Page 40 - DISSERTATION AND THESIS HANDBOOK 2017 -2020

J. Graduate School Standards

The Graduate School requires adherence to the
following standards in advance of the final, oral
defense, and throughout the dissertation process.
The standards include the following:
Approval by the Institutional Review Board for research studies involving human
subject;
Completion of the requisite research and data analysis;
Academic Integrity (absence of plagiarism);
Review of the appropriate literature which is of sufficient breadth and depth to
meet the standards for doctoral studies;
Adherence to the appropriate style format for the candidate’s discipline (including
manuscript structure, bibliography, footnotes, and endnotes);
Comprehensive and accurate use of citations for all sources used in the study;
Careful proofreading for and elimination of typographical, spelling, grammatical, and
punctuation errors; and
Consistent use of type-face throughout the document, diagrams, tables and charts.

K. The Oral Examination Defense

Once a candidate has completed the dissertation in keeping with
the standards listed above, and the candidate’s advisory committee
finds the dissertation to be ready, the candidate must defend the
dissertation through an oral examination. During the defense, the
candidate will give an overview of the dissertation project and
respond to questions from faculty.

When the dissertation advisory committee agrees the candidate is
ready, the members will sign a form (Dissertation Readiness Form)
indicating their willingness to allow the dissertation to be defended.
Signing this form does not indicate that the members of the
dissertation advisory committee have approved the dissertation; rather, each member
is indicating that in his or her opinion the dissertation is in a state where the candidate
may present it to other members of the senior faculty.

Before an oral defense may be held, the following steps must be accomplished:

The dissertation advisory committee members must stipulate in writing that
the dissertation is of sufficient quality to be defended (Dissertation Readiness
Approval Form);
The examining committee must be formed. All members of the examining
committee must have a complete copy of the written and properly formatted
dissertation; and
An examining committee/oral defense Chair must be identified. The
Dissertation Committee Chair may chair the Examining Committee.

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