A Tradition Unlike Any Other: Research on the Value of an Honors Senior Thesis

An honors senior thesis introduces students into a world of scholarship and professional activity in a way that no single course, either semester- or year-long, can do (Anderson, Lyons, and Weiner). Many honors educators consider honors thesis work to be the defining honors experience. For graduate schools, employers, and the students themselves, nothing demonstrates the value of an honors education quite like the senior thesis. The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) understands the value and tradition of the honors senior thesis, listing it in the Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College and recently publishing a thesis handbook in the latest addition to the monograph series (Anderson, Lyons, and Weiner). A mixed-methods approach in a survey of honors colleges and programs across the country could illustrate the value of an honors senior thesis numerically and perhaps also answer why the thesis is valuable. Educators depend on intuition and experiences to handle the challenges of an honors senior thesis, which can include lack of enthusiasm among thesis writers, unavailability of faculty to serve as advisors, and inadequate course preparation for the thesis. Strong research to supplement intuition and experience is needed to assure the tradition of the honors senior thesis as an essential component of honors education. Research on this topic would be a beneficial contribution to the body of literature on the value of honors education.