Thesis
Master's Thesis and Doctoral Dissertation
The thesis or dissertation must constitute original work by the student resulting in ground-breaking, seminal findings in the field of study. Once completed, the student presents the major findings in an oral final examination according to Graduate School regulations.
The scope of research to be undertaken will be more extensive for a PhD dissertation than for a MS thesis. In either case, but especially for the PhD dissertation, the literature review must be exhaustive and clearly demonstrate the contribution of research conducted by the student relative to work previously conducted by others. In other words, enough information about previous research should be provided to show that the thesis or dissertation is one of the next steps required in the area. For either a dissertation or thesis, simply itemizing the content of each background paper is not adequate; all papers discussed in a literature review must be tied together and explicitly related to the research topic. In many cases, the results of previous work will be compared to the results of the analysis undertaken by the student. The research analysis consists of some combination of data collection, data analysis, and model development and usually takes about two to three terms to complete for a MS thesis, and five to eight terms for a PhD dissertation. The Civil Engineering field of study offers the option of preparing the dissertation as a series of several peer-reviewed journal papers.
A student should expect revisions to an individual thesis or dissertation chapter will take at least 6 weeks from the first time a complete draft is provided to his/her major advisor. Students are encouraged to provide drafts one section or chapter at a time when possible. Once the major advisor is satisfied the thesis or dissertation is ready, a copy is provided to each member of the final exam committee, which consists of the major advisor and two associate advisors for a thesis or a dissertation, and two additional faculty (5 total) for a PhD dissertation. A final examination date and time is set at least two weeks from the time the copies are provided to the examination committee.
For more general information refer to: