Theses explore students’ passions

Carolyn Steinwedel is investigating which groups benefit from
the electoral college system.

Ryan Sears is writing about how contentious issues become
aligned with political parties.

And Tam Tran is looking at nonlinear storytelling in
contemporary literature and albums by Radiohead.

Like most students who are writing senior theses, Steinwedel,
Sears and Tran said they are doing it because they have found
topics that fascinate them.

“Every time I have gotten a chance, I have written about
the electoral college,” said Steinwedel, a fourth-year
political science student.

But students who choose to write theses are a minority.

In the political science department, for example, which
graduated over 600 students last year, 16 students are currently
working on theses.

Writers of political science theses take a seminar in the spring
of their junior year to develop research questions. Then they spend
the next two quarters writing their theses under the guidance of a
faculty mentor.

Thesis projects are also demanding in departments such as
English, in which students are expected to write 40 to 60 pages of
original research.

The benefits of writing a thesis include having the chance to
use the academic tools one has collected in the course of a
university career and the opportunity to experience graduate-type
research while working closely with faculty mentors.

Caitlin Blythe, a fourth-year political science student, said
writing a thesis has allowed her to take advantage of some of
UCLA’s best opportunities.

“We have awesome professors. It’s a shame not to get
to know them,” she said, adding that it is often difficult to
get to know political science professors as an undergraduate
because seminars are difficult to enroll in.

Others, like fourth-year political science student Laura
Claster, enjoy the independence a thesis brings.

“I enjoy doing research, more so than attending
classes,” said Claster, who is researching the relationship
between oil wealth and corruption.

Theses are not geared toward publishing or bolstering graduate
school applications, professors said.

“We have about 100 pages in mind. … It makes it kind of
awkward if they want to do anything with it,” said political
science Professor Michael Thies, who taught the political science
research seminar last spring.

Thies said writing a thesis is a “great practice
run” for students thinking about attending graduate school,
but academic journals rarely publish articles over 30 pages
long.

Theses are also too long to serve as writing samples for
graduate school applications, said Joseph Dimuro, an English
professor who has taught the English research seminar.

Dimuro said he has had students whose theses were good enough to
be published if they were cut down, but he said he had yet to
encounter a student who wanted to do that. This may be because
English honors theses are not intended to be like journal articles,
he said.

Like most doctoral theses, the English honors thesis is based on
the 19th-century German monograph, which required the writer to
give a review of the scholarship that had gone on around his or her
subject before making a new claim, Dimuro said.

But this does not concern many students who are writing theses.
Most say they aren’t motivated by the possibility of
publishing, padding graduate school applications or even
honors.

Tran, a fourth-year American literature and culture student,
said she started working on her thesis because she wanted to have a
writing sample for graduate school, but she continued because it
gave her a chance to depart from the English department’s
traditionally narrow focus.

Sears, a fifth-year political science and history student, said
he decided to look into how issues become associated with political
parties because he identifies himself as a Christian and a
Democrat. He wanted to find out why Christianity has become
associated with the Republican Party, he said.

“I felt like I was straddling two belief systems,”
he said. “Why does pro-life and no taxes go together, instead
of pro-life and taking care of the poor?”

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