The Senior Capstone and Honors Thesis in Neuroscience (NSCI) and Neuroscience & Cognitive Science (NSCS) are research experiences guided by a faculty member. Students in the W.A. Franke Honors College use the format of the senior capstone thesis toward their required Honors Thesis.
The Senior Capstone/Honors Thesis in NSCI must be a laboratory-based research experience; in NSCS, it should be a laboratory-based research experience but also can be an independent literature review guided by a faculty member.
A Senior Capstone/Honors Thesis is intended to be a major student project involving various types of original work. A minimum of two semesters of work credit (6 units of NROS or CGCS 498 or -(H)) is required, which begins during a student’s penultimate semester. It is comprised of focused laboratory-based research work (experimentation and data analysis) or literature research (only in NSCS), followed by a semester of writing a thesis, and a formal poster presentation at the annual Neuroscience Poster Forum (mandatory for both the NSCI and NSCS program).
Honors thesis work also must be presented in the form of a poster presentation at the W.A. Franke College Pinnacle Summit in the Spring of the senior year. More information on W.A. Franke Honors College timeline can be found here: https://frankehonors.arizona.edu/academics/thesiscapstone
Completion of a Senior Capstone or Honors Thesis requires preparation and planning. You should develop your plan in your junior year by narrowing down your areas of academic and professional interest and engaging with faculty. By the end of the junior year, you should have a well-developed thesis plan that you can implement in your senior year and submit your Senior Capstone/Honors Prospectus. By the start of the first semester of your senior year, you enroll for credit (NROS 498 or -498H); CGCS 498 or -498H) and engage in your research project. During your second semester you touch up your research project, write your thesis, present your poster, and submit your thesis.
Early in your junior year, start narrowing down your research topic. This may be done in several ways:
Start your search for neuroscience-related labs on the websites of the Departments of Neuroscience, CBC, MCB, Neurology, Physiology, Psychology and the |Neuroscience Graduate Program| by reviewing faculty research specialties.
Another place to start browsing for research is the |The Undergraduate Research & Inquiry Collaborative|, which promotes undergraduate research opportunities across campus.
If you are unsure how to proceed in selecting an area of interest, you should meet with our |research counselors| (to be named) who can provide some guidance.
Once you narrowed down your research topics, contact potential research advisors (professors) by emailing them or simply visiting their office to arrange an appointment to discuss possible research opportunities in their labs. Note that only general faculty can be your research faculty advisor, not post-docs, graduate or undergraduate students. However, post-doc and graduate students can serve as supervisors. If you do not get a response within a week, you should contact a research counselor for assistance to help “grease the wheels”.
Discuss with the potential research advisor your interests, courses, experience, possible projects, and time commitments.
Ideally, you will find a Faculty Thesis Advisor no later than the first semester of your junior year and conduct research in the advisor’s laboratory in the second semester of your junior year. The goal is to meet regularly with your advisor and develop a proposal over the course of the second semester of junior year. Students who do not follow this recommended timeline for identifying a Faculty Advisor risk missing the thesis submission deadline.
Students who are planning to enroll for a Senior Capstone or Honors Thesis are required to submit a Senior Capstone/Honors Thesis Prospectus to the NSCI/NSCS Program prior to the start of the first semester of research in their senior year.
Students who are completing an Honors Thesis are required to submit the prospectus to both the NSCI/NSCS Program and the W.A. Franke Honors College.
Students are encouraged to write the Senior Capstone/Honors Thesis Prospectus in cooperation with their faculty research advisor. Only general faculty are available to be research faculty advisors, not post-docs, graduate or undergraduate students. However, they can be listed as supervisors on the thesis form.
A prospectus is a short description of your proposed thesis. Your prospectus should clearly describe your thesis topic, the form your thesis will take, and how you will reach your thesis goals. For a laboratory-based thesis, focus on your governing questions or hypotheses, your research methods, and your theoretical or methodological framework. The Prospectus should include:
Introduction (background information)
a statement of the problem and specific aim (typically one)
methods to be used
expected outcomes
A detailed guide for writing a prospectus can be found |here|.
Honors students also need to complete the Honors Thesis Prospectus Form and should consult the Honor’s College |guide|.
Important: Before undertaking your research, you will need to communicate with your faculty thesis mentor to determine what training needs must be completed prior to starting your research. These may include training for human subjects or vertebrate animal research including chemical and biological safety and that your research adheres to the associated institutional protocols (Institutional Review Board IRB for human subjects; Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) for vertebrate animal research). Your Faculty Advisor should be prepared to guide you through these processes which can take several months. So, plan accordingly. (See enrollment for first year)
Signing up for credit for a Senior Capstone/Honors Thesis requires submission of a Capstone/Thesis Registration Form for the |first| and the |second| semester (forms are to be developed).
The form for the first semester requires prior submission of prospectus, attachment of required training certificates (as determined by research mentor), a description of the proposed project that has been agreed on, and signatures by the student and the research mentor. This must be completed within 21 days from the start of the semester.
The form for the second semester includes a schedule for the expected tasks and milestones and signatures by the student and the Faculty Research Advisor. Both forms can be found also on the |Undergraduate Studies Forms Page|. You and your mentor should agree on a process and timeline for finishing your thesis that will allow several iterations of review by your Faculty Advisor.
Enrollment for NROS/CGCS 489/489H is finalized by submitting the completed and signed Research Enrollment Form with attachments to the NSCI/NSCS Program Coordinator |Maria Rodriguez| either in person (Gould-Simpson room 624) or by email (mmrodriguez@arizona.edu).
At the start of your second semester, complete and submit the |Registration Form for Capstone/Thesis – Second Semester|. Take advantage of the form to help you plan out your writing tasks for this semester. Writing should be an ongoing process during the second semester, so that there is ample time to work on the thesis drafts with input from the research faculty mentor.
It is the policy of the NSCI/NSCS programs that students enrolled in an individual course such as Senior Capstone or Honors Thesis cannot be paid for the same hours as lab work. Therefore, academic credit can be awarded only for faculty-approved academic work.
In the first semester of your senior year, you will engage in your research project that you tailored to your interests with the help and guidance of your Faculty Advisor. Although the details of the project will vary from student to student, most will begin by collecting experimental data, performing data analysis, synthesizing and drawing conclusions. In parallel, you will perform a literature review and starting to write a draft of your introduction and the methods section of your thesis. Doing both will significantly help you understanding your experimental data and drawing first conclusions.
Your Faculty Advisor will award a grade at the end of your first semester of thesis work based on your engagement and progress you have made. Remember to register for your next three units of thesis credit for your second semester.
The Senior Capstone/Honors Thesis is not only the documentation of your research project, but also a scientific writing assignment. The thesis must be written in a scientific paper format. A scientific paper is a written report describing original research results and should have a Title, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion section.
The recurrent hypothetico-deductive pattern of developing a thesis to solve a problem and then constructing a methodology and testing for results is common in research writing. When you begin to write the first draft of your thesis, try to salvage useful material for problem statements, methodologies, and bibliographies from your thesis proposal. Importantly, make use of your laboratory notebook for detailed accounts of your procedures.
A thesis is intended to be a major student project involving various types of original work. It is expected that you will obtain a significant depth of understanding the thesis topic such that you can synthesize and build upon existing scholarship, and further the understanding of the thesis topic in some way. The Thesis may not significantly duplicate research you have previously produced or that you are concurrently conducting in other courses used to fulfill degree requirements at the University of Arizona.
a) A laboratory research-based thesis should contain the following sections:
Cover page: The cover page includes the title of your thesis, the author, the Faculty Research Advisor, the date of thesis, and signature line for the Faculty Research Advisor, and date of signature. Note, the cover pages for the Senior Capstone Thesis and Honors Thesis are different. Honors students need to consult the respective guidance by the |Honors College|.
Abstract: The abstract is a short summary of your thesis and should include a concise description of the objectives and methods, as well as the key results/conclusions of your research. The abstract typically contains 250 words or less, with sufficient information to understand the overall content of the thesis.
Introduction: Description of the background of the research topic including relevant literature references and provides a rationale for the research project. It also describes the initial hypothesis and may state what the expected results of the study may be.
Methods: Description of the techniques used in your research with sufficient detail to help someone knowledgeable in the field understand and reproduce the experiments that were performed. References to paper(s) describing the methods where relevant should be provided.
Results: This section describes the new knowledge that is the subject of your thesis project. The section should objectively describe the results of your research in an orderly fashion using figures and tables to supplement the information in the text. Each section of the results should begin with the question or hypothesis you have investigated. You may also wish to stress the positive and negative controls that validated the experiment. State your findings clearly and simply. Negative results may be as important as positive results. What were you testing? Why? How? What did you discover? Is it meaningful? Why? Repeat this information for each different experiment described in the thesis. Remember, the results represent the new knowledge that is the subject of your thesis project.
Discussion: In the discussion section, you should explain the meaning and significance of your research results and put your findings in the broader context of the current knowledge in the respective research area. Did your experiments conform to the expectations you had when the research started? Have any major new conclusions been reached? Does any prior research in this field need to be re-examined? You should end the discussion with a thoughtful statement about future experiments that could be completed to follow up on your study and conclusions.
Bibliography: The Bibliography lists all the references you cited in your thesis.