A thesis can be an important part of undergraduate studies. Special attention needs to be paid to the choice of the topic, the pursuit of the thesis, its write-up and its presentation. The thesis is supervised by a faculty member. It is a personal undertaking, assigned by the faculty member only to one student, not to a group of students.

The work is supposed to be exclusively performed by the student under the supervision of the faculty member. Any interference of a third person in this process without the supervisor’s consent is considered plagiarism and is punishable as such.

Undergraduate theses are assigned at the beginning of the Fall Semester of every academic year. They can be carried out during two academic semesters which must necessarily be the Fall and Spring Semester of the same academic year.  Registering for the elective course “Undergraduate Thesis” can only be done during the Spring Semester. The credit units are the maximum allowable number. The course should be normally completed by June 1^st. This is the minimum allowable time period and can be automatically extended until September 30^th if the supervising faculty member feels that this is necessary in order to optimize the final outcome.

Students work on their theses by their own initiative, under the guidance of their supervisors. The thesis is not meant to be a seminar-type course project. It should be viewed as the student’s most important undergraduate project and accompanying text, representative of their whole undergraduate experience. The presentation and examination of the thesis takes place in front of a 3-member faculty committee.

The evaluation of the thesis is based on the completeness of its content, the extent of its originality, the degree of the student’s handling of the demands of the topic and the supervisor’s instructions, the aesthetic quality of the write-up and the oral presentation and examination. After completion of the examination, the committee fills out and signs the relevant report form which includes a grade for the course (on a 0-10 scale). It is the supervisor’s responsibility to forward the report form to the Departmental Secretary’s office together with the grade report from the electronic grade system.