Seniors of the Honors College put the final chapter on their thesis projects.
Thesis defender Cara Thorne smiles as she answers questions. She was being tested by a grading committee member on her knowledge on what would happen if a variable in the experiment was altered.
With graduation just around the
corner, seniors of the Sally McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College must begin to
defend their theses. Each senior in the
Honors College will present their project to a grading committee.
The committee listens to the
presentation and then asks questions of the student. The purpose of the questions is to gauge the
understanding of the presenter. It also
serves to show that one cannot be a complete expert and they still have a ways
to go.
Each field of study must
complete a different type of project.
For a musician it is a performance and for an artist it is a
sculpture. An engineer works on a senior
project with other engineers, and a science major joins in a lab with a
professor as a sophomore or a junior.
English majors, a creative writer for example, must put together seven
creative writings.
Each student works with a thesis
adviser, and the adviser is the one who makes the final call on the grade of
the project.
According to Dr. Douglas
Sullivan-Gonzalez, the dean of the Honors College, the thesis is written on a
question that is driving the student, not a professor.
“The expectation is for you to
gauge the material in ways unlike any of your other colleagues in
undergraduate,” Sullivan-Gonzalez said.
The project is a month long
project that students must work on.
Sullivan-Gonzalez called it “a dragon” that students have to ride to
graduation.
On Tuesday, senior Chemistry
major Cara Thorne presented her thesis “Evaluating the Efficacy of Small Basis
Sets and the Counterpoise Procedure to Reproduce Complete Basis Set Limit
Higher-Order Correlation Corrections for Weakly Bound Molecular Clusters.” She said that the process of gathering the
information is overwhelming.
“For me there are just a lot of
life lessons bundled into writing the thesis,” Thorne said. She also stated that it teaches you about
time management and knowing oneself and how one works.
Thorne gave her presentation in
Coulter Hall in front of faculty and friends and was congratulated afterwards. Her thesis adviser, Dr. Gregory Tschumper,
congratulated her on a great presentation.
According to Dr.
Sullivan-Gonzalez about 2 percent of graduating seniors are from the Honors College
and have completed their thesis. He said
that the thesis is one of two top reasons that students drop out of the honors
college.
“It means you are one of 2
percent of the kids in the University of Mississippi who have written a thesis
and you have distinguished yourself in performance by going the extra mile when
you didn’t have to do that to graduate,” said Sullivan-Gonzalez
Sullivan-Gonzalez accredits his
thesis writing process to leading him to holding a doctorate in Latin American
History.
“It really is an eye
opening. It’s one that forces you to see
the questions as a participant and not as a spectator.” Sullivan-Gonzalez said.
The remaining thesis defenders for this week are:
- Wednesday
- Jim Burt, Accountancy
- CJ Jenkins, Civil Engineering and Public Policy Leadership
- Caroline Borland, Exercise Science
- Lance Ezell, Chemistry
- Cipriano Apicelli, Biology
- Thursday
- Amanda Hardwick, Chemistry
- James Conner King, Managerial Finance
- Daniel Roberts, Public Policy Leadership
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