The Senior Project is an original, individual, focused project growing out of the student’s cumulative academic experiences. Students have great flexibility in choosing the form of their project. For example, a social studies project might be a research project, a close textual analysis, a report of findings from fieldwork, or a photographic essay, while a science project might be a report on original experiments, an analysis of published research findings, or a contribution to theory.

The Process

Preparation for the Senior Project begins in the junior year. Students consult with advisers, and pursue course work, tutorials, and seminars directed toward selecting a topic, choosing the form of the project, and becoming competent in the analytical and research methods required by the topic and form. Students in some programs design a Major Conference during their junior year, which may take the form of a seminar, tutorial, studio work, or field or laboratory work. One course each semester of the student’s final year is devoted to completing the Senior Project. The student submits the completed project to a board of three professors who conduct a Senior Project Review. Written projects are filed in the library’s archives; samples of each arts project appear with a statement by the student in Word and Image, an online publication.