Enrollment for Dissertation Work

After you successfully complete the Research Paper & Apprenticeship requirement and Pre-liminary Exam, you are permitted to enroll for dissertation credit hours under EDF 6980. The university requires a minimum of 24 credit hours of dissertation enrollment and that you maintain continuous enrollment from the time you pass the preliminary exam until you complete the requirements for the degree. This means that you must be registered for a minimum of two credit hours for at least two of every three semesters (in this case the summer term counts as a semester) and you must never go for two semesters in a row without registering or you will dropped from the university and required to apply for readmission.

In instances when a significant proportion of time and resources is required from a committee member other than the major professor, it may be necessary for you to register for a directed individual study, EDF 5096, with the committee member concerned.

Planning the Dissertation
The design of dissertation work should be done with particular attention to feasibility. It is not uncommon for students to propose goals that would require excessive time, unavailable equipment, overly extensive space, or scheduling commitments when committee members are not available. For example, many faculty members are not available during the summer.

You select your dissertation topic with the advice and concurrence of your committee. Legitimacy of the topic is determined by the committee according to the following criteria:

1. There must be sufficient faculty expertise on the committee to provide adequate guidance, supervision, and evaluation
2. The dissertation must (1) be based on appropriate empirical data, and (2) contribute substantively to knowledge in an area that is subsumed under the interdisciplinary area of instructional systems. A wide variety of research approaches may be employed depending upon the demands of the proposed study.

Dissertation proposals that depart from these criteria may be proposed (for example, historical analysis). Such instances, when considered worthy by the student's committee, must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Instructional Systems faculty. Should a dissertation topic be chosen which does not match the major professor's professional interests or areas of expertise, a request should be made for change of the major professor. Similar considerations apply to changes in the other members of the student's committees.