VERITAS VIRTUSQUE REMPUBLICAM SUSTINENT
The senior thesis is a capstone project providing students a final opportunity to reflect on the wisdom and skills their education has fostered: close reading, logical writing, and clear speaking. The project is the student’s most self-directed exploration of the great ideas of our tradition and requires students to engage more deeply with a great work of the Western tradition than they have ever done, deploying all the tools they have learned in interpreting those texts through reading, writing, thinking, and speaking well. These are the essential skills of responsible citizenship.
The thesis is not simply an assignment to be graded. It is an argument made in the presence of a student’s family, friends, and community. The question the students seek to understand are important not only to themselves, but to all human beings. The defense marks the beginning of a student’s engagement in civil discourse and develops his or her capacity to speak clearly and listen carefully. As a steward of the Western and American traditions’ wisdom, the student learns to honor the roles of conversation in the pursuit of truth.
