The Dissertation Defense

The defense of your dissertation will probably be quite similar to the defense of your proposal. At both stages, your advisor should not let you schedule a defense unless you are ready.

You may be asked to leave the room for a few minutes at the beginning, and you will definitely be asked to leave the room for a few minutes at the end. In between, you will have a discussion about the research you have done. Typically this unfolds through a series of questions from members of your dissertation com- mittee.

Again, the meeting is called a defense, but you should not be defensive. Bring your concerns out into the open, and use this time as an opportunity to make your dissertation better. You want to do more than just pass your dissertation defense – you want to maximize your chances of publishing your research in the best possible outlets. You want your committee to help you identify and resolve potential problems so that down the road, reviewers do not identify those problems as reasons to reject your work for publication.

The dissertation defense should be a discussion among equals. You don’t want to be defensive, but there is no need to simply wilt in front of the committee either. Remember, you are the expert on your research.

Once the discussion is over, you’ll be sent out of the room so the committee can discuss your dissertation and your defense. By far the most common outcome is for the committee to conditionally approve the dissertation. The conditions will be spelled out to you in the form of revisions the committee wants to see in the final dissertation before it is deposited with your university. Most of the time, the committee will simply charge the chair of the committee with making sure these corrections are made. In this circumstance, the committee chair will generally not sign the formal paperwork until they approve your revisions. Occasionally, one or more committee members may want to review some or all of the changes for themselves. Approval without revision is extremely rare, and failure to success- fully defend is also extremely rare.

If you and your advisor have both done your jobs, the dissertation defense will not be stressful. Some students even find it somewhat anti-climactic. By the time you reach the defense, you should have gained the experience and the confidence

necessary to conduct quality research and to share it confidently with others. Also, a fair amount of time at the defense can focus on publication strategies for the dissertation and ideas for what the student might do next, more than just questions about the research.

My last bit of advice here is to tackle the revisions right away. There is a tendency to relax after the defense and let the process of making revisions drag on. Don’t let this happen to you. Make the revisions while the discussion is fresh in your mind. You are so close to the finish line at that point that you should push through to the end. Besides, you may find that properly formatting your final dissertation to meet the guidelines of your university takes more time than you imagined, and you don’t want to miss graduation because you put off your revisions too long.

You cannot claim to have a PhD until your university confers the degree on you. You cannot even claim to have met all the requirements for a PhD until your final revised document has been approved by your department and the Graduate College at your university. In fact, you should not claim to have successfully defended your dissertation until your advisor signs off on your final revisions. You need to be extremely conscientious about this. I have seen and heard about some newly hired assistant professors who have gotten into considerable trouble by claiming to have a PhD prematurely.

4.5 Conclusion

Seminars, comps, and a dissertation – sounds simple enough doesn’t it? These components of a PhD program should not be viewed as separate and independent. Rather, they are interrelated steps helping you reach the final goal of becoming an independent scholar and researcher.

There is no substitute for doing the hard work yourself, but remember that pursuing a PhD is a social enterprise. Classmates in seminars, study groups for seminars and comps, and your dissertation committee are all examples of how you can work with others to succeed through this process. Let me describe a good example of this.

working group in 2008 (or was it 2009?) to help students we were advising make progress on their dissertations. This group meets every other week, taking sum- mers off. At each meeting, one student presents a draft of their prospectus or a dissertation chapter. That document is emailed out to everyone in the group about two days before the meeting. Everyone in the group – faculty members and students – reads the paper before coming to the meeting.

At the meeting, we give the student on the agenda that day about three minutes to make any opening remarks, and then we spend an hour asking questions and making suggestions. We keep the mood light with lots of joking, but the student presenting ends up receiving a lot of constructive feedback. Students get used to receiving criticism, and they also get used to giving constructive feedback to each other. Everyone learns to see regular patterns in the comments that are made as well, whether they are about writing, theory, methods, etc. Students learn to anticipate those kinds of comments and write better first drafts as a result. I still typically meet with my own advisees every week, but this workshop setting has been a positive experience for everyone.

Graduate school is great! Dive in, participate, communicate with your faculty, explore your interests, and take risks. Work hard every week, and find out if this is what you love.

Chapter 5