The Senior Thesis

Overview

The senior thesis is a year-long research and writing project. You will select an issue of importance, anchor your study of it in the deep reading of a small number of great texts, and write a substantive research paper that displays a thoughtful and Christian perspective on the question you have chosen. An “issue” need not be a current political controversy. It may be a question about virtue, justice, human nature — anything serious enough to sustain a year of reading.

The thesis is not a report. It is a sustained, persuasive argument: you take a position on a genuinely contestable question and defend it with careful reading, sound reasoning, and fair treatment of those who disagree. At the end of the year you will present your argument before the cohort and a panel of invited adult reviewers, and defend it in a question-and-answer period.

The Checkpoint Schedule

Wk	Date	Deliverable
3	9/10	Research question + ANI chart due
5	9/24	Advisor confirmed
8	10/15	Annotated bibliography due: 3–4 major works + supporting sources (instructor approval)
12	11/19	Working thesis statement + research plan approved; Advisor Meeting #1
15	12/17	Major work write-up #1 due (abbreviated): outline of the text and key terms only; the two-page exposition is deferred and folds into the rough draft
18	1/28	Major work write-up #2 due
21	2/18	Major work write-up #3 due (+ abbreviated #4 if using four works)
23	3/4	Full thesis outline due (sentence outline, with citations); Advisor Meeting #2
25	4/1	ROUGH DRAFT due (full length)
26	4/8	Peer review workshop (at meeting); Advisor Meeting #3
28	4/22	Revised draft due + practice presentation (group only)
29	5/6	FINAL DRAFT due
30	5/13	PRESENTATION & DEFENSE before panel of invited reviewers

Deliverables are due at the Thursday meeting of the week listed. From Week 16 on, every meeting also opens with a five-minute round-robin: each student reports progress, obstacles, and the next step — come prepared to say something concrete at each meeting.

Requirements

• Length: 4,000–6,000 words of body text (roughly 15–20 double-spaced pages), excluding the cover page and bibliography.
• Sources: anchored in 3–4 major works, with citations drawn primarily from sources approved in your annotated bibliography.
• Citations: footnotes and bibliography in Chicago notes-bibliography style (see the overview below).
• Topic: addresses the topic confirmed at lock-in.
• Mechanics: carefully proofread and free of distracting grammatical, mechanical, and typographical errors.
• Perspective: written from a thoughtful Christian perspective.

Objectives

The ideal thesis is:

• Persuasive — provides convincing evidence for its claim.
• Logical — its arguments hold together as a cohesive whole.
• Nuanced — deals with complexity carefully.
• Textually grounded — shows close knowledge of the source material.
• Appropriately scoped — addresses the issues necessary for its claim without trying to cover everything.
• Clear and artful — uses precise, readable, well-shaped language.
• Theologically responsible — takes Scripture seriously, handles doctrine with care, and does not knowingly argue against essential Christian truth.

Checkpoint 1 — Discovering Your Topic (Due Week 3)

A good thesis question is not merely a topic. It is a serious, contestable question that can become a sustained argument. It should be contestable (thoughtful people could reasonably answer it more than one way), focused (narrow enough for a 4,000–6,000-word paper), and significant (connected to truth, goodness, God, human nature, society, moral action, beauty, justice, freedom, authority, suffering, or the good life).

Refine your thinking this way:

1. Ask a serious question. What is the purpose of education?
2. Turn it into an issue of whether — a pair or list of alternatives that must be chosen between and supported:
   • whether education can be morally neutral;
   • whether a good education requires freedom from inherited authorities or submission to them.
   Other examples:
   • What should Christians do when civil authority is unjust? → whether disobedience to civil authority can be an act of Christian faithfulness.
   • What is the meaning of suffering? → whether suffering is primarily punishment, purification, mystery, or participation in Christ; whether Christian hope changes how suffering should be endured.
   • What makes a ruler legitimate? → whether political authority depends chiefly on consent, virtue, divine order, or the protection of justice.
3. Build an ANI chart — three headings, filled with as many good ideas as possible:
   • Affirmative: ideas, texts, examples, and authorities that affirm a whether stance.
   • Negative: ideas, texts, examples, and authorities that oppose or complicate it.
   • Interesting: questions, distinctions, definitions, comparisons, and observations that may matter but do not yet clearly belong on either side. Work through the common topics:
     • Definition: define your terms. What do you mean by freedom, virtue, authority, nature, role, justice, truth, law, obedience, or love?
     • Comparison: compare texts, authors, and traditions. How does Paul compare with Kant? Locke with later liberalism? Scripture with modern claims?
     • Circumstances: what situation is the author addressing? Does the answer change in family life, civil society, church order, persecution, war, or ordinary moral life?
     • Relations: cause and effect, means and ends. What follows if this claim is true? What does this belief produce in persons, families, churches, or societies?
     • Authority: what authorities can speak to this? Scripture, theologians, philosophers, councils, confessions, historical traditions, or literary works. Which are true authorities for this question, and which are only influential voices?

Deliverable: your whether question, stated in one sentence, with your completed ANI chart. Choose a question that genuinely interests you, involves real tension, and can be examined through Scripture, theology, philosophy, history, literature, or political theory.

Checkpoint 2 — Finding an Advisor (Due Week 5)

Secure at least one advisor: an adult with relevant knowledge or judgment who agrees to meet with you three times during the year, to read your work before each of those meetings, and, if possible, to take part in your defense. Confirm your advisor at the Week 5 meeting, and give them the advisor handout printed later in this part — it lists the three meetings, what you will send before each one, and what help is wanted at each stage. Advisors volunteer their time: send your materials several days before every meeting so the advisor can read them in advance, and arrive with specific questions.

Checkpoint 3 — Annotated Bibliography (Due Week 8)

Identify the 3–4 major works that will anchor your thesis, plus any supporting sources you expect to use. For each source, give a complete Chicago-style bibliography entry followed by a 3–5 sentence annotation explaining what the work argues and why it is central (or useful) to your question. Your major works should be substantial primary texts worth deep reading, whose authors take positions bearing directly on your question — preferably from more than one side of it.

Finding your major works. The recommended starting point is the Syntopicon, the Great Books of the Western World index of the great ideas, which this cohort has used before; it is available online at patrickhalbrook.com/syntopicon. Find the chapters nearest your question — justice, liberty, education, punishment, God — and follow their outlines and reference lists into the works where the argument actually happens. This is a starting point, not a boundary: you can choose any books that meet the standards, not just books from the Syntopicon.

Sizing a major work. Each major work must be readable deeply — outlined, key terms traced, positions understood — in about four to six weeks at the course’s thesis budget of two to five hours a week. In practice that means roughly 150–400 pages, or a bounded selection of a longer work (City of God Books I & XIX, not City of God), named as such in the bibliography. Plan your shortest major work for the third write-up slot (Weeks 18–21): it is the tightest reading window of the year, under full course load.

Checkpoint 4 — Lock-In: Working Thesis Statement and Research Plan (Due Week 12)

By Week 12 you should have a full plan: a working thesis statement (use the worksheet below), a research plan mapping each major work against the write-up due dates, and Advisor Meeting #1, where you discuss both — send your question, ANI chart, annotated bibliography, working thesis, and research plan to your advisor several days beforehand. The working thesis is working; you may sharpen or even reverse it as your reading deepens, but you should not change topics or major works after lock-in without a conversation with your instructor.

Working through some of your major works reading over the Christmas break is highly recommended, and the research plan should say exactly what will be read then.

Thesis-crafting worksheet. Answer in complete sentences, for each major source: What does this source say about my topic? This source is helpful because…; this source is limited or wrong because… Then: The strongest argument for my position is…; the strongest argument against my position is… (write a contrasting statement — “Some would say…,” “Others might argue…,” “On the other hand…”); the biblical, theological, or philosophical principle most relevant to my argument is…

Now draft your thesis statement, using a contrast word — although, while, but — that signals the position you argue against. For example:

While some argue that lying is always morally wrong because truthfulness is an absolute duty, a biblical account of virtue shows that truth is ordered toward love of God and neighbor, not mere obedience to an abstract rule.

Although modern liberalism often defines freedom as freedom from external restraint, Locke’s natural-law tradition shows that political freedom depends on moral order and the proper use of human nature.

Checkpoint 5 — Major Work Write-Ups (Due Weeks 15, 18, 21)

For each major work, submit a three-part write-up. The point is to read the author on the author’s own terms — to situate your topic within the author’s argument — before pressing the work into the service of your own.

• (a) Outline of the text. A two-to-three page outline of the work you read, not of your paper, in complete sentences. Identify the thesis the author argues for and trace how the work’s major movements support it.
• (b) Key terms. Three or four key terms in the text (justice, nature, happiness, freedom, etc.) that relate to your topic. For each: state it; define in two or three sentences, in your own words, how this author uses it; and give two or three quotations that illustrate your definition.
• (c) Exposition. A two-page paper explaining, with support, the author’s view of your topic — not just the claims but the reasons, and how they fit the author’s broader argument. Note complexities, contradictions, and unresolved issues.

Write-up #1 (Week 15) uses an abbreviated format — outline of the text and key terms only. Its two-page exposition is deferred and folds into the rough draft rather than being submitted separately.

If you use four major works, the fourth receives an abbreviated write-up (outline and key terms only), submitted with write-up #3 at Week 21.

Checkpoint 6 — Full Thesis Outline (Due Week 23)

A detailed plan for the structure of your paper — send it to your advisor ahead of Advisor Meeting #2. Use complete sentences; each should be the topic sentence of a paragraph or section. Provide citations for major and textual claims, and transitions and hooks connecting the ideas. Basic rule of outlining: every “A” requires a “B”; every “1” requires a “2.” A properly written outline reads like a severely shortened version of your rough draft — remove the numbers and it should read as a summary of your paper. A 4,000–6,000-word paper usually needs 20–35 planned paragraphs.

Sample outline — The Justice of Revolution (citations shown as author-page shorthand for planning; in the paper they become Chicago footnotes). Notice the shape: the author’s two chief sources argue against each other, the biblical objection gets its own section, and the thesis uses a contrast word:

• I. Introduction. Whether revolution can be just depends largely on whether political authority is absolute, as Hobbes argues, or conditional, as Locke contends. Thesis: Although Hobbes correctly warns that revolution threatens political order, Locke offers the stronger account because a government that systematically violates its trust may forfeit its authority, permitting revolution only under strict moral conditions.
• II. Hobbes argues that preserving peace requires subjects to submit permanently to sovereign authority.
  • A. According to Hobbes, subjects authorize the sovereign’s actions and cannot cast off his authority without his permission (Hobbes, 101, 115).
  • B. Because the sovereign’s authority is absolute, Hobbes maintains that he cannot commit political injustice against his subjects (Hobbes, 102).
  • C. Hobbes’s position protects society from rebellion, but it leaves the people without a remedy when the sovereign becomes actively destructive.
• III. By contrast, Locke argues that political authority remains legitimate only while government fulfills the trust placed in it by the people.
  • A. Locke begins from the natural freedom and equality of human beings, who establish government to protect their lives, liberty, and property (Locke, 46, 59).
  • B. Therefore, when rulers systematically destroy the rights they were appointed to protect, they forfeit their authority and place themselves in a state of war with the people (Locke, 76).
  • C. In such circumstances, political authority returns to the community that originally entrusted it to the government (Locke, 59).
  • D. Locke’s account is stronger than Hobbes’s because it preserves the need for government without making political authority immune from judgment or abuse.
• IV. Nevertheless, Locke’s conditional view of authority does not justify revolution whenever citizens believe that a government has acted wrongly.
  • A. A just revolution must answer serious and sustained attacks on the people’s fundamental rights rather than ordinary incompetence, unfairness, or isolated abuses.
  • B. Additionally, revolution must be a last resort undertaken only after peaceful remedies have failed and the government has become incapable of correcting itself.
  • C. Revolutionaries must intend to restore justice and the common good rather than pursue revenge, private ambition, or mob anger.
  • D. Because revolution endangers human life, its likely harms must not exceed the oppression it is intended to end.
  • E. Furthermore, revolutionaries must distinguish innocent people from legitimate targets and use no more force than their just purpose requires.
• V. The biblical command to submit to governing authorities creates a serious objection to Locke’s defense of resistance.
  • A. Romans 13:1 and 1 Peter 2:13–15 teach that Christians ordinarily owe obedience to civil rulers because political authority serves a God-given purpose.
  • B. However, rulers who attack the innocent and destroy the common good act against the purpose for which authority was given.
  • C. Therefore, resisting a tyrannical ruler need not reject political authority itself but may instead defend the rightful purpose of government.
• VI. Proper authority distinguishes a public defense of justice from private rebellion.
  • A. When a government forfeits its trust, resistance must arise from the political community or from a legitimate public authority acting on its behalf rather than from an isolated individual or faction.
  • B. Thus, Locke permits resistance to tyranny without granting every dissatisfied citizen an unrestricted right to revolt.
• VII. Conclusion. Therefore, Hobbes correctly identifies the danger that revolution poses to political order, but Locke better explains how authority can remain binding without becoming absolute. Revolution may be just, but only rarely, when a government has forfeited its authority and resistance satisfies strict requirements concerning cause, necessity, intention, authority, consequences, and conduct.

Checkpoint 7 — Rough Draft (Due Week 25)

Submit a full-length rough draft — serious and proofread, not a partial draft, a placeholder, or a collection of filler. Because your expositions and outline already contain much of the paper’s substance, the rough draft is largely a work of assembly, connection, and argument.

Bring a copy of your paper for the instructor an each classmate.

Checkpoint 8 — Revisions (Weeks 26–28)

Revision happens in three passes:

• Peer review (reading during Week 25–26; workshop at the Week 26 meeting). Each student reads every classmate’s draft during the week — by this point the course’s other reading has nearly stopped, and this is the week’s main assignment — completing one peer-review response sheet (printed later in this part) per draft. The Week 26 meeting is the workshop where responses are delivered and discussed, draft by draft.
• Advisor Meeting #3 (Week 26). Send your draft and your peer feedback to your advisor in advance; leave the meeting with a concrete, prioritized revision plan — what must change, before what would be nice.
• Revised draft + practice presentation (Week 28). Submit the revised draft and deliver your presentation to the cohort as a dry run, with practice questions.

Checkpoint 9 — Final Draft (Due Week 29)

Check the final draft against every requirement in the Overview and every format specification below.

Checkpoint 10 — Presentation and Defense (Week 30 — May 13, 2027)

The final meeting of the year is given entirely to the defenses — no other strand meets. Each defense has three parts: the presentation (about 10 minutes), panel Q&A (about 20 minutes), and a short audience Q&A. You may use notes but should not read a script. Expect questions about your sources, your reasoning, and the strongest objections to your position. The panel does not replace the parent’s role in assessment; its purpose is to give students a serious audience and to test the clarity, fairness, and strength of the argument.

Format Specifications

Cover page.

• “SENIOR THESIS” — Times New Roman, 12 pt., all caps, centered horizontally, 1.5 inches from the top.
• Thesis title — Times New Roman, 14 pt., bold, all caps, centered horizontally and vertically.
• Thesis subtitle — Times New Roman, 14 pt., title case, centered, directly below the title.
• Attribution — Times New Roman, 12 pt., double-spaced, centered, 1.5 inches from the bottom: Student Name / Senior Thesis / Mr. Arron Kau, Instructor / Month Year.

Body. Times New Roman, 12 pt., double-spaced, left-aligned, one-inch margins. Each page carries the author’s last name and the page number in the upper-right corner. Because the paper has a cover page, the body begins on the first line of its first page — no repeated title or heading block.

Bibliography. Complete and accurate, in Chicago style, beginning on a new page headed Bibliography. Entries are alphabetized by author surname with hanging indents and include every source cited — and only sources actually cited.

Chicago Notes-Bibliography Overview

The authoritative reference is Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (9th edition). The cases below are the ones you will meet most often.

How it works. Chicago notes-bibliography cites sources in footnotes marked by superscript numbers; the note number comes after punctuation and quotation marks. Every source cited in a note also appears in the bibliography.

• In the text: Augustine insists that the earthly city is bound together by “a common agreement as to the objects of their love.”¹
• First footnote (full form): 1. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 890.
• Subsequent footnotes (shortened form): 2. Augustine, City of God, 593. Use the shortened form for every citation after the first; current Chicago practice prefers shortened citations over “ibid.”
• Bibliography entries invert the author’s name and use periods between elements:
  • Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
  • Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.

For classical works in translation — which your major works often will be — cite the translation you actually read. Where line or book-and-line numbers are standard (Homer, Virgil), you may cite them in place of page numbers (e.g., Odyssey 9.19–20), but be consistent.

Quotations. Work every quotation into the argument; never drop one in without context.

• Block quotes: any prose quotation of five or more lines is set off — indented one-half inch from the left, single-spaced, no quotation marks, with the footnote number after the final punctuation.
• In-line quotations take quotation marks; paraphrases do not, but must be worded carefully to avoid plagiarism.
• Name the author in your text when introducing significant quotations (“As Augustine argues…”); it is usually more graceful than leaving attribution to the footnote alone.

Typographical notes. Use [sic] to show an error is the author’s, not yours. Put clarifying additions in brackets. Mark omissions with an ellipsis, taking care never to alter the author’s meaning; do not use an ellipsis at the beginning or end of a quotation, since it is understood that the quotation comes from a larger work.

How the Thesis Is Evaluated

Parents are responsible for assessment. The standards below describe excellent work across the outline, paper, presentation, and defense.

Quality of thought. The central claim is clear, well-developed, and distinct from the views of the paper’s sources, with no needless ambiguity about its position. Every idea is supported with reasonable arguments and ample evidence; terms are well-defined; the paper avoids fallacies and unfounded assumptions. The whole holds together as one coherent argument, each claim transitioning into the next. The best possible arguments are presented for the opposing side, and disagreement fairly represents those who hold other views.

Quality of research. The paper shows clear mastery of the source material and engages the most important parts of each author’s argument, not a convenient caricature — it never argues against a straw man. Quotations are chosen with care, reflect the author’s views in context, and are analyzed and interpreted rather than left to speak for themselves. Sources illustrate the student’s arguments; they never substitute for them.

Quality of writing. The paper is carefully proofread and free of distracting errors. It follows the formatting and citation standards in this guide. The language is precise, artful, and readable, reflecting real attention to word choice, sentence structure, and tone.

Quality of presentation and defense. The presentation is delivered with command of the material — shaped for listeners, not read from a script. Under questioning, the student answers the question actually asked, represents sources accurately from memory and under pressure, and handles the strongest objections without evasion.

Handout — For the Advisor

Thank you for advising a senior thesis. The student you are advising is spending the year on one contestable question, anchoring it in the deep reading of three or four major works, and writing a 4,000–6,000-word argument in defense of a position — then defending it aloud before a panel. Your role is three meetings, spread across the year. The student is responsible for sending you their materials several days before each meeting, so that the conversation starts from work you have already read.

• Meeting #1 — mid-November. You receive: the research question, a chart of arguments on each side, an annotated bibliography of the major works, and a draft thesis statement with a reading plan. The help wanted: Is the question focused enough for a 4,000–6,000-word paper, or is too broad to reasonably cover? Are these the right books — and are they readable in the weeks allotted?
• Meeting #2 — early March. You receive: a full sentence outline of the paper, with citations. The help wanted: Does the argument hold together — does each section support the next? Is the opposing side given its strongest form? Where are the gaps? What’s your biggest objection (or two) to the argument as it stands?
• Meeting #3 — early April. You receive: the complete rough draft, plus the written feedback of the student’s peers. The help wanted: Help the student turn a pile of feedback into a short, prioritized revision plan.

If you are able, we would be honored to have you on the defense panel at the final meeting (May 13, 2027).

The best thing you can give the student is the experience of a serious adult taking their argument seriously — which includes telling them plainly where it does not yet persuade you.

Handout — Peer-Review Response Sheet

Complete one sheet per draft. Respond to the argument, not the proofreading — spelling, grammar, and formatting are the author’s own job, and marking them here only distracts from the work that needs a reader. Answer in complete sentences; “it was good” is not a response.

1. The thesis, in your words. Restate the paper’s central claim in one sentence of your own. (If you can’t, that is itself the most useful thing the author can learn.)
2. The strongest argument. Which argument most persuaded you, and what makes it work — the evidence, the reasoning, the placement?
3. The weakest argument. Which argument carries the least weight, and what would it take to strengthen it — better evidence, a missing step, a narrower claim?
4. The sources. Where, if anywhere, does a source seem misread, quoted out of context, or made to stand in for an argument the author should be making?
5. The opposition. Is the opposing side given its best case? Point to any place it is caricatured, dismissed, or simply absent.
6. The structure. Where did you lose the thread? Name the paragraph or section, and say what you expected to happen there instead.
7. One defense question. Write a question you would ask this author at the defense. If you have several, share the most important ones.

Handout — For the Defense Panel

Thank you for serving on the thesis defense panel. Each student has spent the year on one contestable question: deep-reading three or four major works, writing a 4,000–6,000-word argument, and revising it through peer and advisor review. The defense is the capstone of the year’s work.

The shape of each defense. The student presents the argument (about 10 minutes, notes allowed, no script), the panel questions the student (about 20 minutes), and a short audience question period follows.

The kind of questions to ask. Gracious and genuinely probing. The purpose is never to tear the student down; it is to honor months of hard work by challenging it seriously, giving the student the chance to show the thought behind the paper. The best questions press on the argument and its nuance:

• Sources: “How would Hobbes answer the argument you just made?” “Is that what Augustine means in context?”
• Reasoning: “Does that conclusion follow, or only when we grant your second premise?”
• The strongest objection: “What is the best argument against your position — and why does it fail?”
• Scope and nuance: “Would your claim survive in this harder case?”

Ask the questions you would ask a colleague. A student who concedes what they cannot answer and says how they would settle it has answered well — and it helps if the panel visibly receives it that way. The panel is not responsible for grading, but sharing your genuine assessment of the students’ work is appreciated.