Honours essay guidelines

Honours Students 2009- 2010

Students who choose to pursue an honours degree in political science are required to complete additional political science coursework and to choose a concentration in one of the four discipline sub-fields. In their fourth year honours students will research, write and present an Honours Essay, which provides an opportunity to investigate a problem in depth.

Many students choose to pursue an honours degree to get a taste for the kind of scholarship that they would encounter in graduate school. An honours degree is traditionally considered excellent preparation for graduate school, even though for many graduate schools it is not a requirement.

Additional information can be found in the University Calendar; students interested in pursuing an honours degree should consult the Honours Advisor when planning their program for third and fourth year.

Overview of the Honours program and essay

The purpose of the honours essay is to give senior undergraduate students the experience of investigating a problem in depth and writing a comprehensive paper on their findings. The essay is not intended to be a graduate-level thesis, nor need it be an original contribution to knowledge. In fact, it may have to be written largely from secondary source material. On the other hand, it is the Department's expectation that each essay will reflect some theoretical and methodological sophistication. Your objective is to demonstrate that you can investigate, reason analytically, and write clearly and correctly. You should consult the essays submitted by students in previous years (in the filing cabinet in the Reading Room) to gain an appreciation of the standards expected.

This requirement is assigned three units and deserves the same amount of time that you would devote to a full-year course. Experience shows that students often do not devote sufficient time to the essay in the fall term, leaving them with a heavy workload in the spring term and, occasionally, insufficient time to fully develop the argument. Consequently, students should plan to work on the essay on a regular schedule throughout the year.

Overview and responsibilities

Responsibility for providing intellectual guidance and monitoring a student's progress with the essay rests primarily with the individual supervisor. The role of the honours advisors is to provide a framework in which students can work towards a high-quality honours essay, in part through discussions with other students. In practice, this means setting deadlines and organizing seminars in which students discuss their own and each other’s work. The honours advisors are also responsible for helping students ensure they meet programme requirements. Of course, students are responsible for meeting deadlines and, ultimately, for the quality of their essays.

Each student will draft a thesis proposal and post it on the Moodle site for POLI 499 by October 13, 2011. We will then schedule sessions for group discussions of these proposals the following week. An important part of the honours programme is the opportunity to share your ideas and your research with other honours students, so all those registered in 499 are expected to read work posted by their classmates and to provide constructive criticism. Either before these presentations or after, but by October 19, 2011, you should have discussed your proposal with your supervisor. You must contact your supervisor by October 21, 2001 to establish a due date for the first draft and arrange a meeting to discuss the draft.

A progress report and draft of the first chapter of the Honours essay are due Mid November, 2011 (dates TBA). The draft first chapters will be posted on Moodle and will be presented in seminars to be scheduled in the following week.

The first draft of the entire thesis should be completed by Monday February 20th, 2012. We will then schedule some sessions during which you will have an opportunity to rehearse your presentations. After comments from your fellow students and your supervisors, you will make revisions and produce a final version by April 5, 2012. The final, complete version of your essay will be read by your supervisor and by a second reader. The second reader will be chosen by the honours advisors in consultation with you and your supervisor.

You are expected to present your essay at an oral defence to be held during the final exam period in April. This will be attended by your supervisor, the second reader, other members of the Department and students. Your mark for 499 will be determined by the supervisor and the second reader in consultation with the honours advisors. Your 499 grade will be based primarily on the quality of the honours essay submitted April 5, 2012 and secondarily on your presentation and defence of your work at the session in April.

Honours essays should be approximately 50 pages in length, should adhere to standard thesis format, should be carefully proofread, and should thoroughly document sources using in-text citations or footnotes. After the presentation in April, each student is responsible for submitting a complete, bound, version of her or his essay to be kept in the Political Science Reading Room.

Guidelines for the Honours Essay Proposal,

(due October 13th, 2011)

Beginning with a clear research question and plan is an essential part of scholarly research, even if the question and plan changes as the research progresses. In the context of Poli 499, this is especially important because in the absence of a clear question and timetable, experience shows that it is easy for students to leave the bulk of the work until too late. Your honours essay proposal should include the following elements, developed in consultation with your supervisor:

1. A clear research question. This should focus on an interesting problem or puzzle, defined narrowly enough to permit you to say something significant about it in a 50 page paper. Most students tend to begin with questions that are far too broad; even if your interest stems from a really big question (... what is the meaning of life?), you need to formulate an approach to studying that question that is manageable.

2. A justification for the question. Why is this an important and interesting topic for an honours essay, in relation to scholarly debates in the field(s) of political science of greatest interest to you? This will necessarily include some discussion of the relevant literature and how your question relates to that literature.

3. What kind of contribution do you expect to make to knowledge through this essay? This doesn’t mean an answer to the research question (that should await your research!), but it does mean that you need to have some sense of what your research will produce.

4. A description of the way you plan to go about answering the research question. This should involve a discussion of your planned methodology (understood broadly to include approaches to theoretical and philosophical analysis as well as empirical methods). It is important to be self-conscious of your methods and to justify that choice of method in relation to the research question.

5. A realistic timetable for completion of the honours essay. A draft of the first chapter is due Mid November, 2011 (dates TBA) and the first draft of the full essay is due February 20th, 2012; in order to meet those deadlines, you need to work backwards from them to the present. In other words, in order to have a draft ready by February 20th 2012, what tasks do you need to accomplish, in what order, and by what dates? Once again, this will undoubtedly evolve as you do the research, but a plan will help ensure that you don’t leave everything until February.

Critical Dates:

(by) Mid September, 2011	Supervisor contacted
October 13, 2011	Thesis proposal due, posted on Moodle
October 18-20, 2011	Presentations of proposal
(by) October 19, 2011	Proposal discussed with supervisor
(by) October 21, 2011	Contact supervisor to set due dates for draft first chapter and arrange a meeting to discuss it
October 2011	Discussion of draft first chapter with supervisor
Mid November, 2011 (dates TBA)	Progress report due. Draft first chapter posted on Moodle
Mid November, 2011	Presentations of draft first chapters
January to February, 2012	Regular meetings to get reports on progress of thesis
February-early March (dates TBA)	Presentations of draft theses
April 5, 2012	Final draft due
April, 2012 (dates TBA)	Oral defences of final theses.