Proposing a Thesis Seminar 499 Course

There are many reasons to consider proposing a 499 C/D* Thesis Seminar course to the Commonwealth Honors College (CHC), especially as there is more Honors College student demand than course supply. 

 Reasons to Propose a Thesis Seminar

• It provides Honors College students with a substantial educational experience that will be excellent preparation for their careers. They will have an opportunity to develop/acquire disciplinary research skills, learn about a topic of current research interest, conduct research and write an in-depth, extended account of their work, enhance their academic qualifications for graduate school.  
• It provides YOU with a dozen or so highly motivated, smart research assistants, whom you will train during the first semester and then advise on the development and execution of their research during the second semester. Their findings might generate materials for journal articles, or be the basis of book chapters, or for use in your teaching of other classes.  
• Your Department may be eligible for course funding support.  

Funding Eligibility

• The Thesis Seminar must be open to CHC students of all majors and appeal to students from a range of fields. 499 courses that primarily serve majors of the offering Department are not eligible for funding. If student enrollment shifts over time to become mainly departmental majors, the Department may become ineligible for funding. 
• CHC standard funding for courses approved for funding is $7,500 per course. For two-semester 499 seminars, total funding is $15,000. 
• Funds must be available and CHC must provide positive agreement. 

Consult Before You Commit

Before you invest a lot of time and effort in submitting the rather detailed documentation that the CHC Council course committee will want to see to evaluate your proposal, here are a few things to think about.  If you decide to proceed, we suggest you create a two-page summary of what you have in mind and send it to Dominick Usher, Senior Assistant Dean, for preliminary evaluation (dusher [at] umass [dot] edu (dusher[at]umass[dot]edu)). 

Note that CHC has phased out the word “capstone,” even though it does still appear in some URLs and documents. Dominick can also send you one or more example syllabi from successful past proposals that have similarities to what you plan.

Thesis Seminar Format

• Course length: Two (2) semesters

• Total course credits: 8 credits recommended; at least 6 credits required

• Student capacity: 12 students minimum - 15 students maximum per course   

In the most common model, the fall course is mostly coursework, so that the students get up to speed with the relevant topics, and will involve getting the students to write, preferably a variety of high and low stakes pieces. At the end of the semester, students should submit a substantial written paper (15 – 20 pages) that describes work done during the semester on the topic that will eventually form the Honors Thesis and outlines possible future work for the spring. 

In the spring semester, students will spend a substantial amount of time on their Honors Thesis research and the associated writing, although there should be class activities as well. We expect that students will meet regularly with the instructor in one-on-one situations and get feedback on both ideas and the written drafts. 

Honors Thesis Content 

The Honors Thesis should be substantial, between 40 – 60 pages. Oral communication of findings is important, and CHC expects to see in-class progress presentations and a more formal final presentation. An excellent “external” venue is the Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference, held towards the end of April, with abstracts due around mid-February.

Typically, students are admitted by consent of the instructor, and we recommend that you incorporate some description of your selection process in your documentation (and the notifications that appear on SPIRE) that may include face-to-face meetings and/or email communications so that you can align the student’s expectations with your own, and establish whether the student already has ideas for an Honors Thesis topic. Some instructors ask for a writing sample. In the fall course, we encourage instructors to ask for a substantial piece of formal writing prior to the end of the “W” period, ideally one that requests an exploration of the topic and direction of the Honors Thesis, and build on that work with a more extensive paper due at the end of the semester. As students will not have much time to choose their topics, encouraging them to bring some ideas to the course seems sensible.

Thesis Seminar Proposal Submission

The Thesis Seminar proposal is submitted through the Campus Course Management System.

* Other alphas are available and may be deemed appropriate according to the structure of the 499 course. The most common is C/D indicating Thesis Seminar. The sequence N/O is used if students are producing a Creative Portfolio rather than a Research Manuscript.

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