senior thesis northwestern

• Faculty/Staff Intranet
• Graduate Student Intranet

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

• Undergraduate

Senior Theses and Honors

Conducting original research is central to the field of Anthropology. By undertaking original research in Anthropology students develop core skills in critical thinking, research, and written and oral communication. These skills, rooted in the holistic discipline of Anthropology, are widely applicable regardless of your career choice. Original research for the Senior Thesis may be based on library, laboratory, or field research on a topic that the student has chosen in consultation with their faculty adviser. The Senior Thesis is an opportunity for students to explore a topic of their interest in Anthropology.

Majors with an interest in pursuing original research in anthropology during their senior year identify a thesis topic and advisor during their junior year and submit an application to write a senior thesis to the Honors Coordinator by spring of junior year. The thesis requires:

• Completion of 399 in the Fall quarter of senior year
• Completion of 398 in Winter quarter of senior year

398 may be counted toward the 300-level requirements for the major. 399 is in addition to the 300-level requirements for the major

Honors in Anthropology

Students interested in pursuing honors in Anthropology are required to (1) prepare a 1-2 page project proposal and (2) secure a project advisor during their junior year. The proposal and an email from the advisor attesting to their work with the student should be sent to the Honors Coordinator, Prof. Erin Waxenbaum ( [email protected] ), by July 1 of the student’s junior year.

Students who write a thesis and whose theses and grades meet university criteria are recommended to the college for graduation with honors. Eligibility for honors includes:

• Writing an outstanding senior thesis
• 3.3 GPA overall
• 3.5 GPA in Anthropology 

Honors and awards

Students who prepare an outstanding honors thesis will be nominated for honors in anthropology to the Weinberg College Committee on Undergraduate Academic Excellence, which has the final authority to grant the honors degree. All students writing an honors thesis are also eligible for following departmental awards:

• Oswald Werner Prize for Distinguished Honors Thesis in Anthropology

This prize honors Professor Emeritus Oswald Werner’s research, teaching, fieldwork training and administrative contributions. He was a faculty member for 35 years, a department chair, founder, and director of the Northwestern University Ethnographic Field School, and an ardent supporter of undergraduate research.

• Friends of Anthropology Award for Distinguished Honors Thesis in Public Anthropology

This prize recognizes outstanding research that  matters to the communities in which the researcher works, addressing important  social issues and helping to foster change. The award was established in 2005 with funding from the "Friends of Anthropology at Northwestern" (FAN) Alumni Group.

• Elizabeth M. Brumfiel Award for Distinguished Honors Thesis in Archaeology

See a list of award-winners who have won scholarships and other prizes.

The Honors Coordinator for Anthropology is: Prof. Erin Waxenbaum 

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

• Undergraduate
• Honors, Awards, and Research
• Senior Thesis Seminar

Current Thesis Students

A thesis is a historical analysis based on a student’s individual research using primary materials that makes some original contribution to the field. The variety of methods and approaches currently used in the discipline of history means that no single type of thesis constitutes a model. The originality of the thesis may lie in its explication of untapped sources, its reinterpretations of familiar sources, its new synthesis of existing interpretations, or some other novelty. A thesis will almost invariably include: 1) an introduction to set out the problem, state the argument, limit the scope of the inquiry, and position the thesis in relation to the current state of historical opinion on the topic, 2) a set of chapters to present and analyze the relevant evidence, and 3) a conclusion to summarize the findings and suggest future avenues of research. A thesis is typically 40-60 pages in length including a thorough bibliography.

The final thesis is due in early May to allow your faculty adviser and seminar instructor time to read and review your work in advance of the mid-May deadline for submitting honors recommendations to the College.

Authors must submit a digital copy of their completed thesis to three people: the adviser, the 398 instructor, and the Undergraduate Coordinator. Please submit the thesis both as a pdf file and as a Word file. Printed copies are no longer required unless requested by the adviser or the 398 instructor.

The submitted thesis must include a title page, acknowledgments, a one-page summary with five keywords, the core text, footnotes, and a bibliography. The thesis must be carefully proofread and the references prepared carefully and in a consistent style.

Recommendation for Honors

Completion of the 398 seminar does not assure the granting of Honors. The Undergraduate Awards Committee makes a recommendation on Honors, and its recommendation is subject to approval by the WCAS Committee on Undergraduate Academic Excellence. The department uses the following criteria in its deliberations:

• Two readers of the thesis must judge it to be of very high quality. One will be the faculty advisor; the other is the instructor of the senior thesis seminar. In all cases, both readers must submit a written evaluation of the thesis, explaining their recommendation for (or against) the granting of Honors, and commenting on the originality and quality of the work. In rare cases where there is a difference of opinion, the Director of Undergraduate Studies will read and report on the thesis as well.
• The candidate should have a minimum GPA of 3.5 in history courses.
• The candidate should have a minimum GPA of 3.5 overall.
• Exceptions will be made to the minimum GPA requirement in items 2 and 3 if the thesis is judged to be of extraordinarily high quality.

If the department recommends Honors, the candidate’s name is forwarded to the WCAS Committee on Undergraduate Academic Excellence, which makes the final determination of honors. Be advised that there have been cases in which the department has recommended Honors but the College has declined to confer Honors.

Undergraduate Research Support Grants

The History Department provides eligible students with up to $250 to help support research undertaken as part of the senior Honors Thesis program.

In order to be eligible for an Undergraduate Research Support Grant from the History Department, students must:

• Be writing a senior thesis in the History department;
• Have already applied for and been granted an Academic Year research grant from either the Office of Undergraduate Research or the College of Arts and Sciences;
• Have documented expenses above and beyond those covered by the AY grant

In order to apply for funds, students should submit the following to the Director of Undergraduate Studies:

• The original proposal and budget provided for the Academic Year grant
• Receipts demonstrating that the student's costs went beyond the funds provided by the AY grant

Undergraduate Research Support Grants will be assessed on a rolling basis between October and May of each academic year.

The Johnston Prize

The Grace Douglas Johnston prize is awarded to the student whose honors thesis is judged to be of the highest quality. The award is made by the department’s Undergraduate Awards Committee.

Mechanism for Student Complaints

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

• Undergraduate
• Honors Thesis

Honors Thesis Program

Students who have participated in the Honors Program frequently view it as the most challenging, exciting, and rewarding intellectual experience of their college years. There are many rewards to pursuing an honors thesis: the chance to work closely with a faculty advisor, craft an original research project, engage in sustained intellectual study of a topic, sharpen research and writing skills, and form a research community with other honors theses writers.

Admission to the political science honors program is competitive. Honors students work closely with a faculty advisor to complete a research project of their own design. Honors students craft a research plan, analyze relevant research materials, and write a 60-100 page senior thesis based on this research.

Honors applicants are encouraged to apply for Undergraduate Research Grants (URG) through the Office of Undergraduate Research, Ginsberg Research Grants through the Department of Political Science, or to other grants to support their research.

If you are considering pursuing honors, we encourage you to meet with a Political Science faculty member to discuss your interest and research ideas.

Applications for the 2024 - 2025 Honors Program will open in March 2024. 

Requirements to apply to the political science honors program.

• GPA of at least 3.5 in the Political Science major and overall. To calculate your major GPA, find the average of the courses that are counting towards your Political Science major.
• Complete at least seven political science courses before starting the Honors Program, usually in the fall quarter of senior year
• Recommended but not required: complete a political research seminar (Poli Sci 395) before enrolling in the Honors Program
• Recommended but not required: complete a political science research methods class (Poli Sci 210, 211, 212, 310, 311, or 312) before enrolling in the Honors Program

Honors Program APPLICATION

To apply to the honors program, you must complete the application process. the application requires you to:.

• Complete the application form .
• Include your unofficial transcript (submitted via online application).
• problem/puzzle
• research question
• gaps in existing literature
• what you hope to explain
• hypotheses/hunches
• methods/data you might use
• Have a political science faculty member complete the online recommendation form on your behalf . Please send the faculty member your project proposal when asking them to complete the online recommendation. It is also advised that you discuss your proposal with the faculty member.

Requirements to earn honors in Political Science

• Admissions to the honors program
• Satisfactorily complete the two-quarter Senior Thesis Seminar (Poli Sci 398) in the fall and winter quarters. The 398 courses do NOT count toward the completion of the political science major, but they do count as credit towards graduation
• GPA of at least 3.5 in the Political Science major
• Cumulative GPA of at least 3.3
• Complete all requirements for the political science major
• Submit an honors thesis that meets departmental requirements, including the individual review by two anonymous political science faculty members

For more information about how to prepare a successful application, visit the FAQ section  and writing tips for honors theses.

View the 2020-21 Honors Theses and past award-winning theses for examples of past honors theses.

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES MAJOR

Honors program.

Biological Sciences confers Honors to a select set of graduating seniors, based partly on grades within the major, but more particularly on the quality of research and writing evidenced in formal Senior Theses.

Requirements to Receive Honors:

• Minimum GPA of 3.30 in all BIOL SCI courses through Winter Quarter of Senior year
• Completion by the end of Winter Quarter of the Senior year of at least two research registrations (BIOL_SCI 397, BIOL_SCI 398, or BIOL_SCI 399).
• Judged to be professionally written by the student
• Representing a significant research accomplishment
• Data in thesis collected and analyzed wholly by the student
• Recommendation for Honors by the Biological Sciences Curricular and Honors Board
• Acceptance of the recommendation by the WCAS Honors Committee

Due Dates for Honors Project/Materials :

• By Fall Quarter of Senior Year:  Work on thesis project commences
• By January 5 th , 2024 : Registration in BIOL_SCI 397 (do not register also for BIOL_SCI 398 or BIOL_SCI 399)
• By January 30 th , 2024 : Provisional versions of 3 sections of thesis to BIOL_SCI 397 Instructor
• By April 12 th , 2024: Provisional version of entire thesis is due to Faculty Research Supervisor, plus an email to Honors Coordinator assuring that this has happened.
• By April 25 th , 2024 : Completed Senior Thesis to the Honors Coordinator, as a PDF attachment
• By April 25 th , 2024 : Faculty Supervisor's letter of recommendation to the Honors Coordinator

I. Important Steps Towards Honors:

The Faculty Supervisor’s responsibilities are to provide:

• Guidance in choosing a unique, thesis-worthy project
• A supportive research environment
• Appropriate mentoring regarding experiments and interpretation of results
• Advice concerning the writing of the Senior Thesis

The student bears responsibility for conducting the research and writing the Thesis. Data collected by others may not be used in the Thesis. Data that will appear in another person's Masters or Doctoral Thesis may not be used, nor data that will appear in papers without the student as a co-author.

II.  Application for Honors

• A student effectively applies for Honors by registering for BIOL_SCI 397 in Winter Quarter (Do NOT register for BIOL_SCI 398 or BIOL_SCI 399 that quarter). BIOL_SCI 397 qualifies as a "300-level Elective for the Biological Sciences major".

The student is expected to have done considerable organizing and writing by the beginning of Winter Quarter. By January 30th, serious though initial versions of these Thesis sections must be provided as Word documents to the instructor of: BIOL_SCI 397.

• Introduction and Literature Survey
• Materials and Methods
• References Cited

The Instructor of BIOL_SCI 397 and the Research Supervisor independently provide suggestions for improvement in the ensuing weeks.

III. Writing the Senior Thesis

The completed Thesis consists of the following sections:

• Title Page: The title of the Thesis, the student’s name, and the name of the Faculty Supervisor.
• Abstract: The Abstract summarizes the problem, the experiments, and the conclusion; one page maximum.  Written in third person.
• Table of Contents.
• Introduction and Literature Survey: This section places the research in scientific context. Previous work in the field is referenced and discussed, and its relationship to the Thesis experiments is described.
• Materials and Methods: This section provides details of the experiments and of the analytical (including statistical) techniques utilized. The reasons for choosing the particular method(s) of statistical analysis must be indicated.
• Results: This section includes the objective results of the experiments. Figures and Tables are included as needed, placed at appropriate points within the text. The data are expected to reflect the work of the student, not the work of others in the lab.
• Discussion: This section examines the scientific significance of the experimental results, and suggests possible future directions for related research. The relationship of the results to the work of other researchers is discussed. Included is analysis of why particular experiments succeeded or failed.
• References Cited: References cited in the body of the Thesis should be listed using a format typical of scientific journals in the field. (A consistent style of citation should be used throughout the body of the Thesis; all data or ideas of others must be credited.)
• Curriculum Vitae: The student’s CV concludes the Thesis.

Examples of successful Senior Theses can be found here  and here .

IV. Submission of the Thesis and Recommendation Letter

The Thesis needs to be largely completed by the beginning of Spring Quarter, and submitted to the Supervisor for any comment then. A final version of the Senior Thesis in PDF format is sent by the student electronically to the Honors Coordinator  by the April Due Date. A recommendation letter from the Faculty Supervisor must be received by the Honors Coordinator by that same date.

V. Review by Honors Committees

An independent Reader is assigned to each Thesis. When the Biological Sciences Curricular and Honors Board meets, letters from the Supervisor and the Reader are considered, along with the Thesis itself. For Honors, there must also be a 3.30 or greater average in Biological Sciences courses. After discussion, the Board votes with regard to whether Honors should be recommended to the Honors Committee of Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. It also votes with regard to winners of specific Research Prizes. The Honors Committee of Weinberg College makes the final decisions about granting Honors.

VI. Special Thesis-Based Prizes

There is also an annual competition for four special prizes based solely on the quality of the Senior Theses and the research they represent. Participation in this competition is not contingent upon participation in the Honors program .

The prizes are named after prominent past faculty:

• David Shemin Prize for Basic Research
• Irving Klotz Prize for Basic Research
• Constance Campbell Prize for Basic Research
• Emanuel Margoliash Prize for Basic Research

Research Library assistance

• Biological Sciences research guide : contains key resources for searching the Biology literature
• Subject Librarian : Becca Greenstein is your point of contact at the Libraries who can provide research assistance and answer questions about resources. Contact Becca at [email protected] or 847-467-6606.
• Course reserves are short term loans of course materials. Course reserves for Biology courses are held at the Mudd Library service desk
• Requests, Interlibrary Loan (ILL), and document delivery : request items from our stacks or other libraries to pick up at the service desk; scans of articles and book chapters will be delivered to your email.

DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

• Undergraduate

Senior Thesis Honors Program

In the fall and winter terms of the senior year, majors may enroll for 396-1,2 and will write a senior thesis of approximately 30-50 pages.

* Students who wish to take 396-1,2 must take these courses in addition to the 12 courses normally required for the major.

The fall quarter will be devoted to:

• Formulating a question or problem that can lead appropriately into a research project that identifies a subject of study related to some aspect of religious phenomena (a text, historical event, ritual, performance, object of religious culture, philosophy, sociological trend, intersection of religion with dynamics of gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.) through which to explore that question.
• Compiling a substantial bibliography
• Reading as much material as possible
• Discussing the material regularly with a faculty member. Discussion should focus on the relevance of each work to the question or problem at hand. Meeting as a group throughout the term to discuss research methods and writing strategies.
• Writing a 15-20-page paper on the thesis topic.

Work in the winter quarter will be dedicated mainly to writing the thesis.

• 5th week: complete draft
• 6th and 7th weeks: students read each other's work and analyze it in an instructor-led group discussion with advisers and other students.
• 8th and 9th weeks: revise and submit papers

The department may nominate for WCAS honors those students whose senior theses are of particularly high quality and whose grade point averages within the major are above 3.5.

• Students who write a senior thesis do so under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Arrangements for working with a mentor need to be made during the student's junior year . Consult with the Director of Undergraduate Studies Professor Sarah Taylor early in your junior year if you wish to write a senior thesis.

• Faculty Intranet

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

• Undergraduate
• Economics Major

Honors in Economics

The Honors Program in Economics gives outstanding senior majors an opportunity to design and carry out a research project on a topic of their choice, under close supervision of faculty. Students who are interested in pursuing honors in economics should apply during their junior year. The research project culminates in a senior thesis which, together with the student's record in economics courses, forms the basis for faculty decisions on the award of departmental honors.

The program is administered by the Department's Committee on Undergraduate Honors and Awards. The Committee consists of the Director of Undergraduate Studies and two faculty appointed by the Chair of the Department. (The faculty member directing the Senior Seminar, Economics 398, is not eligible to serve on the Committee.) The Director of Undergraduate Studies serves as the departmental honors coordinator.

Honors Program CRITERIA

Students who are interested in pursuing honors in economics should apply during their junior year by contacting the Director of Undergraduate Studies .  Typically, successful students should have:

• An overall GPA of 3.5 or higher.
• Completed, by the end of the junior year, all core courses in economics: Economics 201, 202, 281, 310-1, 310-2, 311.
• A GPA in economics courses of 3.5 or higher, and no grade below a B in the following courses: Statistics 210; Economics 281, 310-1, 310-2, 311.
• Completed, by the end of the junior year, at least two of the six 300-level field courses required for the economics major, and when combined with the registration for the fall quarter of the senior year, have taken at least four of the six required field courses.

Students who fall somewhat short of these criteria but are highly motivated to write a senior thesis should discuss their application beforehand with the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Students will receive a formal notification of the acceptance of their application to the Honors Program.

Structure of the Program

Honors candidates must complete two additional courses in economics, beyond those required for a major, in which they undertake the research and writing of a thesis. Three options are available for these two courses.

• Economics 398-1,2, Senior Seminar Nearly all candidates elect this option, because it provides a structured environment for pursuing research and allows students to interact with a small group of excellent students who are similarly engaged. A faculty member directs the seminar and provides general instruction in doing empirical work and preparing a research paper. The faculty member will also oversee the progress of each student. However, it is usually the case that students will be referred to another faculty member who specializes in the chosen topic and can give detailed direction and advice. A "K" grade is awarded at the end of the first quarter of 398; a letter grade is awarded at the end of the second quarter which is posted on the transcript for both quarters.  Normally 398-1, 2 is taken in the winter and spring quarters of the senior year, but arrangements can be made for students who intend to graduate in quarters other than spring quarter.
• Two quarters of Economics 399, Independent Study Occasionally a student may already have initiated a line of research with a particular faculty member and may wish to continue working with that person. However, 399's will not fulfill the requirements for honors unless a student has been invited to the Honors Program before enrolling in them. Moreover, students who elect this option must give an oral presentation of the thesis in the Senior Seminar.
• A two-quarter graduate level field sequence, for example, Economics 450-1,2 Industrial Organization This option is very rarely used. It is appropriate for a student who has completed all requirements for the undergraduate major, who has a serious interest in economic theory, and who wishes to use the senior year to explore economic analysis at greater depth and rigor. This option usually requires taking at least the first quarters of Economics 410 and 411, the first-year graduate courses in microeconomic and macroeconomic theory before embarking on the field sequence. 410 and 411 require extensive preparation in mathematics. Students who elect this option must still complete an honors thesis, which would be written in conjunction with the field courses, and they must give an oral presentation of the thesis in the Senior Seminar.

Departmental Honors

Completion of the Honors Program is necessary to be eligible for departmental honors, but it does not assure such an award. The Committee on Undergraduate Honors and Awards makes final recommendations on departmental honors, and its recommendations are subject to approval by the WCAS Committee on Superior Students and Honors.

The departmental Committee considers the following criteria in its deliberations:

• Two faculty readers should find the candidate's thesis to be of  very high quality . Members of the Committee may serve as readers. At least one reader must be a faculty member who did not serve as the student's immediate supervisor. Each reader must submit a written evaluation based on careful examination of the thesis and a recommendation regarding the award of honors. The evaluation must describe the original contribution of the work and comment on its strengths and weaknesses. In case of a division of opinion, a third faculty reader is solicited.
• The candidate should have attained a minimum GPA of 3.3 in the two additional courses taken in the Honors Program.
• The candidate should have attained a minimum GPA of 3.5 in economics courses offered for the major.
• The minimum GPA requirements in items 2 and 3 may be relaxed if the thesis is judged to be of extraordinarily high quality.

A majority vote of the Committee is required to recommend honors. The Committee's vote on each candidate accompanies its recommendations to the WCAS Committee on Superior Students and Honors.

Guidelines for the Honors Thesis

The thesis must constitute an original contribution to economic analysis and must consist substantially of independent research performed by the candidate. A paper that reviews and summarizes a body of literature on a particular topic will not merit honors, unless it arrives at an especially novel and provocative synthesis of ideas. The mere collection of data without some theory-based application or interpretation of the data will also not normally qualify as an honors thesis.

Any of the following styles of research are acceptable and may result in a successful thesis:

• A thesis may use economic theory to model an economic or social problem, develop interesting hypotheses, and examine the empirical validity of the model and hypotheses using suitable data and econometric methods. The model may pertain to contemporary economic issues or to issues in economic history or the history of economic thought. The model itself need not be original; the innovative contribution may instead lie in examining it with new bodies of data, or employing superior econometric methods to those used in previous work, or pitting conflicting hypotheses against one another in new ways.
• A thesis may study a model or class of models that cannot be estimated but is instead analyzed through simulation methods.
• A thesis may focus on a policy issue, applying standard tools of economic analysis to arrive at new insights about the likely impacts of past or prospective policy interventions.
• A thesis may involve only economic or econometric theory, in which case it must develop new methods for studying economic phenomena, or arrive at significant refinements of existing tools or concepts.

Aspects of these approaches may often be combined in a single thesis, and a novel integration of them to study a given problem may also qualify as original research.

Careful preparation of the final thesis is essential. The thesis must include the following:

• A title page
• Acknowledgments
• A one-page summary
• Text, arranged in major sections and subsections, as appropriate
• Endnotes (if footnotes are not entered on text pages)

The document must be typed and carefully proofread. Endnotes (or footnotes) and references must be prepared in a consistent, accepted style.  The thesis is normally submitted in one electronic file (word processing format or a PDF file) to the faculty member teaching the Economics 398 Senior Seminar.

The text should begin with an introduction describing the issues to be studied and the approach to be taken. It would usually proceed to a review and summary of past studies of the topic. The next section would usually lay out the model and hypotheses. If econometric work is undertaken, following sections would describe empirical implementation of the model, the data used, and the statistical results. In other cases, these sections would present the new analyses, insights, interpretations, or theorems. A concluding section would summarize the principal findings and their implications, highlighting the original contributions of the research. It would also note shortcomings of the analysis and propose directions for further research.

Selecting a promising research topic is a great challenge. Broad issues of economic policy are often attractive to students, but unless a topic is narrowed down sufficiently, completion of an original contribution within two quarters of research is unlikely. Even when the topic is suitably restricted, a definitive treatment will usually not be achieved. Thus, it is important that students show awareness in the final text of additional aspects of the problem they might have investigated, or additional statistical tests they might have performed, or improvements in the data they might have made, or additional methods of analysis they might have employed, had they had more time to work on the subject.

Copies of previous honors theses   are available for review from the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

PROGRAM IN AMERICAN STUDIES

• Undergraduate
• Writing a Good Thesis

writing a good senior thesis

Notes towards writing a good senior thesis.

An honors paper has to present a thesis , or argument. It's important to understand what this means. Though in the sciences it might be enough to master a certain body of facts or information derived from class (or from your research) and to rehearse them articulately, interpretation is an analytic skill that requires you to move beyond the specific ideas that you have encountered in your critical and/or background reading. You need to show that you have learned ways of interpreting based on your research, and to demonstrate those skills on new material--that is, to apply different concepts and/or to discuss different parts of the literary text than were discussed in the scholarship you consulted.

An argument is a claim about the meaning of a text combined with a claim about the way the text's formal features are related to its meaning. Thus your interpretation has to take into account both the ideas or concepts of the text, and its recursive formal features (i.e., some strand or strands in its pattern of images, phrases, figures, or plot elements). And it has to identify characteristics of the text that distinguish it sufficiently from other texts. In addition, your honors paper has to have a thesis that extends beyond individual literary works. It may be an argument about the shape of a literary career, about the relationship of a given set of literary texts to their historical context, about the relationship of one writer's work to another's, or about the development of certain formal features or themes over time and/or across the work of several different writers.

Since this is a research paper, your argument must have a relationship to previous research and scholarship. It isn't sufficient, for instance, to reach the exact same conclusion as a previous critic but simply point to additional evidence. Your new evidence must point to a revised conclusion. And the argument must be non-trivial. In other words, it can't simply attend to a theme or aspect of the literary work that hasn't been noticed before, and leave it at that (e.g., "No one's ever looked at images of birds in Dickens . . ."). You have to argue why the things you've noticed are important, e.g., why they make a difference. A good critical paper anticipates what the most obvious objections, counter-arguments or counter-evidence to its thesis might be. If you can't imagine any evidence or argument contrary to your thesis, it may not be the world's most interesting thesis. The best essay is one in which you consider how evidence or scholarship which might seem to contradict your thesis in fact supports it. Or you may want to leave your reader with choices (e.g. "While from one perspective, the novel seems to suggest . . ., seen from another perspective, it seems to suggest . . . These two perspectives appear irreconcilable"). In any case, don't assume either that your argument is obvious, or on the other hand that its mere novelty is interesting.

Scale: there are no rules here, but you should anticipate writing on roughly 3-4 novels (or a dozen or so poems), or the equivalent of this for other genres. The texts you analyze in depth will of course be only the tip of the iceberg. For instance, to make an argument about the relationship of Dickens's portrayal of women to Hardy's portrayal of women you could hypothetically write only on Bleak House and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but your generalizations would have to be ones that genuinely held up for their other novels—and thus you would have had to research and think about many other Dickens and Hardy novels well enough to know that. You would probably also have to make at least passing gestures towards their other novels, in addition to considering the arguments of other critics who had looked at this topic. If you were arguing about the attitude toward technology in 20th-century American literature, you might write on only 3 or 4 authors, but you would obviously have had to read well beyond these particular authors in order to make a generalization about a period.

Remember that your honors work is supposed to be the equivalent of at least two full courses. Think about the reading list for a typical upper-level course in English, and double that in order to get a sense of how much reading and research you should be doing. If you're working on novels, you will probably read 6-8 novels for your honors paper, in addition to maybe a half-dozen scholarly books (critical, biographical, historical, etc.) and a couple of dozen articles. The amount of reading you can do determines the rough scope of the questions you can ask and answer in your thesis. You probably can't make an argument about "what the Victorians thought," though you can make a very good argument about how novels shifted in their portrayal of, e.g., capitalism, over the course of the Victorian period.

Think about posing a question for yourself in your thesis. It has to be a question that can be answered (i.e., it can't be too speculative or subjective), and one which specific kinds of material or inquiry would help you answer. It must also be either a question which other scholars have asked, or one which indirectly helps answer (or re-orient) the question(s) that other scholars have asked.

MATHEMATICAL METHODS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

• Undergraduate

Thesis & Honors

All MMSS students are required to design and carry out a research project on a topic of their choice, under close supervision of faculty during their final year at Northwestern.  The research project culminates in a senior thesis which, together with the student's record in MMSS courses, forms the basis for faculty decisions on the award of departmental honors.

Thesis Library

Libraries | Research Guides

How to find northwestern university dissertations and masters theses, northwestern university dissertations and theses, northwestern dissertations in the university library.

• Masters Theses
• Dissertations from Other Universities

Ask a Librarian

Northwestern dissertations are required to be submitted to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. The link below will allow you to search for dissertations by keyword, broad subject area, publication date and more. 

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window With more than 2 million entries, PQD&T offers comprehensive listings for U.S. doctoral dissertations back to 1861, with extensive coverage of dissertations from many non-U.S. institutions. A number of masters theses are also listed. Thousands of dissertations are available full text, and abstracts are included for dissertations from the mid-1980s forward.

Currently, bound dissertations and theses through 2006 are located at the Oak Grove Library Center and must be requested  through the record in NUsearch . After 2006, all Northwestern University dissertations were required to be submitted electronically for degree completion. 

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• Last Updated: Oct 9, 2023 1:21 PM
• URL: https://libguides.northwestern.edu/dissertationsandtheses

DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS AND DATA SCIENCE

• Undergraduate
• Major in Data Science

Honors in Data Science

Honors in Data Science gives outstanding senior majors an opportunity to design and carry out a research project of their choice, which forms the basis of the Honors Thesis. A research project in Data Science must constitute either an original contribution to theory or methodology, or an advanced data analysis project, and must consist substantially of independent research performed by the student.

Planning ahead is crucial for pursing honors. Prior to their junior year, students should prepare by reading Weinberg’s Honors in Your Major , which provides both a general overview of the honors process and general advice for students pursing honors.

To pursue honors in Data Science, a student should have an overall GPA of at least 3.5, a GPA of at least 3.5 in all courses required for the major and have made significant progress towards the major by the end of their junior year.

A departmental recommendation for honors requires that students take 2 quarters of independent study (STAT 399), through which they develop a research paper (senior thesis). These courses cannot be used to fulfill requirements for the major.

Prior to the fall of their senior year, students must

1) obtain agreement from a Department of Statistics and Data Science faculty member who will supervise the independent study and honors thesis

2) meet with the Director of Data Science for approval to pursue honors

The independent study courses are typically taken during the fall and winter quarters of the student’s senior year, with the Statistics and Data Science faculty member who has agreed to supervise your honors thesis.

For more information, contact the Director of Data Science.

North by Northwestern

Entertainment, science/tech, creative writing, interactives, current issue, past issues, senior thesis spotlights: thesis students discuss their work at the halfway point of the year, stephanie markowitz,, mar. 04, 2024.

To an observer, it can be difficult to understand why a student undertakes the grueling year-long commitment of an honors thesis. It’s an endeavor that can easily double their senior year workload and become yet another source of stress on top of an already hectic schedule.

Some thesis students, like McCormick Industrial Engineering fourth-year Dawson Ren, feel invested in the results of their research through a personal connection to the subject matter. Others, like Weinberg Computer Science fourth-year Will Hoffmann, were ready to take on research of any kind for the opportunity to work with a favorite professor or have a trial-run of the graduate school experience.

Theses look wildly different from each other across disciplines. By the end of the year, Weinberg Art History major fourth-year Elizabeth Dudley will have produced a 30-page visual exploration that has almost nothing in common with Weinberg Neuroscience fourth-year Jenna Lee’s data-filled laboratory reports.

But there is a common thread: curiosity. It’s the only thing that could possess someone to voluntarily spend grueling hours taking samples in a lab, combing through the reference library or parsing through abstracts to find the missing piece of their bibliography.

Here, four senior thesis students with interests in disparate fields explain in their own words what they’re researching and why it’s worth an entire year of nonstop work.

Jenna Lee stumbled onto her neuroscience thesis somewhat by accident. She had been doing research in an on-campus lab since sophomore year, but when the project packed up and moved to Michigan over the summer of 2023, she was suddenly without a lab project right when her research was supposed to be taking off.

“I always knew I wanted to do a senior thesis, but I felt like because of who I am, I wanted to be doing the research while I was writing it,” Lee said. “I also wanted to have a lot of open communication with my mentor, and I just knew that wasn’t going to be viable with the lab that moved.”

After shopping around available labs – “throwing herself out there” – Lee landed in a lab that was researching links between social interactions and neural circuitry. While she said this wasn’t her personal niche interest, she has become more invested in the results over time.

Elizabeth Dudley was similarly introduced to art history by accident, through a freshman year theater course on costume design. She then took an Art History class in the spring called “Fashion, Race, and Power,” and, enamored, immediately declared her major.

“It was the origin of me learning about this entwined point of textile history, visual culture, and the idea of fashion as another form of creative expression,” Dudley said.

This introduction has manifested into a thesis on the internet aesthetic known as “cottage-core” in which Dudley dives into its visual and artistic references, its roots in whiteness and its idealization of rural life.

She had been involved in independent research on the topic since high school and, referring to herself as a “pedantic nerd,” said she always knew she wanted to write a thesis.

“I love to get into the mess of things, and how many opportunities in life are you going to get to devote this much time to a project?” she said.

Will Hoffmann arrived at his Computer Science thesis by following a beloved mentor, Computer Science Professor Wood-Doughty.

“I really loved his teaching style,” Hoffmann said. “So I was like, ‘I don’t really care what I do my thesis work in – I just wanted to work under him.’”

Where Dudley’s humanities thesis was based almost entirely around the selection of a topic she wanted to learn about, Hoffmann thinks about it a little differently. He said computer science is unique because the methods often matter more than the actual substance.

“It’s just like, I have a problem in front of me and I try to solve it. That’s what I enjoy.”

Hoffmann is building a model to accelerate the process of extracting measurements of mud samples from different locations. The model will learn how to derive certain measurements on its own from manually-obtained data.

He noted that although it’s not geological and biological processes he’s interested in, he does like that it has an environmental component.

“It’s definitely broadened my horizons,” he said.

The data obtained by Hoffmann’s model can be used to understand the climate of millennia past, as well as how it might change in the future.

He also noted that because geoscience as a field is a bit behind in its use of machine learning, there’s a lot of room to add to the field’s research.

“That’s something I appreciate,"Hoffmann said. "It’s cool to be on the cutting edge of a field that might not have as much exposure.”

On the other end of the spectrum is the intentionality with which Dawson Ren approached his Industrial Engineering thesis topic.

Ren had been volunteering at a local food pantry once a week for over a year, which was the impetus for his thesis idea.

“Industrial engineering is about trade-offs and developing algorithms,” Ren explained.

His goal is to develop an algorithm that can find the most efficient way for trucks to drop off food at food pantries around Chicago.

“We collect data from different pantries, find out which ones are more consistent with the amount of food they ask for, and which are more variable," Ren said.

Ren had originally planned on taking it easy his fourth year, but realized his plan to go right into grad school would benefit from some previous experience with high-level independent research.

Once each student had finally settled on a topic, it was time to get started. But for a project this massive and long-term, it can be difficult to know what “started” even means.

“I’ve definitely put as much work into this as an extra class or two, especially this quarter,” Hoffmann said. “It’s frustrating at first to not feel like you’re going anywhere, but I also feel like it’s been very helpful for developing patience.”

Fall quarter tends to be a gearing-up period for thesis students – a time to refine their topics and collect literature. Winter quarter ramps up quickly. It’s crunch time once January rolls around, and there are no breaks from thesis work.

Balancing multiple additional classes’ worth of work is, of course, no simple task. On the lighter weeks, lots of thesis progress can be made. But during Northwestern’s notoriously lengthy midterm season, it inevitably falls by the wayside.

“I’m always spending less time on this than I’d like,” Ren said. “There are always other commitments with sooner deadlines.”

Lee is feeling especially apprehensive about the written component of her thesis, which is understandably outside her comfort zone compared to the lab work she’s been doing.

“I feel like I’m a little bit delusional, because I feel like things are going well, but I also know that I really need to pick up the pace,” she said.

Looking ahead to the volume of tasks left for them to tackle is daunting, even when they’re making consistent progress each week, according to Dudley.

For her, the amount of literature to tackle was the most cumbersome.

“There was a lot of anxiety with wrapping my head around, ‘Oh my god, I have to read through all this literature,’” she said.

Things don’t always go according to plan, either. Understanding what it means to be solely responsible for a research project comes gradually as they learn the difference between their previous classwork and an honors thesis.

“In class, it’s really easy to get a 90 percent accuracy and predict things really perfectly,” Hoffmann noted. “But in the real world, there’s a lot more noise and variation, so it will be basically dependent on how much effort I put in.”

Finding their stride

Some weeks are more fun than others, according to Hoffmann. In late January, for example, he was understandably frustrated when he learned he needed to completely revamp his model.

Other weeks are satisfying in a way that can’t compare to anything else they’ve worked on at NU. Dudley is finally about to finish laying out her base of scholarly literature and get to the core of her visual analysis. Lee just got her first round of results back from her lab mice’s brain scans.

“I’ve felt so supported by my PI [Principal Investigator] that I’ve been really enjoying the process of just learning about everything and trial and error,” Lee said. “Even when we get results that we weren’t expecting, it’s been really illuminating to learn what’s causing those errors,”

Ren’s breakthrough moment came when he proposed taking a different approach than in previous research. His entire project is based around the idea of equitable food distribution, so it’s important to have a specific definition of what “equity” means.

“The current definition of equity is very strict. I thought, ‘If we relax it, can we come up with different algorithms that work better?’” Ren said.

Dudley perfectly and succinctly captured the experience of a winter quarter thesis student.

“I absolutely love what I’m doing and I think I’ve hit a good stride, but I also have wrist braces in my bag because I strained my wrist tendons from typing too much," she said.

New discoveries

Writing a thesis is an all-encompassing experience. Almost none of the work happens sitting in a classroom. Sometimes, the research takes a student even further than the annals of Main or the labs of Tech.

Dudley said that a big part of the Art History thesis is visiting archives.

One of her fellow thesis students traveled to France to see a tapestry relevant to her research. Dudley ended up traveling to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to get her own in-person exposure to the 18th-century fashion magazines and textiles that would become a central part of her work.

“I think there’s something so interesting about getting to unpack the visual roots of this,” said Dudley. “With cottage-core, everything is reference-based. Which isn’t a bad thing — we live in the era of remix culture — but what I love is getting to dig into those materials and see why something is being referenced in the first place.”

Lee’s project also requires her to take her learning outside of the classroom.

In a lab in Chicago, Lee conducts her social hierarchy and isolation experiments with lab mice. According to Lee, she sometimes works in the lab for up to 18 hours a week.

“We take thin slices of the mouse brains, stain them with a marker to see the neural activity and see what areas and neurons are activated when they’re socially isolated or not," she said, adding that the imaging takes three days. “The research is slow and can’t be sped up, because the biological processes can’t be sped up, and we can’t speed up the isolation period, either,” Lee said.

For Ren, the possibilities of what his thesis might produce are a huge motivator.

“I want to beef up my numerical experiment section to show my theorem works across different circumstances, like at pantries in Chicago and New York,” Ren said.

His personal involvement with the issue of food scarcity means this project is a long time coming.

Hoffmann, meanwhile, decided to take the plunge last spring, at the end of his junior year.

“I’ve never done an independent research project,” Hoffmann said. “What I put into this is what I get out of it. It’s definitely an exercise in self-control and intrinsic motivation.”

Connecting with mentors and looking ahead

Dudley and Lee have both known they were going to write a thesis for years, but they didn’t know whether the real thing would live up to the idea they had in their heads of an intellectual, academic deep-dive.

“It’s been an experience that I’ve wanted for a long time,” said Dudley. “And I’ve learned through a lot of other experiences at Northwestern to know when the struggles are worth it. And so even though the process is a big challenge and there have been setbacks, it’s helped me to grow – not only as a researcher but also as a person having fun with this project.”

Lee shares Dudley’s satisfaction with what she’s experienced of the thesis process so far.

“It’s been a really affirming experience for me,” Lee said. “My eventual goal is to return to academia and be a professor – I love teaching and I love research. Before doing this, I was like, ‘I think this is my goal, but is it really?’”

However, Lee says that self-doubt was significantly relieved by the thesis work itself. She said the thesis is often a student’s first real opportunity to see a research project through from beginning to end.

“A lot of undergrad research is jumping into the middle of a project to help out, and then jumping out before the writing part starts,” Lee explained. “But this is, on a smaller scale, what I would be doing as a grad student, or eventually as a professor. Feeling that excitement toward the whole process, despite it not being my personal interest, is reaffirming to me that this is what I want to do.”

Ren hadn’t been planning on writing a thesis for quite as long, but he said he’s glad it turned out this way. He said seeing the community impact is gratifying, and using IE to enact social change is "amazing.”

Plus, the process is a huge asset for grad school planning, according to Ren.

“All the people I’m interviewing with for grad school have written papers like these,” Ren said. “They’re as awesome in real life as they seem on paper. It’s a small community, so they’re really encouraging. They’re super nice.”

Through the ups and downs, Hoffmann said it’s taught him a new level of rigor and attention to detail. He said that as someone who has been interested in research for years, even if he does not attend grad school, the end product of the thesis will have been worth it.

Despite the grueling workload, these students see plenty of good reasons to take on an honors thesis. Their unanimous conclusion is that the work is worth it.

"It’s a good kind of trouble," Dudley said.

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International Senior Thesis Research Grant

The Buffett Institute’s International Senior Thesis Research Grant offers awards of up to $6,000 for eight weeks of independent research on a senior thesis, covering travel and living expenses in locations outside the contiguous U.S. as well as research with Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities, locally and globally. The opportunity is open to undergraduate students across all fields of study during the summer.   

Students who seek support for a shorter period than eight weeks of concentrated research may be considered for a prorated grant. Prorated grants are usually for six or seven weeks of research, as approved by a faculty supervisor. 

The application deadline has been extended until March 20, 2024.

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To be eligible for this grant, students must meet the following requirements:  

• They must be conducting senior thesis research on an international or global issue outside of the contiguous U.S.
• They must be an undergraduate student at Northwestern University and not graduating any earlier than the end of the Fall 2024 term.
• They may not be enrolled in summer classes or completing an internship during the eight-week research period.
• They must not accept any other research grant that covers the eight-week research period.
• They must be in good academic standing.  

Please be aware that all students who receive funds for research abroad must meet additional requirements set out by Northwestern Buffett’s Office of Global Safety and Security. As non-credit travelers, all student awardees must complete the International Travel Registry and purchase travel medical insurance through GeoBlue. Some research locations may require a Travel Permission Request according to the international travel policy for undergraduate students . These requirements must be met before successful applicants will receive funds, and travel to certain countries may be restricted for health and safety reasons.   

If your proposed research involves collecting data from human subjects (including interviews, surveys, etc.), you will need to obtain Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval before you may begin your project.  The (IRB) is a multidisciplinary committee that reviews research involving human subjects to ensure the rights and welfare of human subjects are protected.     All Northwestern researchers, including undergraduates, who are involved in the conduct of human subjects research are also required to complete initial human subjects protection training and to re-certify every three years. This training is separate from the application process to receive IRB approval for your research project. If you have questions, please contact your faculty supervisor.  

We highly recommend that applicants also consider applying for the  Summer Undergraduate Research Grant offered by the Office of Undergraduate Research. While students can only receive one research grant during this funding period, applying to both programs increases the chances of securing funding for your research project.

Deadline: March 20, 2024

Students can apply via the online application .  The application requires an endorsement from the student’s faculty supervisor to be considered complete. In the application form, students will provide their faculty member's email address. Once submitted, the faculty member will receive an email notification outlining the next steps. Thus, it is important for students to submit their application well before the deadline and to inform their faculty supervisor in advance that they intend to apply for this grant and include details such as the application deadline and a link to this webpage.   

The Office of Undergraduate Research has a robust set of resources to help students understand how to prepare components of a research proposal. If students have questions about the Buffett Institute’s International Senior Thesis Research Grant specifically, please email Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives Samantha Nissen .

The deadline to apply is March 20, 2024 . We aim to notify students of their award decision in early April .

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We ask that t his award be transferred to your department , which will then disburse funds to the student directly in one lump sum at the beginning of summer. If your department is unable to administer this award, we will work with you. If your student is awarded, we will contact you with the next steps then.  

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Northwestern CS Announces Winter 2024 Outstanding Teaching Assistant and Peer Mentors

The quarterly department awards recognize exceptional service to the cs community.

Northwestern Computer Science honors and recognizes students who demonstrate excellence in computer science mentoring and teaching with the Peter and Adrienne Barris Outstanding Teaching Assistant and Outstanding Peer Mentor awards. Seven students were cited in winter 2024.

Nominated by any member of the department for service to the CS community that goes beyond expectations, the teaching assistants and peer mentors work with faculty to deliver courses and support of the highest quality.

Shu-Hung You

You was named the Peter and Adrienne Barris Outstanding Teaching Assistant for the winter 2024 quarter in recognition of his service to students in the COMP_SCI 111: Fundamentals of Computer Programming course. He is a PhD candidate in computer science at the McCormick School of Engineering specializing in the theory of programming languages.

“Shu-hung has consistently made incredible contributions to CS 111 over the past several years. He goes far above and beyond what is required and asked of him,” a nominator said. “He is an excellent resource for advanced students who want to discuss more advanced topics in programming languages. We will miss him dearly when he finishes his PhD.”

You is coadvised by Northwestern Engineering professor of computer science Robby Findler and assistant professor of computer science Christos Dimoulas .

You’s research interests include designing language features that ensure correct validation of program behavior, implementing programming languages, building abstract machines, and experimenting with compilers for functional languages.

He is currently working on behavioral boundaries, a theoretical foundation for specifying and comparing contract systems. Behavioral boundaries are a syntactic device that re-structure the common formal model of higher-order contract systems into interposition and monitoring subsystems.

Winter 2024 Outstanding Peer Mentors

The Northwestern CS peer mentor program is designed to ensure that students representing a range of computing backgrounds receive individual attention and real-time feedback.

“Max is very good at debugging and explaining errors in logic,” a nominator said. “He is excellent at explaining the theory and basis behind a lot of the nitty-gritty details in code.”

Glass is a software engineer with the Campus Sleep Initiative , a student-run organization dedicated to bettering the lives of students by raising awareness surrounding sleep health. He is developing CatNap, a mobile app to help Northwestern students re-prioritize their sleep.

A member of Northwestern's Financial Tech Club , Glass is interested in systems-level software and quantitative finance and plans to pursue a career in software development.

“Receiving the Outstanding Peer Mentor Award is important to me because it affirms that I have made a positive impact on my peers and hopefully I have improved their learning as a result,” Glass said.

Charles Kalousek

“Computer science students need to understand how to approach difficult, multifaceted problems throughout their careers and, as peer mentors, we try to guide students in the right direction by creating diagrams, writing pseudo-code, and questioning their thought process,” Kalousek said.

Nominators in the COMP_SCI 211: Fundamentals of Computer Programming II course highlighted his ability to clarify assignments.

“Charles is consistently helpful in his explanations of both conceptual ideas in code and the debugging process,” a nominator said. “He gives suggestions that are genuinely helpful and is very good at guiding your thinking process to the right point so you can find the answer somewhat on your own.”

Kalousek, who has supported CS 211 for the past three quarters, appreciates the opportunity to pay it forward.

“I am beyond grateful for the recognition, but more importantly I am so glad to have had a positive impact on the students’ learning,” he said. “The peer mentor program has been a tremendous support for me and it’s very fulfilling to provide that support for other students.”

Kalousek is co-president of Northwestern’s Theme Park Engineering and Design Group , a club for themed entertainment and roller coaster enthusiasts to network and collaborate through projects, competitions, and professional development opportunities.

This summer, Kalousek will start an internship with Cat Digital, the digital and technology division of Caterpillar Inc.

Elysia Lopez

“Elysia has been a fantastic peer mentor. In addition to being a generally kind, open, and friendly person, she has a wealth of computer science knowledge,” a nominator said. “She was quick to respond with any question that I had and was willing to work with me even outside of office hours.”

Lopez explained that peer mentors support students through the “ups and downs” of computer science courses. She seeks to make connections to students’ existing knowledge to impart new concepts.

“I’m so honored that I’ve been able to make even a small difference in helping out my peers,” Lopez said. “Teaching and CS are my passions, and to receive such positive feedback truly means the world to me.”

A short fiction writer and fan of fantasy novels, Lopez is focused on learning web development and technologies that enable her to weave storytelling into software. She’s also interested in diving deeper into the realm of educational technology software development.

Lopez is a member of Kaibigan — which means "friend" in Tagalog — the Philippine-American Student Association that builds community through events such as the Pinoy Show, a cultural event that includes live music, dance, skits, and student-made videos.

Nicholas Qiu

“Nick has always gone above and beyond when helping me and always made sure I got the help I needed whenever I was struggling,” a nominator said. “He is a big reason why I’ve been doing well in my classes. He cares deeply about the students and helping others and is overall a great peer mentor.”

Qiu, a second-year student in computer science at Northwestern Engineering who is also studying mathematical methods in the social sciences at Weinberg, is encouraged by this award to continue serving as a peer mentor and helping others.

“Being a peer mentor means I get to guide and advise my current peers in a more explicit fashion, something that I’ve always been passionate about,” Qiu said. “I get to help students through coursework and concepts that I spent time figuring out myself, to make it easier for them to get through the initial learning curve that many students get stuck in.”

Qiu is a member of the spring 2024 cohort of resident teams at The Garage at Northwestern . His team is building Convident, an AI-powered language learning app that aims to advance intermediate speakers' language proficiency through personalized learning milestones, a curated selection of resources, and an emphasis on meaningful conversations and cultural understanding.

Qiu also serves as treasurer of Northwestern’s Chinese Students Association , a student organization that promotes awareness of Chinese culture and hosts social and networking events.

Catherine Tawadros

Tawadros is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Weinberg with a minor in data science. She provided “friendly and kind” support to students in the COMP_SCI 349: Machine Learning course.

“She was willing to stay past her scheduled hours to help students even when office hours were busiest,” a nominator said.

Celina Zhao

Zhao is a fourth-year student in computer science at Northwestern Engineering who is also earning a minor in data science and engineering and a financial economics certificate from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management . She was described as an “outstanding member” of the course staff for a particularly large section of CS 349.

As a peer mentor, Zhao builds a collaborative environment and provides guidance, support, and encouragement. She aims to explain course material in an approachable manner, including helping students visualize concepts and utilizing code snippets.

"Receiving this honor reflects my desire to make learning enjoyable and accessible for students, following the positive impact of peer mentors who guided me throughout my learning experience," Zhao said.

Following graduation, Zhao plans to join Microsoft as a software engineer.

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Reimagining Design with Nature: ecological urbanism in Moscow

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The twenty-first century is the era when populations of cities will exceed rural communities for the first time in human history. The population growth of cities in many countries, including those in transition from planned to market economies, is putting considerable strain on ecological and natural resources. This paper examines four central issues: (a) the challenges and opportunities presented through working in jurisdictions where there are no official or established methods in place to guide regional, ecological and landscape planning and design; (b) the experience of the author’s practice—Gillespies LLP—in addressing these challenges using techniques and methods inspired by McHarg in Design with Nature in the Russian Federation in the first decade of the twenty-first century; (c) the augmentation of methods derived from Design with Nature in reference to innovations in technology since its publication and the contribution that the art of landscape painters can make to landscape analysis and interpretation; and (d) the application of this experience to the international competition and colloquium for the expansion of Moscow. The text concludes with a comment on how the application of this learning and methodological development to landscape and ecological planning and design was judged to be a central tenant of the winning design. Finally, a concluding section reflects on lessons learned and conclusions drawn.

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The landscape team from Gillespies Glasgow Studio (Steve Nelson, Graeme Pert, Joanne Walker, Rory Wilson and Chris Swan) led by the author and all our collaborators in the Capital Cities Planning Group.

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Evans, B.M. Reimagining Design with Nature: ecological urbanism in Moscow. Socio Ecol Pract Res 1 , 233–247 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-019-00031-5

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