Easing the thesis process

As juniors prepare drafts of their independent work, summer thesis funding deadlines and the sight of seniors toiling away at their carrels are reminders that the junior paper is only the prelude to the real thing — the senior thesis. With that in mind, academic departments and programs should do all that they can to help students begin their advisor search — the process that arguably kick-starts the thesis experience — late in junior year in order to save some last-minute panic in the fall of senior year.

First, all departments should circulate a list of professors who will be on sabbatical in the following academic year, as well as a list of visiting professors who will be available for senior thesis advising, so that juniors know at least half a semester ahead of time who will and will not be at the University in their senior year. This would encourage students to start thinking about possible thesis topics and student-advisor relationships in junior year instead of waiting until the first few weeks of senior year. It would also allow students to discuss their academic interests with professors who will be on sabbatical before they leave Princeton and facilitate a potential long-distance advisory relationship similar to those for students who study abroad.

Second, centers and programs that bring visiting fellows to the University, such as the University Center for Human Values (UCHV), Law and Public Affairs Program (LAPA) and Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), should circulate the biographies and academic interests of their fellows for the coming academic year and encourage their fellows to take senior thesis advisees in addition to conducting research and teaching courses. Visiting fellows are valuable resources for the University, often bringing a new area of expertise or filling a gap created by a professor on leave, and students would benefit from knowing ahead of their senior year how these fellows could make a difference to their thesis experience.

On a related note, while it may be difficult to plan sabbatical leaves of faculty members, we urge academic departments to evaluate whether there are viable policies to ensure that faculty in a particular field do not go on leave at the same time. In the Wilson School, for example, juniors have been warned that the coming year will be particularly difficult for students to find advisors in international relations because of the number of faculty who will be on leave in that field. This may also be particularly important for small departments with a high percentage of emeritus professors, such as the Near Eastern Studies department, in which many seniors suffered last year because of the large number of professors on leave.

Of course, how much a student gets out of the thesis experience ultimately depends on the student's own initiative. Giving students a hand and encouraging them to start early in an advisor search that will hopefully develop into a close intellectual friendship is perhaps the most — and not the least — that the University can do for the fulfillment of a painfully rewarding graduation requirement.