PSY 359H: Honors Research I

Spring 2007

M 1-4 pm Location SEA 2.224

Instructor

Who Office Office Hours email
Art Markman SEA 5.218 Wednesday 1-3pm
or by appointment		 markman@psy.utexas.edu

Teaching Assistant

Who Office Office Hours email Lab/Office Phone
Brent Kenney SEA 3.120 Monday, 4-6pm kenney@mail.utexas.edu 471-7022

Click here for the list of students and projects.

Course information

This course is designed as a "lab meeting" for the students doing honors research. Here, you'll get guidance about your honors project. We'll talk about doing a literature review and about designing a study. The group will serve as a sounding board for research ideas. We'll review materials for experiments and make suggestions about data analyses.

In addition to talking about research, we'll also discuss careers in Psychology and related fields. Depending on the interests of the group, we can talk about admission to graduate school, and the many fields of study that you can pursue after getting your degree.

Requirements

Obviously, the main requirement to be in this course is to have been accepted into the honors program. If you have not been accepted into the honors program (or are not sure), please check with Prof. Markman before attending the class.

The main requirements for this semester are a series of written papers that are designed to help you get started on your project and to get the early parts of your honors thesis written. Briefly, here is a summary of the assignments. We'll talk more about them in class.

  1. 3pp. preliminary sketch of proposed research.
  2. 20 pp.; draft #1 of prospectus: literature review, research plan, detailed Method section, etc.
  3. draft #2.
  4. 30 pp., draft #3, Final Paper, including revised Introduction and elaborated Methods section.
Both the quality of the Final Paper and the proposed thesis are considered in grading. Class participation in the seminar is also considered. Class attendance is mandatory, and more than 2 unexcused absences during the semester will result in a 1 grade reduction in your grade for this course.

One reason why we will be writing and re-writing the paper is that the best way to learn how to write is to focus on writing a single thing clearly. Most writing experiences in college consist of putting together a single paper that is turned in and graded without an opportunity for revision. Because this course is small, we will have a chance to write and revise the thesis throughout the semester.

Sample CVs

Here are the sample CVs that we looked at in class if you're looking for examples to create your own.

Student Information

In order to keep track of what everyone is up to, here's a list of the students in this seminar. Eventually, all of you will have home pages, which will be linked to this page. Also, if you have a personal home page, it can be linked to your name in this table.
Student Name Project Title Project Home Page
Rebecca Bridges Project Page
Charles Bryant Project Page
Daniel Catterson Project Page
Taona Chithambo Project Page
Lindsey Frachtman Project Page
Jasmine Ghannadpour Project Page
Nicole Horowitz Project Page
Samantha John Project Page
Nina Mehta Project Page
Ann Nguyen Project Page
Kendall Reynolds Project Page
Austen Sitko Project Page
Van Walker Project Page
Jennifer Whiddon Project Page