Current Students
Frequently Asked
Questions |
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should I do a Master's project? What's the difference between a directed project, a thesis and a practicum? What courses do I need to take before I can write my thesis-practicum? How do I choose a faculty advisor? What can I expect from my faculty advisor? How do I choose a topic? What skills are required in writing a Master's project? What other resources are available to me?
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Why
should I do a thesis-practicum project?
The Public Services faculty views the Master's project as the capstone of your graduate career. This project challenges you to draw on many of the aspects you have mastered to complete this degree: an in-depth knowledge of the nonprofit and governmental service sectors, a broad understanding of management issues, familiarity with research methods, program evaluation or policy analysis, and proficiency in the use of budgeting or statistical tools. Which aspects of your Public Services education you decide to use depends on the nature of the project you design. The project calls for the use of multiple skills and the demonstrated ability to conceive and carry out a complex academic assignment. The completion of such a project demonstrates a level of competence often required for positions in the nonprofit or governmental sector or a further career in academia. |
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What's
the difference between a thesis and a practicum?
The Directed Project is the standard final project for MPS students. It is intended to simulate a real world experience. Managers rarely have time to conduct formal academic research; they are usually inundated with data and must learn to sift it and make sense of it. In the Directed Project you will be given a choice of several large databases to work with. You will conceive of a question that can be answered using this data, do a literature search to see what practitioners and scholars have found in exploring related questions and you will use your data to answer the question. The final paper is usually shorter than a thesis or practicum. Being permitted to do a thesis or practicum is an honor, and it requires a grade point average of 3.5 or above, you may write a thesis or practicum. The distinction between a thesis and practicum is not precise; it would be more accurate to think of it as a continuum. Some projects clearly fall into the category of a thesis or a practicum. Others, depending on how they are structured and written, could be either. Both approaches use a wide range of methods and require high quality writing. Examples of MPS/HLP theses and practica are listed in Appendix A. In brief, a thesis is
an academic piece. It is based on theory and its purpose is the
development of knowledge. It includes an extensive literature review
that considers the relevant theoretical and published research work.
Conclusions are based on the analyses of collected data, whether
collected by you or someone else. |
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What courses do I need to take before I can write my thesis-practicum?
The Master's project requires two courses: 585 Problem Design (2 credit hours), and 595 Practicum in Administration and Policy Analysis or 598 Thesis Research I (4 credit hours). We offer these courses sequentially and you must take 595/598 in the quarter following 585 with the same Professor. |
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How
do I choose a faculty advisor? The Public Services Program relies on a single faculty advisor for the Master's Project (the Professor for the 585 and 595 class). In working on the project, you need to be familiar with that Professor's requirements and standards for the project. Many of these requirements will be spelled out in the syllabus for 585. Your faculty advisor will be your 585 instructor. |
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What can I expect from my faculty advisor?
A few tips: • See the advisor regularly while working on the project. Regular appointments help keep you motivated to continue working, reduce the chances that the advisor will require that you rewrite a substantial portion of the work, and assist in timely completion of the project. • Similarly, submit chapter drafts as each are ready, rather than waiting until you have a completed project. • Keep in mind that the advisor still has other, regular duties such as classes, advising, research, and departmental work. • For some advisors, it may not be possible to review drafts in less than a week or two. Remember, as the deadline for the final drafts approaches, the advisor is likely to be inundated with drafts. • Although the faculty members attempt to accommodate students' needs and schedules, you should not expect that an advisor will review a draft in one or two days or work through university or summer holidays to ensure that you finish according to your schedule. Moreover, if you intend to graduate in the Spring, you should plan on having your thesis signed-off in mid-May. |
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How do I choose a topic?
In a directed project, you will sift through available data until something strikes you as interesting or unusual. For example, you might observe that perception of crime fell between 1996 and 1999. You will then formulate at least on hypothesis about why this is true and test it, but first, you review the literature. You see that the crime rate actually fell. Good, but how do people form perceptions? What does the literature say? Experience and media influence. If personal experience is the key, you would expect men's and women's perceptions to change at the same rate. If the media strongly influences perceptions, you would expect that the most highly educated persons, who read papers and watch news broadcasts, would perceive a bigger drop in crime than others with less education. These hypotheses are testable using the same data set. This is how a directed project works.
Selecting a topic is
one of the more critical and difficult tasks in the project process.
As the project requires considerable work, the topic should be of
strong interest to you and hold professional benefit as well. The
topic must be of appropriate scope. Topics that are too broad require
more time, more resources and more advanced skills than is feasible
for a thesis-practicum project. |
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What skills are required in writing a thesis-practicum?
Writing. Completing the Master's Project requires you to write clearly, logically, and concisely. It may be the longest document you will write. It presents challenges about organization and continuity that are more pronounced than with shorter papers. The MPS program offers a non-credit writing course to assist students who want to strengthen their writing skills. DePaul's Writing Center may be of help to you too. Computer software. At a minimum, master a word processing package before beginning the thesis-practicum project. The project always requires multiple revisions, making other means of preparing the report tedious and time-intensive. Other possible uses of computer software programs include the following: • producing graphs and tables (e.g., Excel or Harvard Graphics) • creating relational databases (e.g., Paradox or Access) • creating and analyzing quantitative databases (e.g., Paradox or Access) • creating and analyzing quantitative data bases (e.g., SPSS, Lotus, Excel or Minitab), and • creating and analyzing qualitative databases (e.g., Ethnograph). While certainly not all research projects require such software programs, anticipate your needs by exploring your software options early in the process Library Skills. The library offers access to the holdings of 41 Illinois libraries through Illinet On-line and the catalogs of more than 800 Illinois libraries. (You can also access Illinet through a DePaul Online Internet connection.) Access to periodicals and other information sources is available through online and CD-ROM databases at each campus. If you are unfamiliar with these methods of searching for sources, check for library workshops or request such a workshop during the MPS 585 class. Familiarity with these tools will considerably facilitate the literature search. Exploring internships. An internship may be useful in developing a thesis-practicum project (more often a practicum project). An internship may provide useful background in a field, personal contacts with professionals, and even ideals for a particular project with a particular agency. Keep in mind that any work done for an internship may not be submitted as a thesis-practicum project. |
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What
other resources are available to me? Public Services student research funds. You may be eligible to secure a small grant, made possible by alumni contributions, for out-of-pocket expenses. Grants range from $50 to $125 and cover expenses such as phone calls, stationery, postage, photocopies, and local travel. See Appendix B in the handbook for a copy of the application or contact the Program Director. The Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development. The Chaddick Institute offers two resources if you are studying urban planning and land use issues: access to computer software for mapping data and partial tuition reimbursement if you are doing more extensive work on areas of interest to the Institute. Contact the Director of the Institute. Reference librarians. The reference librarians at DePaul will meet with you for 30 minutes to provide assistance with a literature search. Make an appointment if you are having problems finding relevant literature or are unfamiliar with the process. DePaul computer labs. Computer labs are available at all campuses. You do not need to open a computer account or pay fees to access a PC and its software. The PC's have word processing programs, spreadsheets, and statistical programs. To check on the availability of a specific program, contact the University's Information Technology Office. The computer labs also offer workshops each quarter for various programs. Check at the computer labs for a schedule of workshops. The lab assistants may only be able to provide limited assistance with your software program; you may need to rely on tutorials or manuals. Writing Center. The Writing Center, with offices at the Loop and Lincoln Park campuses, provides consultation six days a week. Make an appointment if you are in need of more than a brief consultation. Special library collections. A number of libraries in the Chicago area have special collections. A few are listed here. • Several libraries in the Chicago area are repositories for federal documents: Northwestern University, University of Chicago at Illinois, and the Harold Washington Public Library. • The Municipal Reference Library, which is housed in the Harold Washington Public Library, contains an abundance of material on Chicago that is unavailable elsewhere. Access is limited. • The Transportation Library at Northwestern University has an extensive collection of materials on both transportation and police/crime issues. The materials include pamphlets, technical reports, and research documents that may be difficult to obtain elsewhere. • The DePaul University Library has an archival collection of the Chicago Defender. • The American Hospital Association library is open to the public on a limited basis; materials can be used in the library only. Located at Franklin and Madison, the library is an excellent resource for many aspects of health care (not just hospitals) and has a particularly good collection of journals. • The John Crerar Library at the University of Chicago has medical, science, and technology collections, including an extensive collection of journals. The library is open to non-students during limited hours. • The Donors Forum Library at 208 South LaSalle has a narrowly focused collection on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, including limited financial information on local nonprofit charities and national grantmaking foundations. Other sources of information. This list may help you think of other places from which to obtain information: • The government documents store at State and Van Buren has a limited selection of government documents for sale and a listing of government documents available throughout the mail or the Internet. • The Chicago Health Policy Research Group has a wide range of free data sets available. These data sets include the national health interview surveys and special data sets on Chicago area health issues. • The Metropolitan Chicago Information Center provides research services to member organizations. It conducts an Annual Metro Survey of more than 3,000 Chicago-area households. The Center also offers reports that are useful to nonprofit organizations. DePaul University is an MCIC member organization and the library has copies of its reports. • Data archives at the University of Michigan contain the databases from a very large number of research projects, including any project funded by the federal government. You may find a listing of the available databases at the DePaul library. Before ordering a database, check with your faculty advisor about its utility for your project. Check with the Information Technology Office to see whether you can obtain help in using the database. Back to top |
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