Project Report

The project report is the evidence that shows your committee what you have done. It will be filed as a permanent record in the journalism library so that other students may examine it when considering project ideas or preparing their own reports. Copies of the report must be distributed to the project committee at least five working days before the oral defense. It is your responsibility to reserve a room for the defense.

The final project report must be in-depth, detailed and free of grammatical, spelling or typographical errors. The report should be prepared in an 8 1/2 by 11-inch format. The report should be delivered to committee members in a binding that permits easy handling. Once the report is accepted and any final changes are made, it must be hard bound for filing in the journalism library. Project reports are to follow a format similar to that of a thesis. Here is the format (any variation must be approved by your faculty committee). In the following order:

Title page, which includes a short title of the professional work performed for the project, the semester in which you completed the project, your name and the names of the committee members with adviser/chair indicated.
Detailed table of contents. Include page numbers for the first page of each section. (Pages must be numbered consecutively from the table of contents through the final page in the book.)
An introduction that explains why you chose this project and how it fits your career goals.
A chronological description of your activities during the project. You should keep and include a weekly record of your work.
Your evaluation of both your work product and of what you have learned from this project.
If you have done an individual project, a letter of evaluation from your on-site supervisor may be included but only with your written approval.
Abundant physical evidence of your work, such as clippings, article drafts, scripts, tapes or videotapes, printouts of Web pages or compact disks.
The analysis component. This should begin with the literature review you did during the project seminar. A research component should conform to a scholarly presentation style agreed upon by the student and the project adviser. A professional analysis component should include the revised, publishable-quality report of your research or professional analysis.
Attach as an appendix a copy of the proposal as approved by your committee, without the literature review, together with a description and explanation of any changes in the original proposal.

You are responsible for working with your committee to establish a date for the oral defense and for obtaining a room in which the defense is held. Committee members must have a draft of the project available a minimum of five working days before the oral. The committee signs the report of the master‘s examining committee form at the time of the oral defense if the members accept the report. The committee may, however, require additional work before the report is acceptable. Project students do not have a thesis title so this line on the form is left blank.

The associate dean will not sign the examining committee report form, signifying that all requirements have been met, until a copy of the final project report is submitted to the graduate studies center. Hard-backed binding can take two weeks or more to complete. Therefore, a receipt indicating that the project report has been dropped off for binding and that the bound copy will be delivered to the journalism graduate studies center immediately upon completion will be sufficient to release the defense paperwork for graduation purposes. However, if the project report is not delivered as indicated on the receipt, the student‘s diploma will be held until the report is received.

The student must be registered the semester or session he/she graduates. If s/he has registered for all nine of the area problem credits in previous sessions, s/he may register for the exam only. The personnel in the MU Graduate School can help with this enrollment.

The professional project plan is a terminal degree. Students considering doctoral work should discuss the alternative thesis plan with the adviser.