Open Letter on the Sociology Honors Program:
The honors program is the culmination of a senior’s education in sociology at Wake Forest University. The honors program allows you to graduate “with honors” from WFU and published studies show that employers and graduate schools value the record of someone with an honors thesis higher than just the reputation of the graduate’s college or her or his GPA. It signals to future graduate school programs or prospective employers that you are an extra-ordinary person, capable of independent research, critical thinking, and clear writing at a professional level. And your essay will be available here, on our department’s home page, in perpetuity.
Only majors with a WFU GPA of 3.0 or higher, and a GPA in sociology of at least 3.3 may join the program. Anyone interested in pursuing the honors program should contact the director as soon as possible by email. No one can register for the program without the director’s permission. Honors counts as one regular three-credit-hours course per semester, and successful honors students are enrolled in the honors seminar in both the fall and spring of your senior year.
In the following, I am going to discuss strategies and a timeline for doing a successful senior thesis.
Although there are many ways to do a brilliant senior thesis, and one’s analytical method should flow from the nature of one’s research question, I will put all caution aside and outline two practical approaches with which I have seen students do particularly well.
1. The statistical analysis of an existing data set. If one has identified a gap in the literature, then one can search for an existing data set in order to statistically explore that ignored question. In 2006 our senior of the year, Shaughnessy O’Brien (currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in sociology at Indiana University) discovered a gap in the sociology of education literature of any discussion of “tier effects” on first generation college students. And he knew that the National Educational Longitudinal Survey would allow him to address his research question. Descriptively for O’Brien, the question was where do first generation students end up in the various tiers of higher educational institutions? To answer that descriptive question O’Brien ran simple frequencies for first generation students by college tier. In explanatory terms, he wanted to know which variables meaningfully increased the odds of being in the top tier in comparison to any other. To answer his question about odds, he used logistic regressions.
Separate from their usefulness for filling a gap in our knowledge, existing data sets are also a good way to test a core theorem of an existing theory, such as Bourdieu’s hypothesis about cultural capital and educational attainments. The key is to find data that could sustain or falsify the theory in question.
2. Ethnographic field work. Statistics can tell us which variables best predict an outcome, but they cannot bring to life the mechanisms or processes that are causally responsible. Field observations are fundamental to the formulation and verification of explanatory hypotheses in sociology. For example, some of you may be familiar with Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods. Lareau gives us a portrait of the way class, race, and culture structure family relations and social inequalities. Another example of an ethnography on a key question is Jay MacCleod’s Ain’t No Making It. MacCleod’s book was originally his undergraduate honors essay. By applying Pierre Bourdieu’s theories to lower-class White and Black youth gangs in one urban school, MacCleod made some counter-intuitive discoveries. And there is the example of Nina Eliasoph’s Avoiding Politics, which is a participant observation study of voluntary organizations. Eliasoph tests the assumption held by most scholars working on social capital and civic engagement that by simply participating in a voluntary organization, one cultivates a language of civic-mindedness. She joined five different groups and found, contrary to everyone’s expectations, from Tocqueville to Putnam, that none of them provided a context that enabled their members to talk about the common good. Civic organizations are, paradoxically, good at avoiding politics.
Senior honors thesis authors can test a variety of theories and findings that exist in the secondary literature simply by systematically reporting on a strategically selected site. For human subject research, we would need Institutional Review Board permission, but any number of thesis authors could successfully do field work, provided you all have a clear research question.
On finding an advisor, each of you should do your best to team up with a member of our faculty before the end of winter semester in your junior year. You should not go into the summer without an advisor and a reading list (or an agreed method for identifying one) that addresses your broad topic. When we come back, faculty advisors should meet with you on a weekly basis, and I will be doing the same until it is clear that your project is running smoothly.
The schedule of tasks and our timeline looks like this. Each item in this eight-step program is a goal to be accomplished with the assistance of your faculty advisor and me.
- Topic and Advisor: Broad topics and the name of your faculty advisor (or likely advisor) should be sent to me no later than the first week in May.
- Formulate Research Hypothesis: Beginning in the summer, you should read the most recent articles or books in your chosen field, and by the end of September, your grasp of the existing literature should be sufficient to allow you to formulate a precise research question.
- Identify and Access the Evidence: In October, you should come up with a strategy for putting evidence on the table. You will need to identify the data source or field site where your research will take place and apply for access, including, if necessary, Institutional Review Board permission to work with human subjects.
- Collect the Evidence and Know How to Analyze It: In late October and all of November and December gather evidence and devise a method for analyzing it to arrive at valid findings. [Please note that those of you on track at this point, will be given permission to carry on into the spring semester; off-track students leaving the program will write up a brief report on what did and did not work on their projects, and receive a grade, lower than an “A” for the fall semester’s work.]
- Evaluate/Interpret: In January, with our assistance, you will shift through your evidence and decide what it tells us about your research question.
- Writing Up: In February, you will draft a report, approximately 30 pages in length, presenting your research and its findings. Draft reports are due March 1.
- Revise: In early March, you will receive detailed feedback from your faculty advisor and me, enabling you to revise your senior essay for formal submission in April.
- Submit: The fully revised essay is due on April 1. Your committee will evaluate it and give you written comments within two weeks. After you have gone over those comments with your advisor, you will do an oral presentation and “defense” of the essay before fellow students and faculty. Following your oral presentation, you will turn in a clean copy for permanent record in our department’s library by the first week of May.
Two years ago we had ten students starting the honors program and eight completing it. Of those, three went on to top graduate programs in the country, with full funding or major scholarships. This year there are five honors students.
We are very proud of our honors seniors. I want us all to experience this work as productive and rewarding. Please do not hesitate to contact me at any time, from now until we are all on the quad in graduation gowns, about any or all of this.
Sincerely,
Dr. Joseph A. Soares
Director of the Honors Program
Department of Sociology
Wake Forest University
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