The Senior Thesis Course
Through the Senior Thesis course, our students engage in rigorous intellectual inquiry, preparing them to become lifelong learners and thoughtful contributors to society.
The Senior Thesis course at Cincinnati Classical Academy represents the pinnacle of our students’ academic experience, providing them with a final opportunity to reflect on the wisdom gained and to apply the skills honed throughout their education. This course plays an essential role in shaping our students’ intellectual and moral formation.
Course Overview
A Culmination of a CLASSICAL Education
Each CLASSICAL senior will formulate a thesis prompt, create an approved reading list built around that prompt— and then research, write and support the thesis, and defend the paper in a public setting. The Senior Thesis prompts are carefully formulated to encourage students to engage with the greatest ideas, works, and minds while grappling with real problems concerning human nature, the human good, and the natural order. Rather than directing students to write mere research papers or report on familiar topics, the prompts challenge them to employ their skills of reading, reasoning, and rhetoric in pursuit of universally accessible truths that are worth knowing for their own sake.
Categories of Senior Thesis
1. GREAT IDEAS
These theses focus on profound concepts that facilitate direct encounters with truth, goodness, and beauty. Students are encouraged to engage with great minds and texts in dialogue, ensuring that their arguments are grounded in rigorous scholarship.
Sample Prompt: What is the good life?
These theses focus on profound concepts that facilitate direct encounters with truth, goodness, and beauty. Students are encouraged to engage with great minds and texts in dialogue, ensuring that their arguments are grounded in rigorous scholarship.
2. GREAT WORKS
Theses in this category encourage students to delve deeply into the wisdom of specific authors or texts, fostering a profound understanding of complex ideas. While students may not engage in dialogue between multiple sources, they gain valuable insights from intensive study.
Sample prompt: Choose one work (or author) and explain what it (he/she) teaches about human nature, the human good, and/or the natural order.
This prompt encourages students to submit to the authority of a text or author while exploring diverse disciplines beyond ethics and politics.
3. GREAT MINDS
Theses centered on great minds offer opportunities for students to emulate the best habits of thought and gain wisdom from eminent thinkers.
Sample prompt: Choose one work (or author) and explain what wisdom it (he/she) teaches.
Students are directed to seek wisdom, whether practical or speculative, across various disciplines.