Senior Fellowship Program
Introduction | Course Load |
Responsibilities | Recent Senior
Fellows
Many Hampden-Sydney students are fully occupied during
their undergraduate years in meeting the proficiency, distribution, and
major requirements that lead to a degree. Some students, however, seek
additional challenges and opportunities; they desire more intensive
experiences in a particular discipline or in closely related disciplines.
One avenue for obtaining such exposure is the College's Senior Fellowship
Program.
The Senior Fellowship is intended to be a cross-disciplinary course of
study not easily housed within a single major and not easily accomplished
through a sequence of regular courses in several majors. The Senior
Fellowship emphasizes breadth as well as depth of study and thus is
different from Departmental Honors projects
housed within a major.
Selection of Senior Fellows takes place in the spring semester.
Qualified juniors are selected to be Senior Fellows for the following year.
These men must demonstrate the maturity, intellectual competence, and
imaginative curiosity to warrant their pursuit of a program of independent
study contributing to their own enrichment and to that of the College. The
Fellows are permitted the maximum amount of freedom consonant with the
satisfactory development and completion of their personal projects. The
freedom can include the waiving of conventional upper-division requirements
in the fellow's major or majors, though applicants for the Senior
Fellowship must complete all proficiency and distribution requirements in
the curriculum. The strongest applicants will have completed most, if not
all, of such requirements by the end of the junior year.
The essence of the Senior Fellowship Program is responsible
individualism. Within a reasonable academic framework, the student is
offered an unsurpassed opportunity for personal intellectual
fulfillment.
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The Senior Fellowship requires a significant number of
hours of independent research, though the precise number may vary. Senior
Fellows will normally carry the equivalent of a fifteen-hour course load,
though they will take no more than three courses from the regular
curriculum. All Senior Fellows will undertake at least six
and at most fifteen hours of independent research during
both semesters of their projects. All independent research, under the
guidance of the advisory committee, will be under the heading Honors 499:
Senior Fellowship in the fall semester and Honors 500: Senior Fellowship in
the spring semester.
Senior Fellows will also be encouraged to undertake Student Summer Research projects, funded like other summer
researchprojects during the summer after their junior year, so that they
may get a head start on the work of their fellowship year. The summer
project may involve a serious course of reading to help the Fellow in his
Senior year, or it may be one of a series of essays that will make up the
Fellowship project. The student must submit, by the application deadlines,
a detailed report of his summer work.
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Senior Fellows will produce in the course of the year a coherent body of
work, but that work normally will be divided into parts, each with its own
deadline. The student, in consultation with his advisory committee, will
define the nature, form, and extent of the written work expected of him.
Every project will be notable for the ambition of the undertaking, though
the formal results will vary in length and form depending on the student's
discipline. In many instances, a series of substantial essays, or chapters,
will be preferable to one long essay or research report. No matter what
approach the student chooses, he must construct during the fall and spring
semesters a carefully annotated bibliography that reflects the range and
depth of his research. The overall project is expected to meet the
standards of scholarly writing appropriate to the discipline(s) in which
the work is done.
Senior Fellows must also submit a written summation of the year's work,
as well as an annotated bibliography and copies of papers produced in the
course of the study. The student's advisory committee will then meet to
evaluate the work and to request revisions if necessary. During the course
of the spring semester, each Senior Fellow will make a public presentation
of his work-in-progress.
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2008 - 2009
Joshua Bohannon -- Religion and Philosophy:
Berkeley and Christology: Or, What Immaterialism Can Do For Orthodox Faith
2007 - 2008
Ross Van Tuyl -- History and English (Literary Analysis):
For God or for Profit: An Economic Reading of Chaucer's 'Shipman's Tale' from The Canterbury Tales
Dashle Kelley -- Economics and Mathematics:
Misfire: The Affects of Minimum Age Laws and Mandatory Hunters' Education Requirements on Hunting
2006 - 2007
Jason Bart -- Classics and Philosophy
An Exploration of Virtue: How Classical Conceptions of Virtue Were Molded to
Fit Christianity
Everett Gardner -- Philosophy and Political Science
Ethics in American Law: Capital Punishment
Garth Patterson -- Economics and Political Science
Under the Lion?s Paw: British Imperial Policy and the Political and Economic
Development of British India 1757 ? 1948
2005 - 2006
Richard Rosendahl -- Economics and Mathematics
Topic:
will study the
relation, if any, between the success of college and university athletic
programs and several variables (endowment, admissions and graduation rates,
etc.) of the institutions
Eamon
Thornton -- English and Philosophy
Topic:
will examine the works of Walker Percy as they relate to existentialism in the
American south
2004 - 2005
Matthew Brady -- Biology and English
Topic: Concepts of selfhood and
Nature/Nurture in Biology and Fiction
Jonathan Foote -- Biology and Religion
Topic: Ideas of Creation
Jordan Gaul -- History and Political Science
Topic: The Politics that Led to the U.S. Civil War
Thomas Nelson -- Economics and History
Topic: Economic History of the U.S. Civil War
Killian Zimmerman -- Biology and Psychology
Topic: The Brain and Behavior of Rats
2003 - 2004
R. Michael Birch -- Political Science & Religion
Topic: "Christian ecclesiastic experience in America"
Mark McKnight -- Religion
Topic "How the carnivalesque informs current and future theological investigations"
Thomas Robbins -- Political Science & Spanish
Topic "Political development in the Andean region of South America"
2002 - 2003
Adam Bowling -- Biology & Religion
Topic: "Ethical and Theological Issues Raised by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer"
Alex Reczkowski -- Mathematics & Fine Arts
Topic "The Golden Mean"
2001 - 2002
No Senior Fellows this year
2000 - 2001
Daniel Larison -- Religion & History
Topic: "The New Iconoclasm: Church Reform, Modernization, and
Eleutherios Venizelos"
1999 - 2000
David C. Phillips -- Political Science & Literature
Topic: "Beyond Politics"
1997 - 1998
Thomas I. Johnson, Jr. -- Religion & Philosophy
Topic: "Christianity's 'Being-in-the-World': the Post-Modern
Question"
1996 - 1997
Bradley K. Gillen -- Social & Political Thought
Topic: "Libertarianism: The Conscience of a Movement"
Adam T. Talaber -- Political Philosophy & Critical Theory
Topic: "Prophets or Puppeteers: Reading Philosophy with Leo Strauss and
Jacques Derrida"
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