Guidelines on Overlapping Topics

Exploring a general topic of personal interest in more than one course paper is often a wise strategy as it allows students to deepen their expertise by bringing multiple lenses to it. With this approach, work done in multiple course papers on particular topics is likely to generate the seeds for the second‐year paper, the dissertation, and other research papers. To ensure that professors are aware of students’ work on the same topic in multiple courses, students need to disclose this information to course instructors as early as possible. If you plan to write a new paper on a topic that you have addressed in a prior class, you must (a) let your current professor know, in writing, that this is your plan; (b) clarify the new work that you will complete for the current class; and (c) give the current professor a copy of your prior deliverable. If you are writing on the same topic for two or more simultaneous courses, you must (a) let each of your current professors know, in writing, that this is your plan; (b) clarify the unique perspective of each paper; and (c) make the final deliverable for each course available to each other faculty member on request.