The focus of the Senior Seminar is the development of a Senior Project proposal.  Proposals will be turned into the Senior Project Committee in mid-October. The Senior Project Committee this year includes both Dr. Gibau and Dr. Mullins, as well as another faculty member who will be appointed early in the Fall semester.  Consequently, turning a paper in for the class is the same as turning it into the committee.  The Committee will review proposals and students will be informed of the Committee’s decision in November. If we require revisions or re-submissions, those changes will be due in December, at the same time as proposals that were accepted in their original form. 

This course is required of all Anthropology majors who declared their major in Anthropology in or after 2002.  Students who declared their major before 2002 can take the class to provide them assistance in preparing their Senior Project proposal, and the credits will be credited toward their Anthropology electives, but the course is not required of those students.  Most Anthropology majors should plan to register for the Senior Seminar in the Fall of their senior year; at the conclusion of this course you should have prepared and defended your Senior Project proposal, and you will then be approved to register for the Senior Project (A 412) in the Spring.  If your Senior Project requires another schedule please discuss this with the instructors (as well as your faculty advisor) prior to the semester.   

All written work must be completed in both electronic form and as a hard copy.  Please turn in the electronic versions on a disc or send them to both instructors via email.  You absolutely should keep a back-up copy of all work completed in the class.

The major graded assignment for the semester is your final Senior Project proposal (70%).  All students who complete and submit an approved proposal by the deadline will receive the full points for this assignment.   Late submissions will be penalized a full letter grade for each day they are submitted late.  

You will submit a preliminary project proposal in Week 2 (5%).  All submissions at the deadline will receive the full credit for the assignment (i.e., 5 points).  Late submissions will be penalized one point each day they are late.

An analysis of a student's Senior Project from an earlier semester will be turned in on Week 3 (5%).  The analysis must minimally be one page in length and review the research questions the project outlined, the methods used to explore that question, the data the student collected, and the conclusions the student reached.  This must be in an essay format: no bulleted papers, lists of incomplete sentences, or answers to a few questions.  Late submissions will be penalized one point each day they are late.

A literature review with at least 10 resources will be due Week 4 (5%).  The literature review should accumulate a bibliography of resources from a variety of scholarly and popular formats appropriate to your project, but you are not required to provide annotations or write a paper on these resources.  All submissions that include the minimum number of resources will receive full credit.  Late submissions will be penalized one point for each day they are late.

A revised proposal will be due in Week 5.  Any student that does not turn in a revised proposal by the deadline will receive a one-point deduction from their peer review grade for every day it is late, and they will still be required to complete the peer review of another student's project proposal.  These proposals will circulated to other students at random for peer reviews that will be due the following week.  That peer review of another student's proposal will be due in Week 6 (10%).  This paper should be a written analysis that systematically reviews the proposal and identifies ways in which the proposal could be clarified or strengthened.  Late submissions will be penalized one point each day they are late.

Attendance will be worth 5% of the course grade.  The Seminar will only meet seven times, so attendance is key to completing the project proposal and the assignments leading up to it.  Students will be allowed one unexcused absence.  These include documented illnesses--sniffles on the phone or a haggard look the following week are not sufficient documentation--, a religious holiday recognized in the calendars of some reasonably well-documented faith, or an absence for participation in an Athletic Department-excused event.  We will be reasonably forgiving about things over which you have no control, like flat tires and sick children.  We will negotiate these things on a case-by-case basis as soon as possible after the absence, but please let us know immediately via email and do not plan to barter over these absences at semester's end.  After the single unexcused absence, students will lose one point each week:  If you miss two days you receive four of the five points, if you miss three days you receive three points, if you miss four days you receive two points, if you miss five days you receive one point, and if you miss six or more days then you receive no credit for attendance.

Lets say that a hypothetical student does the following work:

• turned in preliminary project on time in Week 2, received full 5 points

• turned in a review of a Senior Project proposal in Week 3, received full 5 points

• turned in the Literature Review in Week 4 that contained only seven resources, so the project received only 4 points

• received an 8 out of 10 possible points for the Senior Project peer review

• missed three classes, so received 3 points on attendance

• Senior Project proposal received an A-, which is averaged as a 90; so .70 X 90 = 63.0 points out of 70 (if the grade had been a C+, it would be averaged as the mean number in the C+ range, which is 77 and then multiplied by .70)

• add all those raw scores together for the final course grade, which in this case is 5 + 5 + 4 + 8 +3 + 63 = 88 (B+)

Please contact both instructors via email for all course-related communications and save a copy of all emails regarding the project and class.  Any questions about your project proposal should become part of your Senior Project proposal, so do not delete these emails now or during the production of your project.  Any questions on absences or other course grading must be sent to us in email, and we will resolve all these in emails prior to the conclusion of the semester. If you cannot complete an assignment on time for any reason, you should contact the instructors as soon as possible. We can always be contacted before or after class, you can schedule an appointment, and we check our email virtually everyday.  Please do NOT wait until well after a deadline to talk to us. Do NOT postpone talking to us if you are having any difficulty completing an assignment or you're having difficulty with the class.  Late assignments will be penalized for each day they're late if you do not negotiate an extension with us beforehand or at the earliest possible opportunity. This syllabus includes deadlines for all assignments and penalties for turning in any assignment late: it is your responsibility to know when assignments are due. There will not be any extra credit material.  Please keep electronic backups of all coursework.  If you do not complete and defend a Senior Project proposal by semester's end you will receive no credit for the assignment and will not pass the course.  You can monitor your grades over the semester on Oncourse. A 92+ (95) A- 89-91 (90) B+ 86-88 (87) B 82-85 (84) B- 79-81 (80) C+ 76-78 (77) C 70-75 (73) D 60-69 (65) F 0-60

All work in the course is conducted in accordance with the University’s academic misconduct policy.  Cheating includes dishonesty of any kind. Plagiarism is the offering of someone else’s work as your own: this includes taking un-cited material from books, web pages, or other students, turning in the same or substantially similar work as other students, or failing to properly cite other research.  If you are suspected of any form of academic misconduct you will be called in for a meeting at which you will be informed of the accusation and given adequate opportunity to respond.  A report will be submitted to the Dean of Students, who will decide on further disciplinary action.  Please consult the University Bulletin’s academic misconduct policy or me if you have any questions.

 The Office of Adaptive Educational Services (AES) ensures that students with disabilities receive appropriate accommodations from the University and their professors.  Students must register with the AES office in order to receive such services.

Portable electronic devices, such as cell phones, pagers, two-ways, and PDA’s, must be turned off before entering the classroom.  You can use a laptop for note-taking but should silence it in class; do not plan to surf the web in class.  You must let us know in advance if you carry around such devices for familial reasons (e.g., pregnancy monitoring, disabled family, or contact with kids--not to stay in touch with a significant other who just likes to hear your voice, buddies planning the rest of their day, and so on).  Anyone whose electronic device disturbs class will be given a verbal warning on first offense and will be asked to meet with the instructors if they continue to disturb the group.

The classroom is a safe speech situation in which it is your responsibility to treat other classmates fairly and with mutual respect, even if they have the audacity to disagree with you, champion an opinion that is inconsistent with your worldview, or simply bore you.  Anyone who talks when someone else is talking, is hostile, or otherwise violates classroom etiquette (e.g., does other homework, reads the newspaper) will be considered to be in violation of this policy.  Students who fail to adhere to these guidelines will be asked to leave class and will be required to meet with me before returning to class.

Week 1 August 28

• What is a Senior Seminar?

SEPTEMBER 4 NO CLASS--LABOR DAY

Week 2 September 11

• Preliminary Project Proposal: Please bring a brief description of at least one paragraph on what you would like to do for your senior project.  It does not need to be a project for which you have done any concrete planning, but it should be a reasonably feasible plan that outlines the specific research questions you are interested in, the methods you propose to use, and the setting in which you would like to conduct this project.

Week 3 September 18

• Proposal analysis: Prepare an analysis of one of the senior projects posted on OnCourse.  Prepare a brief analysis of the project of at least one page, addressing the following questions:

n       What was the research question (or questions) the student set out to investigate?

n       What methods did the student use to explore that question?

n       What kind of data did the student collect?

n       What conclusion did the student reach?

Week 4 September 25

• Literature Review:  Please bring a bibliography of primary (if appropriate) and secondary sources that you think will be useful to you in helping you to shape your project.  In this class, we will discuss the use of other sources you will use to help you frame your own research.  Some sample “Reviews of Literature” will be distributed and discussed.

NO CLASS OCTOBER 2--REVISE SENIOR PROJECT PROPOSALS

Week 5 October 9

• Revised proposal: Revise your proposal and include a bibliography with at least 10 sources.  Identify a faculty project mentor with whom you have already met and discussed your project.  Bring the almost-final draft of your proposal to class so that it can be circulated for peer review.

NO CLASS OCTOBER 16--PREPARE PEER REVIEWS

Week 6 October 23

• Peer review: You will be turning in peer review analyses of another student's proposal draft.

NO CLASS OCTOBER 30--REVISE FINAL DRAFT OF SENIOR PROJECT PROPOSAL

Week 7 November 6

PROPOSALS SUBMITTED.  Your proposal be 7-10 pages and should include the following elements at a minimum:

n       A Statement of the Problem (your research question or questions)

n       Methodology (including where you will conduct your research and what strategies you will use)

n       Kind of data you will collect and what methods you will use to analyze that data;

n       A bibliography with at least 15 sources.

Week 8 December 4

• Review Senior Project Proposals with class

All proposals will be reviewed by the Capstone Committee.  Your faculty mentor advisor must also receive a copy of your proposal.  We will review these proposals; you will receive feedback from the committee by November 21st.  If they are required by the committee, any revisions are due on Friday December 1^st

 Last updated August 17, 2006