You should consult the HSU Graduate Student Format Handbook issued by HSU's Office for Research and Graduate Studies for a detailed discussion of the M.A. project.  What follows is a brief explanation.

Every master's program in the CSU System must require a culminating experience consisting of a thesis, comprehensive exam, or project. If a project is required, it may be bound or unbound.  The HSU English Department has chosen to require an unbound project.

The Format Handbook's official definitions of "thesis" and "project" are similar. While the flexibility afforded by the "project" is perhaps most advantageous for students in the MATW and the MI Program, the English Department has opted, for consistency's sake, to require a project of all its master's candidates:

Although bound projects must follow the manuscript format requirements of the thesis and are archived in the university library, unbound projects are governed by regulations specific to the department in which they originate and are usually retained in the department's own library.  Because the English Department requires an unbound project, it has established its own regulations that are set forth here.  While the Format Handbook is still useful for general purposes, its detailed information on manuscript format in Part II is intended for writers of theses and bound projects, not for writers of unbound projects.  You should therefore not assume you must follow every stated requirement that you find there, as the English Department's requirements are many ways less stringent.  However, since the English Department's requirements relating to many topics--acceptable fonts, spacing, and pagination, for example--are based on those in the Format Handbook, you may still want to consult it for further guidance. The Format Handbook is also a useful source for guidance on special problems--how to incorporate tables and figures and other illustrative material, for example.

You can begin thinking of questions you might like to investigate in a project as soon as you begin your course work.  In writing your seminar papers you may discover an issue that you would like to explore more deeply in a project.  The assignments and discussions in English 600 (Fundamentals of Research) should assist you in clarifying goals for your project.

The Graduate Coordinator can discuss your plans for a project with you and help you select one or more faculty members knowledgeable in your area of interest.  After obtaining the approval of an advisor and a second reader who will supervise their project, candidates will enroll in English 690, Master's Project, in the last semester of residency.

The Second Reader
The addition of a second reader brings the practices of our program more closely in line with those of other M.A. programs on campus (and around the country, for that matter). With a project advisor and a second reader, you're effectively working with a mini-committee, which gives you the benefit of more expertise and experience.

At the beginning of the project, you, your advisor, and your second reader should sit down together and come to a common understanding about what's expected when. Does your abstract need revising or refining? Does your reading list need to be pared or augmented? Do you need more time to digest and discuss the research and reading you've done? Do you need help shoring up your understanding of this material or determining its implications for the scope and structure of your argument? Once these preliminaries have been addressed, then what? Weekly meetings? Bi-weekly? 10 pages of new text and 10 pages of revised text each time? The second reader should have substantial involvement in your project from the very beginning, and must not be brought in at the last minute. That is: s/he is not a rubber stamp, and while your adivsor will have the last word over your project's approval, the second reader's comments should be taken seriously, as s/he is not obliged to sign off on something s/he feels is unworthy of an M.A. The exact terms of your working relations will be determined by the three of you; the earlier you agree upon this, the more harmonious and predictable the process is likely to be.

You should have what all parties consider a "near-final" draft to your advisor and second reader no later than 30 days before commencement (in Fall, the Friday before Thanksgiving Break). The rationale for these daunting dates has to do partly with courtesy, partly with logistics, and partly with avoiding unpleasant surprises. The Office of Research and Graduate Studies needs final project approval forms from the English Department no later than the last day of exam week--and that's taking it right down to the wire. Our internal deadlines, then, allow one week for your readers to turn around that draft to you, two weeks for you to respond to any final requests for revisions, and (assuming your revisions are satisfactory) another week for the Grad Coordinator and the Program Assistant to process all the paperwork. (It's not uncommon for twenty projects to be filed in the final weeks of Spring semester!)

If your project is interdisciplinary in nature, you may (with the Graduate Coordinator's approval) ask members of other departments to serve as consultants or outside readers, although the English Department will retain the final responsibility for supervision and approval.  Students wishing to complete requirements for both the Literature and Teaching of Writing emphasis must submit a different project for each emphasis.

Qualified writers of fiction or poetry may be permitted to complete a project in one of those areas, under the direction of a professional writer in the department.  Normally, only candidates for the literary emphasis will undertake such projects.  MATW students wishing to do "creative" projects must include, as part of their project, an explanation of how their creative work relates to the teaching of writing.

A.  Thesis or Project Proposal Abstract Form

The form entitled "Thesis or Project Proposal Abstract Form" should be included with your other candidacy papers ("Advancement to Candidacy Form" and "Approved Graduate Course List"), which must be submitted before enrolling in your last nine units of study.  Your Proposal Abstract should summarize and describe the project's significance, objectives, methodology, and conclusions or recommendations.  You can download these forms via our website.

You should be aware that some Project Advisors will require that you write a longer proposal in addition to this short Proposal Abstract that you include with your candidacy papers.  Check with your Project Advisor to learn whether you will be expected to prepare a proposal in addition to the Proposal Abstract required by the Office of Graduate Studies.

B.  Request for Program Variation or Waiver Form

If in working on your project you find that it has changed so that your original Proposal Abstract no longer fits, you should rewrite your Proposal Abstract and submit your new one, using a "Request for Program Variation or Waiver" form, also available via the "forms" page of our website. If your project doesn't change significantly, you don't need to file this form.

C.  Unbound Project Approval Form

The "Unbound Project Approval" form, which must be signed by your Project Advisor, the Graduate Coordinator, and the Chair of the Department, must be submitted after you have finished your project.  You should submit this form (with the required signatures) to the English Department when you turn in your two copies of your project.  (Your two copies and this form are due 15 days before the date of graduation.  See "Deadlines" below.)  The Records office will not issue a degree without this form.  Students sometimes assume that if their Project Advisor submits a grade for English 690, the grade is enough to authorize Records to issue a degree.  This assumption is incorrect; you need to submit the "Unbound Project Approval" form. 

As required by federal law, HSU has procedures for ensuring the protection of human subjects in research projects.  Most research done in English is exempt from the policy.  Nevertheless, if you plan on doing research involving human subjects survey, for example you must still submit a research proposal to the Institutional Review Board, Office for Research and Graduate Studies.  Most M.A. students in English whose research involves human subjects need only submit a request for an exemption.  See the Graduate Coordinator for more information.  You should also obtain a form entitled "Human Subjects in Research:  Brief Instructions for Obtaining Approval from the HSU Institutional Review Board."  This form is distributed to students in English 600, but it can be obtained at any time from the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, 130 Siemens Hall.

You should discuss with your Project Advisor and second reader how often, and at what dates, they would like to see rough drafts of your work.  You and your Project Advisor should also determine at what point the second reader will begin reviewing and commenting upon your drafts. You should plan on submitting a complete rough draft to your Advisor and second reader well before the deadline below, in order to allow ample time for revisions (which may in some instances be substantial).  Two copies of the final draft of your project must be turned in to the English Department, together with a copy of your "Unbound Project Approval" form signed by both your Project Advisor and your second reader. This form is similar to, but not the same as, the third page of your candidacy forms. Once the two copies of the project are submitted with the completed Unbound Project Approval Form, signed off by the Project Advisor and your second reader, you will have discharged your responsibilities with regard your project at the department level. The Office of Research and Graduate Studies will review the Unbound Project Approval Form for accuracy, but the project remains in the department.

The deadlines for final submission of your project to your Project Advisor will be as follows:

FALL SEMESTER: The Friday before Thanksgiving break.

SPRING SEMESTER: 30 days before the Commencement Ceremonies.

Two copies of the project (in final form) are required.  While both are initially given to the Graduate Program Assistant, ultimately one copy is given to your Advisor and the other is placed in a loose-leaf binder and kept in the English Department office (in Room 201A) where it can be read by students and faculty.  Both copies should be submitted with the pages paper-clipped or clamped, but not bound or covered in any way. 

A. Style Manual

You should use the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th Edition, as a general guide.  When in doubt, follow this guide.

B.  Type

The body of the project should be word-processed and double-spaced, and it should use one side of the page only. Use 12 pt. type and a standard font such as Times New Roman.  Smaller or larger type is acceptable for headings, illustrations, tables, and other special cases, but the entire body of the manuscript should be in the same size and style of type.

C.  Title Page

(subsection under revision)

D.  Page Breaks

It is the author's responsibility to ensure that page breaks occur in appropriate places.  (Use the "Widow/Orphan" function of your word processing program.) For example:

All pages of the project from the title page to the last page of the appendices are counted, but not necessarily numbered.  Small case Roman numerals are employed for the Introduction, Table of Contents, etc., and should be placed at the bottom (center) of the page.  Number the pages of the body of the project with Arabic numbers beginning with the first page of the first chapter or section that follows the introduction.  The first page of sections/chapters, the Works Cited page, and any appendices should be paginated at the bottom (center) of the page.  On all other text pages, place the numbers in the upper right-hand corner, one-half inch from the top.  Do not embellish your numbers with parentheses, hyphens or any other punctuation.  Although the MLA Handbook, your guide for most matters, suggests a running head that includes your name before each page number, all you should include is the page number, unaccompanied by name or embellishment, lonely but not forlorn, in the upper right-hand corner. (The "Header/Footer" function of your word processing program should allow you to make all necessary variations.)

F.  Margins

For margins, follow the MLA Handbook:

G.  Quality of Copies

Copies must be submitted on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper with a pH of 7 or higher (i.e. the paper must be neutral or alkaline).  All copies must be clean, that is:

You should use parenthetical documentation, not footnotes or endnotes, to indicate sources. When using parenthetical documentation, you may use footnotes or endnotes as content notes or bibliographic notes.  Here's how the MLA Handbook defines these kinds of notes:

Medieval Europe was a place both of "raids, pillages, slavery, and extortion" and of "traveling merchants, monetary exchange, towns if not cities, and active markets in grain" (Townsend 10).

The parenthetical reference ("Townsend 10") indicates that the quotations come from page 10 of a work by Townsend. Given the author's last name, your readers can find complete publication information for the source in the alphabetically arranged list of works cited that follows the text of your paper.

Townsend, Robert M.  The Medieval Village Economy.  Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.

The MLA Handbook recommends keeping parenthetical references concise.  If you include an author's name in a sentence, you don't need to repeat it in the parenthetical page citation that follows:

Rubinstein, Arye.  "Children with AIDS and the Public Risk." AIDS: Facts and Issues.  Ed. Victor Gong and Norman Rudnick.  New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1986.  99-103.

Spear, Karen.  "Building Cognitive Skills in Basic Writers." Teaching English in the Two-Year College 9 (1983): 91-98.

Lyon, George Ella.  "Contemporary Appalachian Poetry: Sources and Directions."  Kentucky Review 2.2 (1981): 3-22.

• An article from a weekly or biweekly periodical:
  

  Begley, Sharon.  "A Healthy Dose of Laughter."  Newsweek 4 Oct. 1982: 24-26.