Social Ecology Undergraduate Honors Research - SE 190A - 2025-2026

The Honors Seminar allows you to engage in a research project under the supervision of a faculty advisor.  You are expected to present your research project and write it up as a "thesis" or major paper. 

You have been assigned a Liaison Librarian.  We recommend that you contact your assigned librarian and schedule a Research Consultation. 

The research process can be daunting. Where do you start? Research is an iterative process - research questions may evolve as you dive into the scholarly literature; if your project involves collecting data, your literature review may take different shapes as you determine prominent themes. Here are a few tips and strategies to get started.

• Brainstorm your topic: what sub-topics are you interested in? What are some keywords/phrases useful to search this topic?
• Decide what kind of information you're looking for. Different types of sources will offer different perspectives, and you might need to search in different places to discover these different types sources.
  • Books can offer broad overviews or historical context
  • Scholarly articles can offer empirical evidence or more focus on a specific intervention or population
  • Popular newspapers such as New York Times can offer societal context
• Create an outline of your topic. You may need different types of sources for different parts of your project (e.g. an encyclopedia for your Introduction; scholarship for your literature review) and you might need to combine different search terms for different sections of your project.

When you find a promising resource, try the following strategies to find additional material:

• In books, use the Table of Contents to determine if one or two chapters might be useful. You don't have to use the whole book in your project.
• Browse the References list at the end of a chapter or article to find additional sources.
• Copy/paste the article title into Google Scholar and use the "Cited by" feature at the bottom of each citation to find more recent material.
• Always read the Abstract to determine if an article might be useful in your research
• Find the author-supplied keywords or subject heading terms mapped in the catalog to find related material

Getting everything done on time - assuming that is the goal, it is recommended that you engage in the following tasks:

1. Plan your project with your advisor
2. Prepare an outline of your work and final project
3. Meet with Liaison Librarian as needed
4. Conduct a literature search 
5. Determine what style manual you will use for writing your paper - perhaps APA - and learn how you can do this efficiently
6. Consider learning how to use Citation Management Software to organize your citations and be able to cite them accurately and consistently.
7. Consider ways to present information - slides, handouts, poster session, to make it visually as well as content rich, etc.
8. Update information as needed

Library hours change!  Please consult Library Hours.  Also be reminded that Gateway Study Center is available for after-hours and a reservation system will tell you where study spaces in all libraries are available.

If you leave the Libraries late at night, make sure you have a walking companion or call the Safety Escorts (949-824-7233) to accompany you to your car or campus residence.