Page 71 - DISSERTATION AND THESIS HANDBOOK 2017 -2020

Graduate School Standards

The Graduate School requires adherence to the
following standards in advance of the final, oral defense,
and throughout the thesis 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.

The Oral Examination Defense

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

The philosophy of the oral defense is to demonstrate that

The dissertation is commensurate with the standards for original research in the field;
The ethics and standards governing research in the field have been followed,
The candidate‘s mastery of the research and the appropriate methodology, and
The candidate‘s understanding of the relationship of this work to the broader field in
which it is lodged.

Thesis defense is a university community event open to the university public. It is
mandatory that the members of the Thesis Advisory Committee and the candidate attend
the defense. Other attendees may include
Members of the academic community, and
Family and friends.

Although students are members of the academic community, it is advisable for students
to check with the thesis candidate before the oral defense to ascertain whether
attendance at the oral defense is acceptable

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