Guidelines for Seniors
JUPS 303: Senior Thesis Seminar (3 credits)
Course Objectives
- Work collaboratively as a JUPS cohort and with your JUPS mentor for the goal of each student to successfully complete a thesis for completion of the justice and peace minor/concentration, through a healthy process!
- Hone our analytical, writing, presentation, and research skills as justice and peace junior scholars.
- Do our best to ensure that each thesis is researched and written in ways that further the pursuit of more just and peaceful living, starting with our own.
- Create and follow a structured, do-able thesis plan agreed upon by the mentor, student, and Professor Wisler.
- Work individually and in small peer groups to create artifacts and revise drafts to achieve clear and direct text.
- Dialogue about ethical issues regarding thesis writing, research, and presentation including plagiarism, intellectual property, human subjects protocols, and public responsibility.
- Communicate/present the thesis or parts thereof in an oral (or other) presentaction.
- Explore how to keep the thesis alive beyond graduation and support one another through senior year
Course Deliverables
- Thesis: the equivalent of at least 50 text pages, depending on topic, style, and methodology. The thesis should include a cover/title page, table of contents, and works cited. The thesis should demonstrate originality of thought, analytical strengths, and the student’s ability to examine texts in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, through a justice and peace ‘lens’. It should comply with the undergraduate honor code and meet standard criteria for quotations and bibliographical references (~20 citations).
- “Presentaction”: At some point during the year, each student needs to do a presentaction about his/her thesis to a group outside of our cohort. (I am unsatisfied with the word “presentation” and so I have combined it with the word “action” to get presentaction.) Who your audience is and how your presentaction takes shape and what it looks like will depend on your thesis. Possibilities include speaking in one of my (or another professor’s) classes, teaching at a local school/church, presenting at a conference, organizing your own/group on- or off- campus event, doing direct action, creating a teach-in, writing an op-ed for a newspaper, etc. The possibilities are endless. These can be publicized on the JUPS website and JUPS Facebook group and through the JUPS listserv. Please submit a 1-page (~250 words) appendix to your thesis describing your presentaction.
Grade
- 2/3 of your grade is based on the final product of the thesis as determined by your thesis mentor and submitted to Professor Babin by the second Friday of April in the Spring semester.
- 1/3 of your grade is based on your process through the Fall and Spring in your peer editing groups, class sessions, and one-on-one meetings with Professor Babin.
- Note: The final grade for JUPS 303 is awarded retroactively. A student receives an “IP” grade for the course on the Fall transcript. Upon thesis completion, the grade is changed to a final letter grade.
Thesis Format Guidelines
The final thesis manuscript should be double-spaced, typed in a 12-point font (Times, Times New Roman, Palatino), on single-sided 8 1/2 –by-11 inch paper. Left and right margins should be one inch. Top and bottom margins should be one inch. Pages should be numbered, except the title page. The title page should contain the thesis title, the student’s name/email address and college/major, semester, the mentor’s name/title/email address, and the phrase (centered towards the bottom) “A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the [Minor/Concentration] in Justice and Peace, Georgetown University, [Semester and Year]”. The thesis should use a consistent bibliographic citation style (MLA, APA, Chicago) and have technically perfect citations (in-text, endnotes, or footnotes, depending on the style). The thesis should be clipped at the top and in a folder but not stapled or hole-punched in a binder.