ideas,” says Fernández-Kelly, referring to the use of large databases for research data instead of the slow, sometimes painstaking work of studying systemic issues on the ground. “But that isn’t a problem with the senior thesis, but a problem with our culture.”

In response to the popularity of generative AI tools, deans Jill Dolan, Kate Stanton, and Cecily Swanson (the latter two co-chairs of the University’s working group on such technologies) issued a campuswide memo in August stating that policy on using AI in assignments would be up to the discretion of teaching staff. “We believe that the powers and risks of generative AI should only deepen the University’s commitment to a liberal arts education and the insistence on critical thinking it provides,” they wrote. 

Should faculty permit, the future Tian envisions might just as well become reality soon: one in which thesis writing is a combination of AI-assisted and human-derived work. But this isn’t something that keeps the GPTZero founder up at night. 

“Standards of student writing are derived from best practices in the real world,” he explains. “This is an exciting opportunity in the reverse: How students are writing theses or using AI tools responsibly will help define how people are using a combination of these technologies after they graduate.”

Not long from now, Jeremiah Giordani ’25 — who for one PAW article described himself as “one of the biggest ChatGPT users at Princeton” — will be brainstorming thesis ideas. The computer science concentrator, who laments the view that generative AI is for lazy students seeking easy ways out, considers the tool on par with calculators or spellcheck functions: time-saving technologies that give people the cognitive freedom to focus on creative tasks. 

“These technologies are here,” he says. “They’re very useful, and to become as skilled as possible, it’s necessary to learn how to use these tools as well as you can.” Though Giordani is not yet sure what he’ll research, he plans to find an adviser who has a liberal, and even encouraging, approach to using ChatGPT.

Regardless of who (or what) will do the writing, that’s one thing computers will never change: the very human relationships students build with their advisers. True, some pairings may hardly ever meet, and some seniors have admitted to avoiding their advisers altogether. But when a senior and their adviser click, history shows that the learning and guidance often go both ways. 

Malkiel’s 2007 collection The Thesis , which gathers interviews with Class of 2006 seniors and their advisers on the thesis research process, includes the story of ORFE concentrator Lindsey (Cant) Azzaretti ’06, who, for her thesis, came up with the idea of applying modeling techniques to the optimization of human blood storage. Her adviser, Warren B. Powell ’77 — who had advised upward of 200 undergraduate theses before his retirement in 2020 — was inspired. “The problem is now featured in a book I am writing on approximate dynamic programming, and I have already used it in a tutorial I have given on the topic,” his section in the anthology reads. “All this for a problem that would never have occurred to me.” 

“This is an exciting opportunity in the reverse: How students are writing theses or using AI tools responsibly will help define how people are using a combination of these technologies after they graduate.” — Edward Tian ’23 on using AI in students’ work, especially theses

Lee, Salama’s thesis adviser, says she believes the advising experience has influenced her own approaches to scholarship. Published in 2021, her most recent monograph — which explores the life of saints and their believers in the Spanish Philippines — features a foreword in which Lee explains how her identity as a Korean Argentinian compels her to study the intersection of Asian and Hispanic worlds. “I realized that you can write a good, strong piece of academic work that has personal resonance,” says Lee, whose work with Salama and other students has often concerned the incorporation of the first-person voice. “I’m not sure I would’ve done this if I hadn’t directed a thesis,” she adds.

To summarize the sheer diversity of theses from the past century — and to predict what they will look like in the next — is to partake in the same quixotic fervor of Eisenhart’s original vision. But for each student who has cried in a carrel is one who has laid a cornerstone for an illustrious career, or, at the most basic level, realized that they had it in themselves to do something incredible, and in their early 20s, no less. How big the world seems after such an accomplishment, and the rest of life so doable — or perhaps it is simply the comic relief of shared suffering that buoys us along. That much hasn’t changed; when members of the Class of 1925 designed their Reunions beer jacket, they included a tiger being crushed under four massive tomes. And what about the Class of 1924, the last batch to escape the mandatory thesis? 

Their beer jacket featured a horseshoe. They couldn’t believe their luck. But whether that was a prescient choice, I’ll leave to the reader to decide. 

Jimin Kang ’21 is a freelance writer and recent Sachs scholar based in Oxford, England.

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Thesis trauma and a recurring nightmare, inspiring examples of senior theses.

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Outstanding Seniors in the College of Science: Heather Jensen

This spring, each department in the University of Arizona's College of Science nominated an outstanding senior who went above and beyond during their time as a Wildcat. We are pleased to share their stories as they reflect on their time at UArizona. Our next Outstanding Senior is Heather Jensen in the Department of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. 

Heather Jensen

Department: Neuroscience and Cognitive Science  

College of Science: Why did you choose your area of study? 

Jensen:  I was actually very much a hater of the sciences in elementary and middle school, but in high school I ended up taking a psychology course that both piqued my interest and made me feel like pursuing science was possible for me. I landed in neuroscience over psychology because I was really enthralled by the possibilities inherent in a biologically-grounded but people-oriented field.  

COS: Tell us about a class or research project you really enjoyed.

Jensen:  Right now I am completing my senior thesis in Dr. Jean-Marc Fellous’ Computational and Experimental Neuroscience Laboratory. I’m working on understanding changes in spatial navigation strategies using interactive neurorobotics in a rodent model. One of the fun facts about this lab is that we have the largest rodent maze in the world! I also really enjoyed my time as a research assistant in Dr. Jessica Andrews-Hanna’s Neuroscience of Emotion and Thought lab.  

COS: What is one specific memory from your time at UA that you'll cherish forever? 

Jensen: I studied abroad in Amman, Jordan, with a group from UA, and we were lucky enough to go on a few sporadic trips around the area. One of these trips was to Wadi Rum, a desert valley near Petra. At night, a group of us walked out away from the campfire and laid down in the sand to look up at the stars. Maybe my city girl is showing, but I’ll never forget that night—how bright all the stars were, how clearly you could see the Milky Way, and how lovely it was to rest for a minute, surrounded by friends, and acknowledge how big the world was around us.  

COS: What is next for you after graduation? 

Jensen:  I will be pursuing my PhD in Social and Affective Neuroscience at UCLA.

2024 Honors Convocation Honorees

Carroll College's Honors Convocation celebrates the induction of students into academic honor societies and recognizes additional academic accomplishments of Carroll students.

FORENSICS AWARDS

The Talking Saints shared the Northwest Conference Championship, the 34th consecutive year the team has won or shared the regional title. 

Monsignor R. Vincent Kavanagh Memorial Debate Award Catherine Dudley June LePage Spencer McDonald Charlie Said

Thomas A. Clinch Memorial Forensics Award "Most Inspirational": Anna Brown

Dean McSloy Symbols Cup Mary Knight

Michael Ingram Short Prep Award Honoring Excellence in Extemporaneous and Impromptu Speaking Anna Brown Katy Keim

Oscar A. Provost Memorial Oratory Award Anna Brown

Harry A. Smith Award for Excellence in Interpretation Emily Mowat Olivia Smith

SIGMA THETA TAU

International Honor Society in Nursing The Zeta Upsilon At-Large Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau (Sigma) was formed through the joint efforts of the nursing faculty at Carroll College and Montana State University School of Nursing to encourage and recognize superior scholarship and/or leadership achievement in nursing at either the undergraduate or graduate level in the State of Montana. Sigma is an international community of nurses, dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, teaching, learning, and service through the cultivation of communities of practice, education, and research.

Maile Allzer Addie Butler Taylor Costales Mikayla Hert Elias Hill Tessa Hoover Alexzandria Hutchinson Sonia Karbowicz Sophia Kohler Laura Ley Mattie Grace McGreevey Erik Muskett Elaina Patten Jasmine Pearson Halee Skogen Lorenzo Sobolewski Avery Tripp Emilie Turpen Caitlyn Vermulm Stephanie Westlund Allison Winslow

ALPHA KAPPA DELTA

International Sociology Honor Society Alpha Kappa Delta is the International Sociology Honor Society.  Founded in 1920, the purpose of the society is to acknowledge and promote excellence in scholarship in sociology, the research of social problems, and other social and intellectual activities that lead to improvement in the human condition.  The Delta Chapter of Carroll College joins over 660 chapters dedicated to the ideal of “investigating humanity for the purpose of service.”

Grace Arend Anika Bjornson Isaac Goudy Anna McGill Bersabeh Mekonnen Zellele

PHI ALPHA THETA

National History Honor Society The Omega-Eta chapter of Phi Alpha Theta is located at Carroll College.  Phi Alpha Theta, established in 1921, is the international honor society in history.  With chapters located at colleges and universities in the 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, and the Philippines, Phi Alpha Theta is one of the highest rated departmental honor societies in existence.  Members of the society may participate in a wide range of historical activities, including the annual Regional Phi Alpha Theta History Conference.

Hoke Bell Alyx Gage Hunter  Irish Kyra O'Reilly James Peruzzi Slone Rexin Jonathan Rose

ERIK PRATT AWARD

Best Political Science/International Relations Senior Seminar Paper Delaney Boyle

LAMBDA PI ETA

National Communication Honor Society Carroll College holds the Alpha Alpha Eta chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, the national communication honor society.  Membership is granted based on academic excellence.  The goals of Lambda Pi Eta are to (a) recognize, foster and reward outstanding achievement; (b) stimulate interest in the field of communication; (c) promote and encourage professional development; (d) provide an opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas about the field; (e) establish and maintain close relationships and understanding between faculty and students; and (f) explore options for further graduate studies.

ROBERT HOPPER MEMORIAL COMMUNICATION ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

This award recognizes superior performance in the Department of Communication Studies and Public Relations' Senior Oral Comprehensive Exam.  The award is named in honor of the late Robert Hopper, Charles Sapp Centennial Professor, University of Texas at Austin, a distinguished scholar, author and teacher, in the field of communication studies.

Chase Coyle

CLASS OF 2024 HONORS SCHOLARS

The Carroll College Honors Scholars Program fosters excellence in academic scholarship, personal character, and social commitment.  The Honors Scholars Program is proud to recognize its graduating class of 2023.

Macie Holmes Sonia Karbowicz Nicole Morgen Ava Sargent Elliot Wald David Wassmuth

International Honor Society in Psychology The Carroll College Psychology Department holds the charter for the Carroll Chapter of Psi Chi, the international honors society in psychology.  Psi Chi aims to foster cooperation in the investigation and cultivation of the mind.  According to the Psi Chi bylaws, the purpose of Psi Chi is to encourage, stimulate and maintain excellence in scholarship and to advance the science of psychology.  Nominations to Psi Chi are based on demonstrated academic excellence as well as involvement in and service to the department and the broader Carroll community.

Kadie Baney Nate Hicks Carlin Lechner Anna McGill

PHI SIGMA IOTA

International Foreign Language Honor Society In 1996, Carroll College's Department of Languages and Literature was granted the Gamma Rho chapter from the Phi Sigma Iota International Honor Society, the first to be chartered in Montana.  Phi Sigma Iota is the highest academic honor in the field of foreign languages.  The Honor Society recognizes outstanding accomplishment in the study or teaching of any of the academic fields related to foreign language, literature, or culture.  This international society has as its ideals and purpose the recognition of outstanding ability and attainments in the study and teaching of foreign languages, the stimulation of advanced pursuits and individual research in this discipline, and the promotion of cultural enrichment and a sentiment of international amity derived from the knowledge and use of foreign language.

SIGMA BETA DELTA

International Honor Society for Business, Management, and Administration Sigma Beta Delta is an international honor society for students majoring in business, management and administration.  Sigma Beta Delta’s lifetime membership is a prestigious honor recognizing high academic achievement, promoting honorable service to mankind, and encouraging lifelong personal and professional improvement.  The Greek letters Sigma Beta Delta reflect the society’s principles of wisdom, honor and pursuit of meaningful aspirations.

Megan Baxter Delaney Boyle Andrew Denegar Kaitlyn Fellows Roi Kedar James Lang Keel Potter Savannah Rydalch Isaac Schilter Madalen Shipman

MATHEMATICS, ENGINEERING, & COMPUTER SCIENCE OUTSTANDING GRADUATE AWARDS

These awards recognize graduating seniors who have made significant academic achievements during their years at Carroll.  A selection committee of department faculty considers students’ academic performance, development of strong personal character, and contributions to and support of fellow students and Carroll College.

Tom Stewart Award—Computer Science Dustin Gardner

Alfred J. Murray Award—Mathematics Nicole Morgen

Eric R. Sullivan Award For demonstrated excellence and scholarship in Data Science Ryan Johnson

John L. Scharf Outstanding Engineer Award Chloe Gallagher David Wassmuth

MANION SCHOLARS AWARD

The Manion Scholars Award was established in 1998 to honor Dr. James J. Manion, whose more than 30 years of teaching at Carroll College instilled in students an appreciation for the value of hard work, perseverance, and commitment to excellence.  This merit-based award is given annually to junior and senior biology or biochemistry/molecular biology majors in recognition of their academic achievement and promise of success.

Belle Anselmo Kiki Bourekis Marrin Chapman Geri Cutler Benjamin Held June LePage Kelsyn Lohr Elliot Wald

OUTSTANDING ANTHROZOOLOGY SENIOR AWARD

Zoey M. Barrett Audrey E. Brown Allie Bullman Grace A. Carter Grady E. Case Sydney F. Gannon Kaitlyn R. Hansen Kira K. Hegg Lily C. Hoelscher Aileen C. Jones Sydnee M. Paul Slone I. Rexin Dayana O. Rosas-Guzman Madelyn J. Showalter Lisa C. Sipes Miriam E. Skari Kelli N. Stone Sophie M. Thomas

PHI SIGMA TAU

International Honor Society in Philosophy Carroll College holds the Montana-Alpha chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, international honor society in philosophy.  Phi Sigma Tau awards distinction to students having high scholarship and personal interest in philosophy.  In addition, the society aims to promote and popularize interest in philosophy among the general collegiate public.

AsherCasey Andrew Devine Ryan Frampton Julia Hackl Annika McCulloch Jack Snouwaert Christopher Szpilka Sheerley V. Ugarte-Arostegui

PI SIGMA ALPHA

National Political Science Honor Society The Department of Political Science holds the charter for Alpha Epsilon Xi, a chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha.  Pi Sigma Alpha is a national honor society for graduate and undergraduate students of political science.  Founded in 1920, Pi Sigma Alpha claims over 600 chapters in North America.  It is the only nationally recognized college honor society in the discipline and is one of the largest constituent members of the Association of College Honor Societies.

Anna Brown Jonathan HagEstad Sheerley Ugarte Arostegui

Associated Students of Carroll College (ASCC) Honors

Students receiving ASCC Honors have served as a member of the Student Government for two or more years, and graduate with a GPA of 3.2 or higher. The Honor Cords are given out to celebrate the dedication of those students to both their academics and the student body.

Kiki Bourekis Liam Lynch Guillermo Perez-Ochoa Ryan Rector Miriam Skari Jack Snouwaert

HEALTH SCIENCES DEPARTMENTAL AWARD

This award recognizes juniors and seniors majoring in Health Sciences or Public Health who have demonstrated excellent scholarship at Carroll and in their required major courses.

Addison Ekstrom Robert Jackson Hague Danica Lerch Tegan Mauldin

JOHN SNOW HEALTH SCIENCES AWARD

Named for the pioneering English physician who is widely considered to be the founder of epidemiology, this award is presented to graduating Health Sciences or Public Health seniors, who, in addition to excellence in scholarship, have demonstrated outstanding commitment to research and/or community service.

Robert Jackson Hague

ARMY RESERVE OFFICERS’ TRAINING CORPS AWARDS 

These awards are determined on a yearly basis by the Cadre of the University of Montana and Carroll College ROTC.  Awards are based on academic achievement, ROTC excellence, and leadership qualities.

American Legion Gold Award Coulter Cloninger

American Veterans of World War II (AMVETS) Award Bryce Hall

Association of the United States Army (AUSA) History Award Tristan Pyette

Association of the US Army Award Weston Mitchum

Daughters of Founders and Patriots Award Allie Eaves

Daughters of the American Revolution Award David Luhmann

Major General Robert Frederick Special Forces Award Jonathan Goodman

Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) Award Edouard Karleskind

Military Order of the Purple Heart Award Aidan Jarvis

Military Order of World Wars (MOWW) Bronze Award Jacob Bates

Reserve Officer Association Award Madelyn Eggers

Sons of the American Revolution Award Davis Greenwood

The Department of Army Superior Cadet Award Landen Conner

The Department of Army Superior Cadet Award Jerny Crawford

Veterans of Foreign Wars Award Jerny Crawford

CLASS OF 2024 THESIS GRADUATES

The thesis is designed to encourage creative thinking and to stimulate individual research.  Thesis graduates may be eligible for special graduation honors.

Kiki Bourekis Noah Lohar Nicole Morgen Hank Rugg Elliot Wald

STUDENT-ATHLETE ACADEMIC HONORS

All students listed received academic all-conference honors from the Frontier or Cascade Collegiate Conference.

Women's Soccer

Emma Barron Natalie Brown Emily Funseth Courtnie Gagnon Zoie Koci Ella Kuenzli Deanna Lord Molly Molvig Makinlee Naffziger Myah Rietze Jaymee Sheridan Stephanie Smith Olivia St. Marie Grace Wagner

Men’s Soccer

Caleb Hoxie Walker Jump Michael  Klooster David Macy Ryan Quinn Adam Webster

Abbie Amend Kaitlynn Ayers Ellie Koerber Sammie Labrum Alyssa Lybbert Kati Slater Kenna Thomas Kennedy Venner

Women’s Cross Country

Erika Arthur Sydney D. Lamb Nicole Morgen Hannah Sempf Madalen Shipman Emma Stachofsky

Men’s Cross Country

Zackary Gacnik Daniel Koralewski James Normandeau Zachary Rector Peter Rehberger

Women’s Golf

Echo Anderson Megan Baxter Makayla Bury Stella Claridge Katie Fagg Abby Smith

Sam Conner Kyle Pacake Caleb Spangler

Julia Carr Elizabeth Gleasman Sidney Gulick Bellicia Hawk Elizabeth Heuiser Avery Kelly Mara Lynch Jaden Mueller Molly O'Connor Hannah Schweikert Lauren Sehenuk Isabella Sweet

Women’s Basketball

Willa Albrecht Clare Converse Addi Ekstrom Isabelle Erickson Sadie Filius Maddie Geritz Elliot Hencz Kyndall Keller Danica Lerch Erica Nessan Ava Oakland Jamie Pickens

Men’s Basketball

Andrew Cook Derek Kramer James Lang Aidan McGarvin Isaiah Moore Guilherme Pedra

Women’s Track and Field

Erika Arthur Kayla Botkin Alexis Cooney Chloe Gallagher Rakiah Grende Kailen Herbstritt Madison Lewis Sophie Loveless Sydney Miller Nicole Morgen Kylie Munsinger Crisha Polk Chloe Raats Sorren Reese Hannah Sempf Madalen Shipman Emily Shumaker Emma Stachofsky

Men’s Track and Field

Cormac Benn Landen Conner Connor Curnow Zack Gacnik Elias Hill Reuben Hornby Daniel Koralewski Abraham Montalvo James Normandeau Zach Rector Peter Rehberger Kaiden Romney Tim Sellars Josh Smalley

Chris Akulschin Nick Anderson Dayne Barbie Cormac Benn Spencer Berger Nicholas Clouse Chase Coyle Connor Curnow Nolan Deleon Andrew Devine Jack England Kaden Gardner Gunner Giulio Daxon Graham Mason Greene Jonathan HagEstad Jaden Harrison Benjamin Held Ty Henson Bryan Holland Hunter Irish Simon Jansezian Lucas Jensen Tucker Jones Duncan Kraft Benjamin Larsen Max Lehman Joseph Martin Thomas McGree Hunter Mecham Benjamin Melhaff Peyton Morton Mitchell Muralt Hunter Peck Keel Potter Jack Prka Tristan Pyette Ryan Rickman Camron Rothie Hank Rugg Wyatt Sandford Luke Schabot Kade Schlepp Timothy Sellars Tug Smith Quinn Stamps Forrest Suero Jacob Sweatland Baxter Tuggle Jake Walk Chayton Winkle Braeden York Tucker Zanto Colter Zink

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