Writing a PhD Dissertation

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Writing a PhD Dissertation

• Chad Williams

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Overview

• Purpose of dissertation
• Why its unique
• Dissertation process
• Requirements
• Committee
• Defense
• Writing best practices

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Purpose of dissertation
Torture Students!!

• Institutional
• Demonstrate candidate's preparedness
• Must represent significant and original research
• Communicative
• Contribution to scholarly knowledge
• Personal
• Earn a degree
• Learning experience

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What you should learn

• Topic
• Writing as a way of expressing knowledge and
  thinking
• Understanding the meaning of the results
• Training for communicating with other scientists
• Arguments that will convince other scientists
• Learn what your weaknesses and how to address
• Strengthen through personal development
• Learn how to leverage research group

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Why unique?

• Audience
• You
• Your committee
• Depth

• Department Faculty
• Profession

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Special Style Characteristics

• Intended primarily for scholarly audience
• Usually 100-300 pages
• Dense in citations
• Very formal writing style and guidelines
• Common organization
• Oral defense component

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Dissertation requirements

• Formalness of requirements vary greatly by school
• DePaul (2 pgs) Outline of review process
• Berkley (33 pgs) Paper that can be used, style,
  process, etc.
• Common requirements
• Dissertation committee
• Dissertation proposal
• Written dissertation
• Dissertation defense

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Two ways to finish

• Perseverance - given size of dissertation
  unlikely to finish with perseverance alone
• Planning
• Be aware of major milestones and lead time
• Set interim milestones
• Make your advisor aware of key draft dates

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Dissertation committee

• Advisor
• Set and understand expectations early on
• Keep up to date
• Make them your ally
• Selecting committee Coverage of key roles
• Theory
• Knowledge of literature
• Editor
• Keep committee informed

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Dissertation proposal

• Decides viability of topic
• Contract with committee
• Trial run for dissertation defense
• Establishes tone

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Writing guidelines

• Unlike conference proceedings no space
  limitations
• Essence of dissertation is critical thinking not
  experimental data
• Every statement supported
• Citation
• Original experimental results
• Carefully separate cause-effect from statistical
  correlation

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Dissertation Defense

• Formality or serious last stage?
• Keep committee informed ahead of time
• Prepare for the defense
• Total mastery of substance of the dissertation
• Packaging material for presentation
• Be realistic
• Avoid traps

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Challenges of dissertation writing

• Dont underestimate writing process
• Time from start until completion
• Notation changes over time
• Significance of results
• Organizing the volume of work and results
• Advisor/committee

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Best Practices

• Write up every new result
• Keep careful notes of setup
• Write up each piece for publication
• Dont need to write dissertation in order
• Often most productive to skip around

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One suggested writing order
5th

• Abstract
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Related Work
• Chapter 3 Definitions
• Chapter 4 Methodology/Conceptual Model
• Chapter 5 Experimental Measurements
• Chapter 6 Corollaries/Consequences
• Chapter 7 Conclusions

4th
Ongoing
2nd
1st
3rd
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Writing tools

• Write up every new result
• Keep careful notes of setup
• Write up each piece for publication
• Writing tools
• TeX, AMS-TeX, LaTeX, BibTeX
• Eases submitting to multiple venues

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0th Draft approach

• For you, not intended to be of quality to share
• Write 15 min a day
• Periodically categorize writing by closest
  chapter
• When have raw content organize 1st draft

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Outline approach

• Start with high level outline
• Make the outline as detailed as possible
• Anytime write iterate through outline

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References

• Additional Sources
• Glatthorn, A. Writing the Winning Dissertation
• Bolker, J. Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen
  Minutes a Day
• Sternberg, D. How to Complete and Survive a
  Doctoral Dissertation
• Class Sources
• OLeary, D. The Thesis Writing Process
• Levine, S. Writing and Presenting YourThesis or
  Dissertation
• Chinneck, J. How to Organize your Thesis
• How To Write A Dissertation
• Wolfe, J. How to Write a PhD Thesis
• Bem, D. Writing the Empirical Journal Article