Seniors

You registered last spring for the fall semester.  When you return to campus, review your selections, discuss your schedule with your advisor, and make whatever changes are needed.  Please keep in mind the requirements and other considerations given below. 

Your advisor for this year will normally be the same as last year, but due to sabbatical leaves, your CSS advisor may have changed over the summer. Please check your portfolio to see if your advisor has changed and to whom you may have been reassigned.  Go to him or her for advice and authorization at preregistration time in November.

 

Choosing Courses for the Senior Year

All CSS seniors take CSS 391, Senior Colloquium, in the fall semester and will be pre-registered for this course automatically.  Additionally, they take either two thesis tutorials leading to an Honors thesis, for one credit per semester, or an individual tutorial worth one credit in order to complete a senior project. Senior projects may also be completed within an advanced seminar in the social sciences.

Honors thesis.  If you did not line up a thesis advisor last spring, move fast now or you may lose the thesis advisor you have in mind.  Even if you lined this up last spring, take initiative by contacting your advisor before or during the first week of classes:  too many theses are weakened or even fail because of time lost in September and October. The CSS expects thesis students to meet with their thesis advisor regularly—normally, once weekly when classes are in session—until completion The "CSS Senior Year Program" details the events and deadlines that accompany an honors thesis.  You are personally responsible for meeting these deadlines.  Remember that you have to add a thesis tutorial during Drop/Add at the start of each semester.

Senior project.  A senior project may be completed through an individual research tutorial, or with prior approval of the relevant instructor, as part of the requirement of an advanced seminar (usually in a social science or related discipline) culminating in a longer research paper. Senior projects can be completed either in the fall or spring. If you intend to enroll in an individual tutorial, be sure to find a faculty member willing to advise your project during the drop/add period of the relevant semester, or make arrangements with the instructor of an advanced seminar for which you are (or will be) enrolled to produce a longer version of the seminar paper that will constitute the CSS senior project. The nature of such a project and the requirements that go with it are specified in the "CSS Senior Year Program."

General Education Expectations.  If you have not done so already, you must finish both your Stage 1 and Stage 2 general education expectations by the end of your senior year in order to graduate with a CSS major.  If you are not yet compliant, we request that you devise and submit a plan to complete through Stage 2 by the end of spring semester.  Please submit your plan via e-mail to Mickie Dame by the beginning of the fall semester.

General Notes

Grades.  As in junior year, CSS courses (including thesis and individual tutorials) are graded on the usual scale of A to F.  You may take your other courses graded or not, if the instructor gives you a choice, and the results will be recorded on your transcript accordingly by the Registrar's Office.  For the senior thesis tutorials, your thesis advisor can give you a grade of X in the fall, as a placeholder until the thesis is completed.  Then the X grade will be revised to a letter grade in the spring by your thesis advisor.  Note that the honors designation on your thesis and the grades you receive for your thesis tutorials have no automatic relationship; honors is determined by the reading committee, while your tutorial grades are determined solely by your thesis advisor.

Transcripts.  The Registrar's Office prepares your transcript, using a special format for CSS students. You should check your transcript over before having it sent off with applications for jobs or graduate school; things sometimes get lost in the shuffle, especially transfer credits (for example, from overseas programs), completion of incompletes, clearing of X grades, and audits.

Summer Letter