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The School Psychology Program at James Madison is committed to practice which is empirically grounded. To meet that goal, the program trains individuals who are knowledgeable of current best practices and who are prepared to assimilate new developments in the field as informed consumers of the research literature. In addition, there is an expectation that JMU-trained school psychologists will be contributors to the research literature as principal investigators and collaborators or as evaluators of programs and services. The Ed.S. thesis is an integral part of the student’s curriculum. In it students are able to investigate an area of interest in depth and to develop, analyze, and present new data relevant to that area. The project is also an opportunity for students, under the guidance of a research mentor and a committee of faculty to learn about the conventions and requirements of research, including the use of appropriate design and analytic tools and various forms of professional communication of research findings. At the end of the thesis and the three methods courses leading to it (PSYC 605, 606, and 609) students should be prepared to be independent researchers.