Senior Thesis

The Senior Thesis, the signature effort of a student’s education at The Summit Academy, is a sustained performance in the liberal arts. It is not a work of specialized research, but the extended pursuit of a difficult question in dialogue with a great author. Texts must be either included in or closely related to the Summit curriculum. Students are encouraged to plumb any of the liberal arts for works they love that raise questions they feel called to pursue. Literary and historical works are, of course, on the table: but so are mathematical proofs, musical scores, and libretti; masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and painting; theological and philosophical treatises; seminal works of scientific thought; great experiments and inventions; political documents, laws, and encyclicals—anything, in short, with a voice in the “Great Conversation.”

Apprenticed to faculty advisors, students choose their texts and topics midway through Junior year, read and reflect over the summer months, and plan, compose, and revise three drafts of a 12-15 page essay, which they defend before a panel of faculty readers after presenting an 8 page abridgment to an all-school assembly open to the whole community. The three strongest theses, as determined by faculty vote, advance to Senior Thesis Finals, a public evening event at which finalists present and defend their theses a second time before a distinguished panel of guest judges, who award the Senior Thesis Prize.

Senior Thesis Winners

Molly Tierney, Class of 2025 Winner
Magnanimità per Difficoltà: Enlarging the Soul Through Life’s Struggles in Manzoni’s I promessi sposi

Emily Warnick, Class of 2024 Winner
Gloria Dei Est Homo Vivens: Art, Freedom, and the Way of Beauty in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy

Isabella Malanga, Class of 2023 Winner
Paradise Found: An Exploration of God’s Providence and Justice through Milton’s Paradise Lost

Kate Delaney, Class of 2022 Winner
“One of Them Had to Stop Burning”: An Exploration of Human Nature Through Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

Grace Finch, Class of 2021 Winner
Physics and Philosophy: A Defense of Hylomorphism from the Perspective of Quantum Physics

Anthony DeTrane, Class of 2020 Winner
The Godfather Parts I & II: The Tragic Consequences of a Machiavellian Power

Jacob Malcolm, Class of 2019 Winner
Signposts of Transcendence in G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy: How Paradox Opens Us Up to Transcendence