International and Area Studies Honors Thesis Rubric

The International and Area Studies Teaching Program (IAS) consists of six interdisciplinary undergraduate majors, five of which participate in a common Senior Honors curriculum. This capstone experience requires students to write a thesis that is based upon original research. By definition, the instructor of the yearlong Honors course (IAS H102/195) cannot be expert at identifying appropriate sources for such a wide array of interests and topics. As a result, students in the course must also work with an outside thesis advisor. Over the course of the last decade or so, it became clear that thesis advisors frequently had very different expectations from those of the IAS program, as well as having very different expectations from each other. The program therefore sought to find a way to get all of the advisors onto the same page. It clarified, on the contract that advisors sign when they agree to assist an IAS honors student, the rules of the program and the expectations that IAS has of the advisor. (A lot of this is left up to the individual advisor's discretion, but the document does state the minimum that is required.)

Each advisor has always been expected to provide comments and a grade for the honors thesis, but IAS also realized that it had nothing to tell individual advisors about how to assess this significant (75+ page) piece of research. As a result, we generated the Thesis Evaluation Form that is presented here. Because faculty are so busy, and more importantly because faculty come from such disparate disciplines, a common assessment device has helped enormously. Faculty comments have actually increased ; the areas for response are so much clearer in this new document. Moreover. IAS now gets consistent feedback from all of our students' advisors. We have, moreover, found that thesis advisors from other departments are grateful for this help in knowing how to evaluate student learning in an interdisciplinary program. Similarly, we adapted the form for students to (1) provide a guide to their thesis advisor in the early stages of research, so that the advisor can see the rubric in advance of having to use it and (2) serve as a guide to students as they research and write their own papers. (In all cases, the students are harder on themselves than the faculty are.) 

IAS has traditionally had a somewhat difficult time in collecting comments from thesis advisors, even when it has included assigning a student a grade for the research component of the spring semester course. Using the rubric, however, has increased response rate dramatically. It now stands at 100%, which is far better than we envisioned possible at the start of the project. This has helped the program provide consistent grades and consistent comments with those made by the thesis advisors. It has also generated quite a lot of positive feedback from those thesis advisors who have felt compelled to comment. In short, IASTP believes that it has been successful, and that it can be successful in other programs and departments as well.

IASTP Honors: Final Evaluation of Thesis by Faculty Advisors