The Required Senior Colloquium

The Senior Seminar is a required course for all Cognitive Science Seniors, taken during the last two semesters before graduating (typically Fall and Spring semester of the senior year). It is intended to help seniors through all stages of the senior thesis process. In the first half of fall, the course will focus on developing a sufficiently well-defined research plan and writing a senior thesis proposal. Once a student submits the proposal and it is accepted by the lecturer, the student is no longer required to attend the weekly class sessions, and will instead treat it like a directed research course under the guidance of their advisor. Students who are not able to submit a thesis proposal by the last class before Fall break will become the lecturer’s advisees by default and remain in the seminar through the rest of Fall and Spring. The second half of the Fall will focus on research methods, including experimental design and statistical analysis, and the Spring will focus mostly on writing.

The Senior thesis is the final graduation requirement for all Cognitive Science majors. To meet this requirement, each student must conduct an independent research project under the guidance of a faculty advisor and submit an essay in the style of a scientific article describing the research. The subject matter can be anything that substantively relates to Cognitive Science, but the project must involve novel research. A literature review that describes work which has already been done is not sufficient: the project must make some kind of novel research contribution (though it need not be groundbreaking- incremental contributions are an important part of scientific practice). The project is expected to reflect at least two semesters’ worth of work, and the final essay is evaluated under a higher standard than a typical one-semester term paper. Students on the B.S. track must conduct empirical research for the senior thesis—typically by designing a study and collecting new data—while students on the B.A. track can do purely theoretical research (though it must still make a novel contribution). The research and writing are typically conducted in the Fall and Spring semesters of senior year, and the mandatory Senior Seminar provides additional support through all stages of the thesis process.

Senior Projects from Prior Years

We have assembled a helpful list of senior projects from previous cognitive science majors, organized by year. Current majors may use this list to get sense for the types of projects to conduct. There is also a guide to the research process of the senior thesis.