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| Chapter 3: The Research Proposal
In this regard, we urge you to consult the online course catalogue for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to ensure
that there are faculty teaching courses in the general area of your proposed topic. The catalogue will also tell you
the rank of the instructor involved. Thesis directors must hold the rank of senior lecturer, assistant professor,
associate professor, full professor, or professor emeritus/emerita and be voting members of the Faculty of Arts
and Sciences; or hold a senior-level teaching appointment in one of the other faculties (such as Law, Education,
Medicine). Not all instructors in the Extension program meet these requirements, so the fact that you had a certain
professor in an Extension course does not necessarily mean that this person is eligible to direct an ALM thesis.
How do you choose a research topic? Like any large undertaking, this one is easiest to approach if broken down
into smaller steps. Your first step should be simply to brainstorm: make a list of topics that might interest you.
They may be related to papers you have written for earlier Extension courses, to your reading, or to issues raised
in connection with your work. Let the list take shape over several days or weeks until you have a number of
topics. Then go down the list and rank the topics in order of preference.
Step two involves discussing your list with the research advisor for your field. Bearing his or her responses in mind,
you are now ready to select one topic for step three. Take a blank piece of paper and write briefly what you know
and what you would like to find out about the topic. It will be helpful to keep the following questions in mind:
• What has been said about this subject already?
• Which aspects of this topic remain unexplored or unresolved?
• Do any questionable or erroneous assumptions characterize the previous writings on
this topic?
• Is there a particular method or approach to this topic that might shed new light on it?
Writing in this way tests your interest and also suggests how much you need to discover in order to begin to
prepare a proposal on the chosen topic. If, for example, you are interested in medieval architecture but find that
you cannot think of a single cathedral you know well, then you have a lot of work ahead of you, and you may
want to rethink the topic. If your short essay proves to you that the topic is not worth pursuing, move to the next
on your list of interests and write briefly again, and so on, until you feel satisfied with the topic you have selected.
Once a general research topic has been chosen, the next step should be to find ways to limit it, give it clearer
focus, and shape it into a tightly defined research problem or question. If the problem is too broad, the research
is likely to remain superficial. There will simply be too much material for you to investigate. Conversely, the topic
may be so narrow that not enough material exists to do it justice. You may find yourself fascinated by a particular
topic but discover that there is only one article on it and that it is written in a language you do not read. It is then
wise to choose another topic.
All this does not mean, however, that the thesis cannot deal with important issues. It should. But the mark of a
careful and competent researcher is to know how to pick the proper angle from which to approach an issue.
Consider, for example, the problem of utopias. No thesis could possibly encompass all the ramifications of
this topic. Instead, the investigator might examine utopias created in a particular period or country, or the
psychological or economic ramifications of particular utopian systems. Alternatively, one might focus on the
A Guide to the ALM Thesis