HSS Home / Undergraduate Studies / Beyond the Classroom

Beyond the Classroom

At Caltech, the pursuit of knowledge extends through an array of initiatives to provide undergraduates with the skills to think deeply and engage with the wider world. Students work closely with HSS faculty to design and complete senior theses and summer research projects, and the various student clubs and publications present more opportunities for collaboration and growth.

Student Research and Other Opportunities

Undergraduate Theses in HSS Options

The senior thesis is an original research project written under long-term mentorship and collaboration with a faculty advisor in the student's HSS option. The thesis process combines research skills and methodology with important real-world questions, while also developing the student's writing and presentation skills. Explore recent HSS senior theses shared on the Caltech Library CaltechTHESIS repository.

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Contact the applicable option representative for information about the corresponding thesis requirements.

HSS Student Summer Research

Students have an extraordinarily broad range of summer research opportunities to explore with HSS faculty and labs—from collaborating with neuroscientists on the latest questions about human behavior to engaging with humanities scholars over archival research in medieval literature, and nearly limitless topics in between. Most opportunities are available through two programs organized by Caltech's Student-Faculty Programs Office: Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) and WAVE Fellows. Explore this list of recent SURF, WAVE, and other student research projects in HSS.

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Contact the Student-Faculty Programs Office for more information.

Hixon Writing Center

The Hixon Writing Center employs undergraduate peer tutors who work with student writers in both individual and small group contexts, aiming to help students build knowledge and confidence in their work as writers. If you're interested in becoming a peer tutor, hiring typically happens each winter term, and new hires take a training seminar during the spring term.

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Make an appointment with a writing specialist or peer tutor on the HWC website.

Clubs and Publications for HSS Students

Caltech has many clubs and organizations for students to explore their interests, create new connections, and hone their skills. Several of those clubs, as well as the student-run publications, may be of particular interest to students pursuing HSS options and those who want to engage beyond their HSS coursework. Visit this page for more information on these featured clubs and publications.

Questions?

Contact the club and publication organizers directly for more information.

HSS Out in the World

Erin Hartman (BS '07, economics and political science) served as an analyst on Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign, where she was tasked with studying data from its massive polling operation. Although others on the team may have had more political-campaign experience, Hartman set herself apart, crediting the broad-based analytical training she received at Caltech for allowing her to spot an opportunity to make voter-behavior models more accurate. Hartman realized that if she synthesized detailed demographics and voting histories and applied them to her prediction models, she could rebalance results to better account for those who don't participate in polling. In 2021, Hartman joined the faculty at UC Berkeley as an assistant professor of political science and statistics. Read more about Hartman

Thomas Luke (BS '86, physics) had every intention of pursuing a career in physics, but while pursuing his graduate studies at MIT, his interest was piqued by a class on empirical finance. He went on to earn an MBA in finance in 1994 and his PhD in physics the following year. His advice to students is to "never underestimate the importance of fundamentals, even in topics that you think are out of your current scope. The number-one thing you learn at Caltech is how to think. It's not about the specific knowledge you have about biology, chemistry, or whatever. If you learn to look at a problem and break it down, you can apply that process to anything." Luke has worked for some of the world's most well-known financial firms, including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch. In 2020, Luke joined MAC Alpha Capital Management, a woman-and-minority-owned investment firm, as one of its founders and its president and chief risk officer. Read more about Luke

Caltech awarded the third-annual Milton and Rosalind Chang Career Exploration Prize to Nivetha Karthikeyan (BS '20, computer science and history) in 2020. The prize awards up to $65,000 in financial support, encouraging recent Caltech graduates to explore new career paths through innovative projects that have meaningful societal impact and allowing them the freedom to focus solely on a proposed project for a year following graduation, untethered to the priorities of an employer or the demands of graduate school studies. Karthikeyan's project, "Intersections: Building Solidarity Through Community Archives," was born out of her senior history thesis dedicated to South Asian immigration and technical labor. She plans to construct and share a new online community archive that focuses on how people of color have historically created alliances, coalitions, and communities with other racial minorities in the United States. About her work, Karthikeyan said, "I am able to build on practices of oral history and community archiving to design my own public humanities project." Read more about Karthikeyan