Our semester is wrapping up here at LCC. Part of that process is the thesis defenses for our Senior students. They’re each required to write a ~25-40 page thesis following a specific methodology, and then defend that thesis publicly. Each student has a faculty adviser they work with during their Senior year.
For this post, I wanted to express how proud I am of my advisees – they’ve both done strong work and successfully defended their theses. Milvydas Knyzelis successfully created a study looking at the relationship between the 30 Best Restaurants in Lithuania ranking and a restaurant’s activity on Facebook (a quantitative correlational study). Rafeek Malaty successfully examined the requirements of a university in Egypt for their student records system and compared it to potential vendors (a qualitative case study).
Both of these gentlemen are entering the job market here after graduation, and are especially interested in remote work. If you have opportunities for them, please contact them at the links above ^
A few words of reflection:
I’ve avoided being a thesis adviser in the past. I’ve (somewhat reluctantly) participated on the thesis defense panels, and had been an outside reader for theses a few times, but I generally tried to avoid it.
However, the Contemporary Communication program is growing, and I was asked to advise a couple of students this year. I was a little nervous, certainly, about the process. I’ve written my own thesis (for my MA), so I knew the process, but was uncertain that I could help guide two students through that same process.
I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It also required a larger time commitment that I thought it would have – more reading through drafts, helping shape research questions, etc. Learning about new fields and research through my advisees was great, and helping them craft what would become a successful study was very rewarding.
I’m planning on doing it again next year, with a few more students!
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