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Senior Honors Seminar and Senior Thesis
To receive departmental honors, students are required to complete
Political Science 191A-B Senior Honors Seminar: Frontiers in Political Science. Through the two-quarter seminar, students will complete a senior thesis. Please note that POLI 191A is offered only in fall quarter and POLI 191B is offered only in winter quarter and these courses must be taken in consecutive quarters.
Admission Criteria
To be admitted to the seminar, a student must have
senior standing in the first quarter of the seminar, have a minimum GPA
of 3.6 in political science (this includes
lower division, courses taken through Education Abroad Program, and Summer
Session), have completed all lower-division requirements
including POLI 30 (Political Inquiry) and five upper-division courses. Also,
students must have an advisor prior to being allowed to enroll.
Writing Project/Faculty Advisor
To be considered for the honors seminar, students must submit a substantial piece of writing to a member of the faculty. The department defines
"substantial" as a paper in which the student has carefully
developed an argument and systematically mustered evidence in support of it.
This written work is intended to give students practice so that the
40-100-page thesis does not loom as an intimidating prospect. These papers
may develop out of any of our upper-division courses that require papers,
any departmental seminar, or in conjunction with coursework completed on
EAP or OAP. If the faculty member feels that the student is
adequately prepared for the seminar, they will sign the faculty
recommendation form stating they are willing to advise the
student during the course of the seminar (forms are available from the department or via
e-mail from askpolisci@ucsd.edu).
When submitting the faculty recommendation form and piece of writing to the faculty member, students must provide a copy of their academic history from TritonLink. For ease of reading, select the "sort by subject" link when printing the academic history to print in subject order rather than quarter by quarter. The
recommendation/advisor form must be submitted to an undergraduate advisor
prior to the "Quarter begins" date published for fall quarter in the Enrollment and Registration Calender.
Thesis Grade
Normally each thesis will be read by two members of
the department faculty, each of whom will assign the thesis a point score.
The standard of evaluation will be that normally used by each faculty member
to grade seminar papers of graduating seniors. Grades, point scores, and
their honors equivalent are as follows: |
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If the point scores assigned by two readers differ by more than two tenths of a point
(e.g., 3.5 versus 3.8), the thesis will be read by a third reader. The
thesis grade will be determined by averaging the three point scores.
To graduate with honors in political science, a student must have
received an average point score of 3.5 or higher on the honors thesis and
maintained a GPA of 3.5 or above in the major through the end of the
second quarter of the honors seminar.
Award of Honor
The award of honors is by vote of the political
science faculty. The award of honors will be based on the average
of (1) the student's departmental grade point average at the end of
the second quarter of the honors seminar (50%), and (2) the point score assigned
the honors thesis by the readers (50%) . |