Looking Back on Undergraduate Research: Chris Lu ’88 on Public Service

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In a continuation of last year’s seasonal series, this winter, each PCUR will interview a Princeton alumnus from their home department about his/her experience writing a senior thesis. In Looking Back on Undergraduate Research: Alumni Perspectives, the alumni reveal how conducting independent research at Princeton influenced them academically, professionally, and personally. Here, Nicholas shares his interview.

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 Chris Lu ’88 was a member of the Obama administration, where he served as a Deputy Secretary of Labor, White House Cabinet Secretary, and Assistant to the President. He is now a Senior Strategy Advisor at FiscalNote and an At-Large Member of the Democratic National Committee. He also served as the senior news editor for the Daily Princetonian during his time at Princeton. With a long career in public service, he has some useful insights for those seeking to pursue careers in public affairs. I had the opportunity to speak with Chris about his experience writing a senior thesis in the Woodrow Wilson School and the enduring impact that policy research has had on his career. Here’s what he had to say:
Chris Lu ’88

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Writing a Creative Thesis: An Interview with Edric Huang ’18

Posted on by Taylor Griffith

Edric Huang, Class of 2018, Anthropology Major with Certificates in Creative Writing and Urban Studies

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Kristin Hauge about her independent work in the Music Department to highlight creative independent work in the arts. This week, I got in touch with Edric Huang, a senior in the Anthropology Department with certificates in Urban Studies and Creative Writing. Unlike most students on campus, he will be writing two theses this year. One is the classic research-based thesis that seniors in the sciences and humanities are familiar with, but the second will be a collection of poems for his Creative Writing Certificate. If you are unfamiliar with the kind of work that goes into creative theses, here’s what Edric had to share about his personal experience: Continue reading Writing a Creative Thesis: An Interview with Edric Huang ’18

Need Funding? Tips for Writing a Convincing Proposal

Posted on by Taylor Griffith

There are many opportunities to apply for funding!

If you are an upperclassman, at this point in the semester, you’ve probably met with your adviser, decided on your research topic, and come up with a game plan for beginning your independent work. That said, you may still need to figure out one final detail: getting research funding. Not only does the Student Activities Funding Engine (SAFE) now have several applications open for Winter and Intersession research, but applications for spring funding will also be opening relatively soon. Even if you aren’t in the midst of writing a thesis, SAFE also lists opportunities for students who need funding for internships, summer study abroad programs, and independent projects. If this is your first time applying for funding and you’re worried about writing a convincing proposal, you’re not the only one. That’s why PCUR attended the Writing Program’s “Crafting Your Research Proposal” workshop to bring back some pointers. If you weren’t able to make it, here are the fundamental guiding questions to help make your research statement as clear and effective as possible: Continue reading Need Funding? Tips for Writing a Convincing Proposal

Why Research Immigration? Recapping Previous Experiences and Moving Forward

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What I’m most passionate about is immigration. How do people move? Why do they move? And what can we do to assist immigrant communities? While I’m not an immigrant myself, I’m the child of Chinese immigrants who came at a time when Chinese immigration was almost entirely restricted on a racial basis. When my grandparents came to America, only 105 Chinese immigrants per year were permitted entry into the United States. While I acknowledge that I speak from a position of natural-born citizenship, it is the struggles of modern undocumented immigrants that truly fuel my desire to research this field of policy.

The author’s grandfather came to America on this ship in 1949.

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Independent Work in the Music Department: An Interview with Kristin Hauge

Posted on by Taylor Griffith

Kristin Hauge ’18, Music Major with Certificates in Musical Performance and Teacher Prep

Kristin Hauge is a senior from Westfield, New Jersey majoring in Music while pursuing certificates in Musical Performance (Piano) and Teacher Preparation. Not only does she participate in a number of ensembles on campus (e.g. Princeton Pianists Ensemble, Sinfonia, and Glee Club), she also has been composing music since high school. And instead of your traditional research paper, Kristin composed an entire composition for her independent work her junior year. If you’re used to conducting studies in the social sciences like me, you’re probably wondering what research is like as a music major. Thankfully, Kristin took some time away from her numerous rehearsals to answer a few questions: Continue reading Independent Work in the Music Department: An Interview with Kristin Hauge

From Junior Researcher to Senior Commissioner: the WWS Task Force

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The research process comes full circle — less than a year after finishing my Woodrow Wilson School task force as a junior writing a Junior Paper, I’m now serving as a Senior Commissioner for a task force about federal policy and poverty reduction in the United States. The job of the Senior Commissioner is to help lead class discussions, to assist juniors in the research process, and to collate everyone’s junior papers into a final briefing book at the end of the semester. Having been through the whole task force process before, it gives me a unique perspective to help guide juniors through their first steps into independent work.

Future policymakers hard at work

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Getting Started with LaTeX

Posted on by Alec Getraer

At some point in your Princeton career, you will likely have to write a long paper replete with a table of contents and extensive bibliography, possibly containing complex mathematical equations, and/or multiple figures and tables. For many students, especially those in the social sciences or humanities, writing a research paper using word processing software like Microsoft Word will be the fastest and most intuitive method (especially with the help of automated citation tools). However, for other students, formatting all of these features using regular word processors will be inefficient, or worse, create unsatisfactory results.

Formatting the different parts of your paper should not be a precarious balancing act! LaTeX automatically formats and coordinates all of these features so that edits are seamlessly incorporated into the document.

For these types of projects, you may benefit from a typesetting system capable of consistent structural layout, superior typographical quality, support for scientific equations, internally referencing figures and tables, and automatically compiling large bibliographies. Enter: LaTeX.

LaTeX is a free open-source typesetting system that uses code and text to generate a PDF document. It allows you to explicitly define formatting options so that document structure remains consistent. Although the workflow is completely inefficient for writing short documents, when it comes to large and complex papers, LaTeX can make life a lot easier. For projects like Senior Theses, many departments at Princeton even have LaTeX templates with correct formatting built-in. While struggling to get a handle on LaTeX last year, I learned some useful strategies that will help you vault over the learning curve:

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Thesis Prep-Kit

Posted on by Taylor Griffith

Time to gather a few items!

Although it still feels like summer, my fellow seniors and I know that thesis-season is officially in full swing. Some of us may still be finding a topic while others have started gathering sources, but no matter where you are in the process, it’s never too late to start exploring strategies to assist you with your independent work. The senior thesis is a year-long, taxing, and rewarding project, but it doesn’t need to be painstakingly stressful. After completing a junior paper last year and talking with several seniors about their own independent research, I’ve gathered several tips on how to make independent research more enjoyable. Here are a few essential items to what I like to call the thesis-prep kit: Continue reading Thesis Prep-Kit

Stuff Happens: Moving Beyond Initial Thesis Challenges

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Don’t panic; things will go wrong.

For me, and for most other Princeton students, a thesis is the longest thing you’ll have written at this point in your life, a particularly daunting task. No matter what happens, there’s no reason to panic or despair about the task at hand. Take a deep breath — everything will turn out fine.

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Celebrating Senior Theses: An Interview with Xuewei Ouyang’17

Posted on by Taylor Griffith

In our spring series, Senior Theses: A Celebration, we take a moment in the interlude between thesis deadlines and graduation to appreciate the diverse, personal, and impactful work of seniors’ capstone research projects.

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Xuewei Ouyang, a senior from New Jersey

Xuewei Ouyang is a senior in the Computer Science Department. For her thesis, she combined her passion for dance and her knowledge of coding to create an app called, ChoreoSpot. Here’s what she had to say about her work:

What is your thesis about?

In short, my thesis is about creating an app that takes a rehearsal video and, within various frames of the video, spots errors on the dancers’ bodies in comparison to the choreographer’s.

Continue reading Celebrating Senior Theses: An Interview with Xuewei Ouyang’17