INDEPENDENT STUDY AT THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER

Since 1948, The College of Wooster has required all graduating seniors to complete an independent research project. The Independent Study program (I.S.) has successfully prepared our graduates for a variety of life experiences, including excellence in research at the graduate level. This program is not reserved for honors students alone because the Wooster faculty believes that all individuals should be challenged to achieve their best efforts of independent and creative thought. I.S. consists of three semesters of research, beginning in the junior year. One course each of these three semesters is tagged as the I.S. course and is one quarter of a student’s total course load. Faculty receive teaching credit for their work with the undergraduates. In the Geology Department, Junior I.S. is taken in the spring; students generally prepare for a summer field or laboratory research experience. Junior I.S. is initially organized as a seminar with all junior geology majors and the department faculty; the seminar includes an ethics in science component. Four to five weeks into the seminar, the students are matched to work one-on-one with a faculty mentor. Students are usually required to write a proposal outlining their senior I.S. project. For most geology majors, the senior project is initiated during the summer before the senior year doing fieldwork with a Wooster faculty member or taking an experience at another institution or consortium. Students identify their topics, design an approach to answering their questions and supporting their hypotheses, collect the necessary data, learn how to recognize facts and separate them from conjecture, and present their work in a thesis during the spring semester. In addition, students give one oral presentation of their work each semester of their senior year. After the thesis is submitted (in mid-March), two faculty readers evaluate the finished project and administer an oral examination. The final mark of Honors, Good, Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory is based on the student’s independence, creativity and responsibility throughout the two-semester project, as well as on the final written thesis and the oral exam. Our alumni recognize the importance of the problem solving and communication skills acquired during the rigorous three semesters of I.S.