MFA thesis candidates are required to define the objectives of their thesis/final project as well as the methodology they plan to use. Students work in close collaboration with their faculty advisor and are required to do all the research necessary to present a coherent, realistic and acceptable thesis proposal.

This course is an intermediate course between DDA-606B Graduate Seminar, and DDA-660 Thesis I. The goal of the course is for you to research, develop and plan a Thesis project that you feel excited about and that the Department feels is acceptable. As such, there is no preset list of instructional topics; rather, issues -- conceptual, artistic, and technical -- are dealt with as they are raised by your thesis project ideas. Students are expected to work regularly and at a steady pace, producing research and development progress on their project each week. This requires independence, maturity, self-motivation, and self-scheduling on your part. By the end of the semester, each student will have produced a coherent, thoughtful, and realistic thesis proposal that is exciting to them and acceptable to the DDA Thesis Committee.

Group Meetings

On alternate weeks we will meet as a group. (See the weekly schedule below.) These sessions will be treated as seminars, an opportunity to discuss and get feedback on issues that you are encountering in your thesis project. These issues might be aesthetic, technical, motivational, logistical -- anything that comes up. It is very important that you all play an active role in critiquing each other's work. I would like as much as possible to have you be the ones who do the talking, make the suggestions, ask the questions, raise the issues. rather than have me do that. You should of course support each other, but you should also challenge each other on any and all aspects of the work. By being challenged (in a positive, helpful spirit), you will work together to help each other advance and develop your project and ideas. If there is an issue you are concerned about with your project and no one brings it up, bring it up yourself -- ask for criticism about it.

Individual Meetings

On weeks between the group meetings, I will meet with each of you individually. These individual meetings will be scheduled to take place within the same time-slot that we are using for the group meetings. I will post that schedule of individual meetings on my Pratt website under your course page.

These individual meetings are very important and useful. Sometimes they are most useful exactly when you feel you are stuck; it is still important that you keep your appointment so that we can talk about that. If for some unusual reason you cannot make your appointment one week, please show professional courtesy and let me know ahead of time. Missing your individual appointment will count as an absence in the same way that missing a group-meeting class does..

Additional Appointments

If you wish to meet with me outside of our normally scheduled class time to discuss your project or your situation, speak to me and we will schedule a time to do so. See above for my contact information and office hours.

The goal of the course is for you to refine and improve your research, development and planning of a Thesis project that you feel excited about and that the DDA Thesis Committee will approve for advancement into Thesis I. This will entail developing your historical research, your conceptual underpinnings, your technical tests, and your examples of finished work for your project.

Attendance/Participation

It is extremely important that you attend and fully participate in the weekly classes, both the group meetings and the individual meetings. Please note also that it is Pratt Institute policy that three unexcused absences constitute grounds for an automatic F for the course, and that two latenesses are considered the equivalent of one absence. Arriving more than 10 minutes after the scheduled start of class will be considered late. Arriving more than one hour after the scheduled start time will be considered absent. Students are 100% responsible for their own attendance and must allow for delays due to subways, traffic, etc. If you miss class because of illness, you should bring in a note from your physician to avoid your absence being listed as "unexcused". (Pratt Student Health services can be of help to you here.)

If you miss a session, you are 100% responsible for finding out what you missed and making it up.

Blog Page

Each student will also create a blog page for this course and will keep their blog page up to date with their weekly research, thoughts, tests, and work in progress. This Blog page is extremely important, as it will serve as the record of your day-to-day and week-to-week research and development. Blog pages will be accessible to all students in the class, so your blog page also serves as a way for you to get feedback from other students in the class. Your blog page for this course must be separate from other blogs you may have. It can be embedded within another blog, but it must have a separate link so that we can easily access your entries that are specific to this course.

Student will make blog entries every week except the weeks of Committee presentations. This means you will make a total of 12 weekly research entries in your blog.

* There will be a minimum of 3 entries devoted to technical issues related to your project.
* There will be a minimum of 3 entries devoted to conceptual issues related to your project.
* There will be a minimum of 3 entries devoted to exhibitions, films or artwork that you viewed that week which are related to your project.

The remaining three entries (for the total of 12) can be on any one of the above categories, at your discretion.

Classroom Presentations

Each student will make two formal classroom research presentations on a topic related to the development of their project. Presentations will be prepared with visuals and text as appropriate, and will run approximately 10 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes alloted for discusssion. The schedule of research presentations will be embedded within the weekly Course Schedule immediately below.

Thesis Committee Presentations

Each student will make also two formal presentations to the DDA Thesis Committee on the development of their project. Presentations will be prepared with visuals and text as appropriate. The amount of time allowed each student is usually very short -- in the neighborhood of 5-10 minutes. The final presentation to the Committee will determine whether you advance to Thesis I or not.

There are no required texts or other materials for this course, as each student's thesis project is individual and has its own specific requirements. The instructor may make suggestions and recommendations to individual students.

Your final letter grade will be determined by the quality and the quantity of work you have done throughout the semester. Grades are earned by a combination of effort + quality. It is assumed that all students will work hard. Thus, a grade of A means that you have worked hard and you have done excellent work; a grade of B means you have worked hard and done reasonably good work; a grade of C means your work is weak and just barely meets the minimum standards of the Institute; a grade below C constitutes a failure for graduate-level work. Graduate students are expected to maintain an average of B or better for all their courses.

Calculation of the final grade will be based on the following arithmetic:

Active participation = 15%
Research blogs = 30%
Classroom Presentation#1 = 10%
Classroom Presentation#2 = 10%

First Committee presentation = 15%
Final Committee presentation = 20%

See this link for Pratt's official guidelines for Grading.

Given that graduate students must keep an overall GPA of 3.0 (B), this can be interpreted as follows:

A = Extremely good work
A- = Very good work
B+ = Good work, better than average
B = Reasonably good, but not outstanding
B- = OK, somewhat short of satisfactory
C+ = Slightly better than minimally passing, not acceptable quality
C = Minimally passing, not acceptable quality

Grades below C are considered non-passing at the graduate level

File Storage

As with all DDA courses, each student is 100% responsible for storing all of his or her files on their own removable storage media. You must make permanent backups of your files on regular basis onto your own storage media (Flash, CD, DVD, external HD, etc.). When you do so, please remember to make two backups -- the first is your "original", and the second is your "backup"

CLASSROOM ASSIGNMENTS

It is Pratt Institute policy that work done in one class cannot be submitted to fulfill assignments in another class. It is very possible to do work that overlaps or is closely related in two different courses, but you cannot fulfill two assignment requirements with one piece of work. If you have any questions, discuss the issue with all the instructors involved before proceeding.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

(The following is copied from the Pratt Institute website.)

Pratt Institute considers Academic Integrity highly important. Instances of cheating, plagiarism, and wrongful use of intellectual property will not be tolerated.

• Faculty members will report each incident to the registrar for inclusion in studentsí files.
• More than one report to the registrar during a studentís program of study at Pratt will result in a hearing before the Academic Integrity Board, at which time appropriate sanctions will be decided. These may include dismissal from the Institute.
• The nature and severity of the infraction will be determined by faculty members who can: ask students to repeat an assignment, fail students on the assignment, fail students in the course and/or refer the incident to the Academic Integrity Board.

For more details about these procedures please see the Pratt Student Handbook, the Pratt Bulletins, and the pamphlet entitled Judicial Procedures at Pratt.

CHEATING

If students use dishonest methods to fulfill course requirements, they are cheating. Examples of this include, but are not limited to:

• Obtaining or offering copies of exams or information about the content of exams in advance.
• Bringing notes in any form to a closed book exam.
• Looking at another studentís paper during an exam.
• Receiving or communicating any information from or to another student during an exam.

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is a bit more complicated, but the rules of documentation and citation are very specific and are tailored to different academic disciplines. Types of plagiarism include:

• Including any material from any source other than you in a paper or project without proper attribution. This includes material from the Internet, books, papers, or projects by other students, and from any other source.
• Using your own work to fulfill requirements for more than one course
• The extensive use of the ideas of others in your work without proper attribution.
• Turning in work done by another person or a fellow student as oneís own.

Please remember that all work must be the student's own. If it is not, the source should be cited and documented appropriately.

If there are aspects of this statement that are not understood, ask faculty members for help.

STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

If you have a learning disability, you are strongly encouraged to work with the Offiice of Disability Services (Main Bldg, Tel: 718 636 3711). Through them you can request special accomodations if appropriate. You are also very strongly encouraged to notifiy your instructor if you have a learning disability, as we cannot help you or make accomodations unless we know what your situation is.