Departmental Honors

If you are a good student majoring in Anthropology, Archaeology, or Biological Anthropology who would like to undertake an independent research project, you may be eligible for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (or Bachelor of Science) with special honors.

Preliminary Requirements

• At least 50% of your coursework must be completed at GW.
• You must have a grade of A or B in at least 50% of all coursework at GW.
• You must have a Grade Point Average of 3.5 or better in courses required for the major program. This includes required courses in other departments, such as biology courses necessary for the Biological Anthropology major and language courses necessary for the Anthropology and Archaeology majors.

Planning Your Work

You must submit a request to be a candidate for special honors and a brief outline of an approved research project not later than the beginning of your senior year. For example, if you plan to graduate in May, your advisor must have this in hand not later than the end of the third week of the fall semester. If you plan to graduate in February, we need the request before the start of the fall semester. The request must include:

1. The title of your project,
2. A brief plan of what research you will do,
3. The name of the supervisor or advisor of your research,
4. Any special resources you will need, and
5. Your supervisor or advisor's signature indicating his or her agreement on the scope and nature of the research. This is especially important when the advisor is off-campus. All research projects with off-campus personnel must also have an on-campus advisor, or the undergraduate advisor, to ensure that deadlines are met and the research scope is appropriate.

Click here for the undergraduate research proposal form.

Your advisor will give the draft to a second person who will serve as reader. This person may or may not be a GW faculty member but will have expertise in the topic. Both the advisor and reader will make comments on the draft, and both must approve the thesis before the Department can recommend to the dean's office that the student receive special honors.

The final version of a thesis, ready for binding, may be submitted at any time before the end of final exams, which is when we notify the Columbian College and Elliott School dean's offices of who is to receive honors. Your home college has to review your final semester's grades before agreeing that you meet the requirements for honors, and the notation on your permanent record is not made until after graduation. However, if your advisor wishes to nominate your thesis for a Jane Hart Award (see below), he or she must receive a substantially complete version by April 15 (or the following Monday if April 15 is on a weekend). Nominated theses are reviewed by the Jane Hart Award Committee, which selects the winners.

The Senior Honors Thesis

The department expects the senior honors thesis to be a significant research contribution on a topic of your choice. It can be based on lab work, fieldwork, or library, museum, or archival research. We expect you to

• define an interesting problem, using appropriate references from the literature to show what other scholars have done to address this problem;
• set out hypotheses if appropriate,
• discuss the research necessary to test the hypotheses or make significant progress toward investigating the problem,
• carry out the research, and
• write up your results, showing how they contribute to solving or understanding your research questions.

Click here for a list of successful honors theses.

Senior honors papers often represent more than one semester of research, so they may range in length from about 35 to over 75 pages of text, data, and illustrations. Students should consult the guidelines for master's theses in the booklet Information Concerning Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations, available from the Graduate School (online at http://www.gwu.edu/~ccas/grad/thesisanddissertations.htm).

It is helpful to break the paper down into sections or chapters. A typical organization might be:

1. Abstract. Abstracts are an essential part of professional writing in anthropology. Although an honors thesis is not the same as a journal article or monograph, like them it should include a concise and informative abstract. Remember that there will be a link to your abstract on the Anthropology Department website, so this one paragraph will be what summarizes your work for interested readers throughout the world. It should be a factual summary of the contents and conclusions of the paper, refer to new information that is being presented, and indicate its relevance. It should not be an introduction to the paper or an outline of it with each section being reduced into a sentence. Avoid the passive voice. Abstracts of honors papers typically run from 75-150 words.
   
2. Table of contents, if appropriate
   
3. Introduction to the problem, statement of hypotheses if appropriate
   
4. Prior research on and setting of the problem (why did you pick this aspect to investigate?)
   
5. Methods used to research the problem
   
6. Summary of the data collected
   
7. Results, or analysis of the data
   
8. Conclusions
   
9. References (should be substantial in most cases)
   
10. Appendices -- could be photos, data, and tables too long for the text, etc.

Each section should begin with an introductory paragraph and end with a summary paragraph tying the section to the whole.

It is certainly possible that your project might not lend itself to the above organization -- for example, if you planned to write a play that investigated some aspect of culture within the framework of courses taught by Dr. Allen, or if your format was more visual than written. But, in every case, by the beginning of your senior year you should obtain your advisor's permission to embark on your project, and you should submit the form to the undergraduate advisor. Students typically register for three to six hours of Anth 195 (Undergraduate Research) to reserve time for the Senior Honors Project.

Final acceptance of the thesis is recorded on the Undergraduate Honors Thesis Approval Form, available online or from the Anthropology office. Two paper copies of the final work should be submitted to the department, one for your advisor and one for the department. If your work contains photos, include prints in both copies. The department binds its copy and keeps it in our library, and will bind additional copies for the author at cost.

Title page. Title pages for GW theses, whether graduate or undergraduate, have a specific format, and you should refer to our sample title page for guidance. Notice (1) that this is not a boldface page; (2) it bears the student's date of graduation, not the date of completion of the paper; (3) it contains the full name and academic title of the thesis director(s), but not of the reader.

Research Grants

Students are encouraged to think about their research project before the beginning of their senior year. The department has a small endowment, The Lewis N. Cotlow Fund, to support student fieldwork. Undergraduates who plan special honors projects are encouraged to apply. If you plan to submit a proposal, consult the Cotlow description and application sheets for further information, and speak to a member of the faculty. Proposals are due the first Friday in March. Department faculty hold grant-writing workshops at least once a year to help students prepare proposals.