Writing your doctoral dissertation - part 7 doc

The stages in writing a dissertation
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Approval of the Dissertation Proposal
To progress from writing the proposal to achieving “approval” for the
proposal you are likely to accomplish several steps:

• approval by the two- or three-member dissertation committee;
• acceptance by the program faculty; and
• acceptance by an inter-departmental group of faculty.

Your primary focus in seeking approval is your committee, who have expertise
in your specific domain, and have worked with you in the formulation of your
topic and research questions. Your committee helps you in designing your study.
Your committee then has a vested interest in making sure your proposal is
“funded” or approved when it gets reviewed by a committee of the program
faculty. Thus, they are likely to be very cautious in offering their approval. Their
academic standards are open to public scrutiny in your dissertation proposal.
They will want to avoid problems with collegial and external reviewers, so their
evaluations are likely to be intense. They will look at each word carefully. They
will look to see if there is a cohesive organization. They will certainly be
concerned with the depth of your knowledge as represented in this document.
You are likely to revise your document many times in this process.
Once they have each independently approved your proposal, other faculty
are likely to review it as well. Some of these reviewers may be responsible
for the “format,” others may be concerned with protecting the “human
subjects” who may provide the data for your study, while others still may be
knowledgeable about your research design and/or research problem. These
reviews are all intended to discover potential problems prior to initiating the
major study. When recommendations are offered, you need to consult with
your committee about your next steps in modifying your proposal.
Ultimately, your proposal is sent to the Office of the Director of Graduate

Studies, which accepts the recommendations of these groups, verifying that
all the established procedures have been followed. If there are any problems,
this Graduate Director facilitates the process for resolving these concerns.
Typically, you will receive an official document stating that your dissertation
proposal has been “recorded,” much like grades are recorded on your official
transcript. This document serves as a contract between you and the university,
and it also moves you along the path to completing your dissertation. At this
stage all of the work you do is towards “writing your dissertation.”
Writing Your Dissertation
You have now entered probably the most time-intensive part of the process.
You will not only “do your research” but you will also write it up in a form
which is acceptable as a dissertation at your institution. You are responsible
for doing all the work projected in the proposal. Most of the work will be
The stages in writing a dissertation
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independently accomplished, initiated by you. Occasionally, faculty meet
with you during “office hours” or “program seminars,” for example, but these
will be at your initiation in the main. Committee members will read and
respond to drafts, meet with you, communicate with you on the telephone or
via e-mail once you initiate the dialog. Students may create support groups,
meeting regularly to offer feedback and encouragement, while sharing
resources and experiences. All of these activities are fairly invisible in the
university. (For an extended discussion of this process, see Chapters 11 – 13.)
The next time you “surface” institutionally (aside from semi-annual
registrations) is when your oral examination is scheduled. At some point in
the process, your chair will decide that she or he is satisfied with what you
have completed. After consulting with the reader(s) there will be a decision
to “schedule orals.” (The student may need to add and/or revise major
sections between the time the chair is “ready” and the rest of the committee
agrees. “Ready” to one faculty member may mean different things than

“ready” to another. “Ready” in one institution may mean different things than
in another.) The next big step is the scheduling of the dissertation orals.
In some institutions, the dissertation is written in collaboration with two
faculty members, and the selection of the third reader occurs once the chair
deems the dissertation ready for this review. Ultimately, all three members
must agree to hold the oral examination. Although some consider this step as
assurance of passing the orals, or at least guaranteeing a grade of “pass” from
these individuals, this is not necessarily the case, as we will see when we
address the issue of orals in Chapter 14.
Dissertation Orals
The dissertation committee decides when it is time to schedule orals. The
oral examination, often called an oral defense, is a publicly scheduled
activity, open to the university community, taking anywhere from one to three
hours on average. The participants include, but are not limited to, the
dissertation committee, the candidate, and external readers. The outside
readers may come from within the university or from institutions nationwide
representing expertise in the areas addressed in the dissertation. This last
group are considered “outsiders” and are deemed to be likely to be more
“objective” in their evaluation. Ultimately, the student wants to “pass.” There
is usually a written record of the evaluations of the faculty present with a
majority of “pass” grades required for the dissertation to be accepted.
There are many academic goals accomplished at the orals: a presentation of
the research project, a discussion of the process and findings, and an examination
of the candidate’s understanding of the dissertation research and the knowledge
related to it. There are also power struggles that surface at these events.
Depending on the mix of faculty, it is possible to have people whose academic
orientations or philosophies are diametrically opposed sitting at the same table.
While the committee might represent one clear philosophy, the presence of an
The stages in writing a dissertation
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opposing voice may provide a contentious setting. If faculty have personal
grievances, you may find these evidenced at these events as well.
While at some institutions the orals are a fairly perfunctory experience,
with champagne waiting at the conclusion, at other institutions it is fairly
common for the student to be assigned to rewrite, rethink, or redo sections of
the dissertation. In most instances, while there is a need to continue working
on the document, there is no need to go through a second oral examination.
(In rare occurrences, the student is required to go through the entire
experience again.) Once the dissertation has received a “pass” grade, there is
one last hurdle to mount: getting an approved dissertation.
The Approved Dissertation
Although the orals have been successfully completed, your dissertation is not
“approved” yet. There is usually a review by an editorial board seeking to
confirm that a specific style guide has been followed, and that the dissertation
is in a form to be made available to the academic world at large. Some
reviews will focus on your format while others consider the effectiveness of
your writing style.
After all of these criteria are met, you are almost home free. There are still
others who certify that you have paid your tuition for each semester that you
have been in the program, and that all library fees and other bureaucratic
requirements have been fulfilled. When all of these are satisfied, then your
dissertation will be approved, an important element in establishing your
eligibility to receive your doctoral degree.
Noncompleters in Doctoral Programs
Approximately 50 per cent of students who enter PhD programs, leave without
graduating, according to Barbara Lovitts (1996). This is due to a variety of
factors which may be grouped as either personal or programmatic. Personal
factors include: needing time to spend with spouse, children, or ailing parents;
having exhausted finances to cover the costs of the program; attention to health;
and changing career goals. Programmatic factors include: isolation, confusion,

hostility; holding unpopular perspectives or philosophies; and inaccessibility
of faculty or courses. Many who leave are embarrassed, feeling defeated by
the system. Lovitts identified the lack of institutional support as a major factor
in students’ decisions to leave. That support could be in the form of information
about the program, or in relationships with students and faculty. Those who
feel defeated frequently find themselves in another program before long. Being
older and wiser, they are more likely to persevere the second or third time
around and get their degree.
The whittling down or selection process is a gradual one. At each step
there are some who choose not to continue. Some students choose to leave
The stages in writing a dissertation
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programs rather than to subject themselves to assessment at each of the
stages, viewing the process as a game rather than an authentic academic
experience. Concurrent with this evaluation is the student’s constant
questioning as to whether she or he is ready to subject herself or himself to
this process. There are students who decline to be reviewed, thereby
removing themselves from the program.
You might wonder why there is this constant evaluation and whittling
down of the pool of doctoral students. There are many reasons. From the
institution’s perspective, there are limited resources available for working on
dissertations. There may be a limited number of faculty who are qualified
and desire to work on dissertations with doctoral students. Since there appear
to be many more doctoral recipients than employment opportunities at
universities (e.g. Magner, 1999) the mass media periodically inquire about
PhDs being a glut on the market. With limited resources, doctoral students
need to be assertive about obtaining the assistance essential for completing
the degree.
From the student’s perspective, there is little comprehension at the outset
of the complexities inherent in writing a dissertation. Many believe they

would have been less frustrated and more task-oriented if they knew what to
expect in the process. Ultimately all doctoral students benefit from
suggestions of strategies for success. From this general overview of the
dissertation process, we will now consider some sage advice from current
and former doctoral students.

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4 Pithy Insights and Suggestions for
Success

“Your thesis is important, Edward, but you need
to howl once in a while, too!”

When current and former doctoral students discuss their expectations and
experiences in doctoral programs, they offer useful suggestions and
perceptions on the dissertation process. Being mindful both that each person’s
experience is unique, and that people typically experience some ambivalence
in this high-stakes endeavor, the range of individual experiences is potentially
unchartable. The eighty-five suggestions in this chapter are offered, by
students and graduates, to guide you—to help you to avoid problems that
others have confronted, or at least to prepare you to avoid being taken by
surprise. The suggestions are clustered around six issues:
Figure 4.1 Some personal advice
Source: Scott Arthur Maesar, Chronicle of Higher Education