GUIDELINES FOR STUDENTS IN THE M.A. PROGRAM

Revised 9/96

Edited 5/00

Students who pursue the M.A. degree at Earlham School of Religion frequently come here with the clear intention to work toward that degree from the start. The following guidelines are intended to clarify the steps needed to finish the degree in good order.

M.A. students should be immediately aware that courses taken in Applied Theological Studies and in the Spiritual Preparation area normally do not apply toward the M.A. degree.

I. Support Requirements

A. Prerequisites

Students who have not done prior work in Bible and theology will need to take the introductory courses in Old Testament, New Testament and Theology (BIST 101, 102, and THST 101). Students who have studied in these areas have the option of testing out of these courses by passing proficiency exams.

B. Language and Research Skills

There is no general language requirement for the M.A. degree. Certain areas of research require language or other research skills. These are determined by the student's M.A. Committee, but the following pattern is typical.

Students in Biblical Studies are normally required to demonstrate reading proficiently in Hebrew or Greek. This can be satisfied either by examination or by the successful completion of a year of study in the same language. No more than three semester hours of credit in a language, however, may apply toward fulfilling the semester hours needed for graduation.

Students in Theological Studies are normally required to show reading competence in one of the following: German, French, Spanish or Latin, whichever is most appropriate for the thesis research.

A requirement in modern languages can only be fulfilled by examination, since most language courses do not teach theological vocabulary or focus on theological texts. While modern language courses can be taken at Earlham, no credit will be applied to the degree program. It might be possible after a year's work in a language, however, to undertake an Independent Study in, for example, "Theological German," for which up to three semester hours of credit could be given. In such cases regular procedures for Independent Study would be followed.

The Quaker Studies and Peace and Justice areas have no general language requirement. If the M.A. Committee deems that a particular language or research skill is necessary for the proposed thesis project, the student will be responsible for the needed skill. For example, a student focusing on Latin America might be required to know Spanish. Instead of developing competency in a language, students in these areas might be asked to learn some other special skill necessary for competent research of the type required by the proposal. Students should consult with their advisors early in their program to determine if there will be any such requirement.

If a language or research skill is needed, the student should satisfy that requirement as early in the program as possible -- normally by the time twenty-seven semester hours of work has been completed toward the degree. If more time is needed, the student should submit to faculty, through the Academic Dean, a specific proposal for filling that requirement. The language requirement must be fulfilled before beginning research on the thesis project. The skill should be learned early and used in doing research for the thesis.

A student may petition the Academic Dean to take a language examination at any time during a semester, but must submit the request at least two weeks prior to the proposed exam date. The exam will ask the student to translate into English a text both in the language and relevant to the area of concentration. The exam may last up to but not more than two hours. No more than two attempts may be made per semester.

Students who plan to pursue a doctoral program should think seriously about pursuing language studies concurrent with the M.A. degree work. Most Ph.D. programs in religious studies require two modern languages, plus other appropriate languages, e.g. Hebrew, Greek, or Latin.

II. Application For Degree Candidacy

A. General Comments

M.A. students must submit an application for candidacy for the M.A. Degree. This includes a petition for candidacy itself, a proposal for a thesis project and a list of the proposed M.A. Committee. This application should come immediately after the student has completed fifteen semester hours of work toward the degree, which ideally should complete a significant portion of the foundational work in Biblical studies, theology and Church history. For students carrying a full load, this application should come early in the spring semester of the first year.

The petition and proposal should be submitted to the student's advisor at least a week before the regularly scheduled faculty meeting at which it will be considered. When satisfied with the proposal, the advisor will sign the petition and forward it to the M.A. Committee, who will recommend action to the faculty. These forms are available from the Academic Services Office on the second floor of the Bethany Building.

The Academic Dean will send a letter to the student, conveying the Faculty's decision.

During the time in which the student is completing the first fifteen semester hours, thought should be given to possible thesis topics. These should be discussed with faculty who have expertise in the area of a given topic. This is especially important, since early ideas sometimes prove unworkable after consultation reveals what the project would entail.

B. Steps In The Process

There are three important decisions connected with the preparation of the M.A. student's "Application for Degree Candidacy."

1. Choose An Area Of Emphasis

The student must decide on an area of emphasis. ESR offers specialization in four such areas: Biblical Studies, Christian Theology, Quaker Faith and History, and Peace and Justice Studies. A proposal should grow out of a decision to concentrate studies in one of these four areas.

2. Choose The Traditional Thesis Or The Three-Paper Option

a. The Traditional Thesis

For the traditional thesis, the student chooses a specific topic. This is often a difficult task. The tendency often is to choose a topic too vague, so that it is impossible for the student's M.A. Committee or the Faculty to be sure what the student intends to do. The topic should be sufficiently attractive to sustain passionate interest and sufficiently focused to get the depths of it in a thesis length essay. It is best to consult with some person on the faculty with expertise in one of the four areas of emphasis before writing a proposal. Faculty input will be valuable in helping the student specify research intentions and phrasing of the topic and thesis proposal.

Along with the proposal should come a bibliography, showing the student's preliminary research. This bibliography is not supposed to be exhaustive, but rather representative. In most cases, 30 or so bibliographical entries of books and articles will be sufficient to give the faculty an idea of how the student is framing the proposal bibliographically.

b. The Three-paper Option

The three-paper-option thesis is somewhat more complicated. These papers have their origin in additional courses, or independent studies, that the student takes beyond those required for the degree. Each paper will be on a separate topic, but the topics together must have an internal relatedness that is academically interesting. The proposal should list each of these papers separately, with a shorter bibliography for each, and should include the rationale for the three papers. It should also include the three courses or independent studies in which these papers have their origin.

The Faculty of ESR wish to make clear that even exceptionally well done papers in the context of courses may prove inadequate to the M.A. Committee, which will be evaluating the three papers not in relation to course work but in relation to Thesis work.

The quality of all thesis work, whether a traditional thesis or a three-paper option, should come up to that expected for publishable academic work.

3. Choose A Two-Member M.A. Committee.

The student must suggest a two-member M.A. Committee, one of whom will be the chairperson. While the faculty will not be bound by the suggestions, they will certainly take them into serious consideration when it makes its decision about the Committee.

There are two matters which will be important to consider here. One has to do with the question of faculty leaves of absence and sabbaticals, and the other has to do with eligibility to serve on the Committee.

The student should consult with any potential members of his Committee to make sure that person will be available to read the Thesis when it is submitted and work with the student through the revisions and into the Oral Examination. Faculty on leave or on sabbatical do not read theses.

Ordinarily, only ESR or Bethany faculty will constitute a thesis committee. Sometimes Earlham College faculty members may be asked to serve either as one of the two regular members or as a special third consultative member. In either case, their generous agreement to serve must be recognized as an "over and above" responsibility added to their full-time college duties. We can only request their help, we cannot presume it. Furthermore, it will be an extremely rare case when someone not employed as Earlham or Bethany faculty would be approved to serve as a regular committee member.

III. The Meaning Of Candidacy

Admission to candidacy by the faculty means that they believe the student has demonstrated the academic ability to pursue the research and writing proposal which the student presented to them. Of course, admission to candidacy is not a guarantee of graduation! There remain the course work yet to be taken and the completion of a demanding program of thesis research and writing, as well as the passing of the oral examination.

Students should be aware that thesis work demands the motivation and capacity to carry forward independent work at a higher level of accomplishment than in typical course work. The student needs to enter this work with high motivation and commitment of time.

IV. Credit For The Thesis

After receiving approval for the thesis project, students must enroll for nine semester-hours of thesis credit, but no more, before receiving the degree. Any semester hours taken as part of extra courses in the three-paper option will substitute for that portion of the nine semester-hours of thesis work. The Business Office bills semester hours taken for thesis work at the same rate as other courses.

V. Researching And Writing The Thesis: Option #1: The Traditional Thesis

A. Style And Length Expectations

ESR has as its style manual Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers. Theses, and Dissertations, the latest edition. Copies of this are available in the Earlham Bookstore.

Theses that do not conform to one of the formats in Turabian will not be accepted. The M.A. student should take time at the beginning of his ESR career to learn the correct form. It will save a lot of grief in the future!

Remember, the Committee's responsibility is to evaluate the content of a thesis. It is the student's responsibility to put that content into a readable, grammatically accurate and technically consistent stylistic form.

Students very often ask how long a thesis they are to write. There is no set number of pages required. The purely formal answer to the question is that it should be as long as is necessary adequately to cover the topic chosen. A check of recent M.A. theses at ESR will show that the average length has been about 100 pages. This comes to about 25,000 words, which is a better way of thinking about length because of today's variation in font size on our computers.

B. Time Needed To Write The Thesis

As a rough rule of thumb, our experience has shown that the minimal amount of time which has been required from the start of the formal research after submission of the proposal to the submitting of the first draft is about six months. It is the nearly universal experience of all thesis writers at ESR and elsewhere that the process of writing itself takes substantially longer than initially planned. A student should not be surprised or discouraged if the process takes longer than the "ideal" schedule.

The completion of a thesis has everything to do with achieving a certain level of research and writing and little to do with pre-determined time schedules. This is a word of benefit for the wise.

C. The First Draft

This is NOT a rough draft and NOT a preliminary study. It is the final best job the student can do. Thus it is the first draft of the completed project. It should be free of typos, and should be formatted in good style, following Turabian.

The student's M.A. Committee will wish to see earlier, preliminary drafts, but these must be scheduled so that a final First Draft is to the Committee no later than February 1. The student, therefore, needs to back up from the February 1 deadline to form earlier deadlines so that this one can be met with good copy.

If the First Draft is not as good as the student can get it, the likelihood of a May graduation is close to zero.

For a December graduation, the First Draft is due October 1.

D. Consultation With Thesis Committee

Upon submitting the First Draft, the student should meet with the members of the thesis committee either individually or in a committee meeting. This will give the committee an opportunity to review the thesis with the student and to indicate any necessary changes. It is the student's responsibility to arrange the meeting(s). In setting meeting date(s), allow two week's reading time for the committee members between the time of submitting the draft and the date of the meeting(s).

E. Revision Of The First Draft

The changes needed may be substantial or they may be very minimal. They may have to do primarily with form or primarily with content. Usually the changes required involve elements of both. The best way to avoid the necessity of substantial re-writing or re-constructing the thesis is to keep close check with your committee chairperson as you are developing your thesis project.

An acceptable reworked draft should be in the hands of the committee by March 1, or November 1.

F. The Oral Exam

After the committee has granted initial acceptance of the thesis, the student will be ready to stand oral examination. The oral must be completed successfully by April 1 for the student to graduate in May, or by November 15 for a December degree.

This examination will be organized by the chairperson of the M.A. Committee and will last approximately two hours. A student may petition his committee for someone outside the ESR/Bethany faculty or the Earlham College faculty to be invited to the oral exam. The committee itself may decide that it wishes to invite such a person or persons. In all cases, however, both the student and the committee will know in advance who will be present. At the conclusion of the examination the student will be excused and the committee will decide about the acceptability of the student's performance in the exam. The student will be recalled and informed of the committee's decision.

G. The Final Draft

After completing the oral exam, the student is ready to type the final draft. The purpose of this is to produce a neat copy that is perfect in terms of all the surface characteristics of a published work, which indeed this draft will be. One copy will be placed in Lilly Library, and one will be housed at ESR.

The final draft of the thesis is to be printed on 20 weight, 75-100 percent rag bond paper. No fancy or colored script should be used, but a standard font, twelve point, in black ink. A high quality printer should be used.

If someone else is typing the final copy, the student should provide that person with a copy of Turabian's Manual just in case there are questions about the required typed form. It is a good policy to look at the first ten pages before the typist proceeds to make sure the typist knows what the form should be. It is better to find stylistic errors in the first ten pages than throughout the first hundred!

The student should fill out, sign and attach to the front of the Final Draft a "Permission Form For Copying Of Thesis," which is available from the Academic Services Office.

In addition to the original typed copy of the Final Draft, the student should make two photo copies and submit all three to the secretary for Academic Services. After having each copy bound, Academic Services sends the original to Lilly Library for cataloging and shelving, one copy to the Academic Dean at the School of Religion for shelving in RBC, and the second copy to the student, who will be billed for the cost of binding all three copies and for mailing.

The final draft must be in the Academic Services Office no later than May 1 for May graduation or December 1 for December completion.

VI. Researching And Writing The Thesis: Option #2: The Three-paper Option

Students who decide for the three-paper option in the masters degree program do not write a traditional thesis, but they do write three major research papers. All the processes and deadlines above, however, apply to this thesis project as well as the traditional one, with some provisions.

1. A student may complete the three papers separately from each other. Because of this, the student must plan these completions carefully, with the understanding that the submission of the First Draft constitutes the submission of all three papers, with all the research and writing already accomplished that is needed to bring the collective work up to thesis quality. Everything said above about the First Draft of the traditional thesis applies to the set of three papers as a whole.

2. It is important to remember that a paper might be judged acceptable--perhaps even of "superior" quality-- for fulfilling the requirements of the course in which it was originally written but judged unacceptable as a major research paper in a thesis project. In such cases, the M.A. Committee will indicate the needed revisions and improvements. Students should finish these papers in plenty of time to engage in such revisions.

VII. Summary of deadlines and timing

After fifteen semester hours of M.A. study: submit an M.A. Application For Degree Candidacy.

Before completing twenty-seven hours of M.A. study: demonstrate research-language competency.

By February 1: submit the First Draft. (October 1 for December graduation.)

Schedule a consultation with the M.A. Committee: allow two weeks reading time for Committee members.

By March 1: Submit a revised thesis to the Committee. (November 1 for December graduation.)

By April 1: Oral Examination. (November 15 for December graduation.)

By May 1: submit the Final Draft of the Thesis and two copies to Academic Services. (December 1 for December graduation.)

Any exception to these deadlines will require special action by the Faculty. Students graduating in December will be reckoned with the following May class of that academic year and will be listed on the May convocation program.

All work for the Master of Arts degree, including approval of the thesis and the passing of the oral examination, must be completed within five years of the date of enrollment at ESR. If added time is needed, applications for extension will be considered by the faculty on an annual basis. These extensions must be requested before the five year period or any previous extension expires.