Unc dissertation guidelines
The thesis or dissertation culminates an important stage of your graduate career. In preparing and defending this document, you prove that you have acquired essential skills of research or scholarship as well as the ability to effectively communicate the results of your inquiry to the academic community. To assist you and your advisory committee in this process, the Graduate School has prepared an ETD Format Manual, one that deals with basic formatting and illustration preparation. Our goal is to help you produce a thesis that looks professional and makes the findings accessible to readers.
Dissertations
This handout will not only answer this question, but also give you good, practical advice on starting, drafting, and completing your dissertation. Partly because the dissertation is a completely new experience that is much larger and more independent than your previous academic work.
To this point, being a graduate student has been, more or less, an extension of your earlier life as a student. The reading assignments, labs, papers, and tests you have been assigned as a graduate student may not have been so different from your undergraduate course work.
It is the academic project that marks your transition from student to scholar. Writing a dissertation is a lot like writing a book. It is, by definition, a self-directed process. This independence can make the process seem very intimidating. When you embark on this large, independent project, you may begin to ask yourself questions about your future in academia. After all, the dissertation is the beginning of the end of a graduate career.
When you finish your dissertation, you have to change your life pretty dramatically —you may go on the job market, begin work as an independent scholar, develop classes, move out of a community that you have grown to love, and so on. You may also feel like your dissertation will begin to define your professional identity. You may feel like your research interests, your theoretical influences, and your skill as a writer may all be evaluated by this first piece of serious scholarship.
Whether any of these points are true or not, you may find yourself questioning your commitment to your chosen profession or topic and unable to begin the dissertation. If you find yourself questioning your commitment to your dissertation or a career in academia, consider these tactics:.
This may be a time to ask yourself what the Ph. Remember that what it means to you and what it means to your partner, family, or friends may be very different. You might make a list of all the reasons you want to get the Ph.
You might try free-writing about your topic and the reasons it inspires you. And why? If you are too close to your own graduate school anxieties to think critically about them, visit campus resources that can help you sort out your thinking on this difficult and important issue. Your advisor or colleagues in your department may be able to help you if you have a good relationship with them. Other graduate students, especially those who are about to finish or have finished, may be particularly helpful.
University counseling services may prove helpful as well. They regularly talk with students about just this issue. Many, many people lead happy, fulfilling lives, build lucrative and rewarding careers, make important contributions to knowledge, share interesting ideas with others, and generally get along just fine without three letters after their names. Deciding not to continue with a Ph. It also does not mean that you have wasted the time and money that you invested in the degree up to the ABD stage.
The dissertation is not a one-shot deal. Unlike the elaborate study strategies you developed in order to pass your comprehensive exams, writing the dissertation will enable you to start developing a set of valuable research and writing skills. Thinking analytically, synthesizing complicated information, writing well, and organizing your time will all serve you well regardless of the career you begin.
If you choose a career in academia, the systems of support, research strategies, work schedules, and writing techniques that help you do the dissertation will help you write books, articles and lectures for many years to come.
If you take some care in developing your dissertation, the document can be transformed, after graduation, into a book or series of articles that can help launch your academic career. Unlike earlier course papers that just received a grade and were then shuttled off to a filing cabinet or trash bin, your dissertation can be used and revised for years to come.
Sometimes, even if you appreciate the differences between the dissertation and previous work and know that you really want to complete the degree, you may still have trouble. Both external and internal stresses can cause the dissertation process to be more difficult than it has to be. Sometimes, however, those three elements can prove to be major external sources of frustration.
So how can you manage them to help yourself be as productive as possible? Even when you are dedicated to your dissertation and have no problems with your topic, advisor or committee, you can have trouble getting your dissertation written. Simple exhaustion, financial stresses, and family responsibilities can seem to conspire to keep you from doing the work that you need to do. Often, graduate students juggle many personal and professional responsibilities while working on their dissertations.
You may be teaching an undergraduate course, working a second job to make ends meet, seeking child care, writing conference papers, serving on committees, and more. All of these activities and worries can leave you feeling exhausted. Sometimes, finding time to exercise, meditate, or participate in relaxation programs yoga, stretching, massage therapy, and so on can help you cope with tiredness better, even if those things do little to alleviate the work load.
The Student Recreation Center and Rams Head gyms offer several exercise classes that may prove useful and relaxing. Good nutrition can also go a long way toward improving your sense of well-being. A fellowship, grant or scholarship can provide enough financial cushion that you can quit at least one job, and perhaps even find full funding for a year. The Graduate School offers funding workshops and a GrantSource library that can help you identify potential sources of funding.
Full fellowships or grants, though, can be a mixed blessing. Often, having one part-time job or other commitment while researching or writing can help you structure your day, get to campus early in the morning, and so on.
Without that structure, the day can slip by pretty quickly. So while fellowships can be tremendously helpful, they also require great discipline to prove effective. Effective time management can be another way to alleviate some of the external stresses of graduate school.
Here are a few strategies:. When scheduling your dissertation time, think about when, where and how you work best. By giving some thought to these details, you can ensure that the hours you schedule for dissertation work are productive. Do you write well in the morning, or are you too sleepy to do academic work?
Can you work in the evening after a day, or do you really need a break? Once you determine the hours that are most productive for you you may need to experiment at first , try to schedule those hours for dissertation work. If at all possible, plan your work schedule, errands and chores so that you reserve your productive hours for the dissertation. Directors of Graduate Studies and other employers may be pretty sympathetic to this desire to schedule your best hours for your dissertation—after all, the dissertation is your reason for being here and should be your number one priority.
So working in a consistent setting can help you not only get great work done in discrete sessions but also pull together ideas from past work and use them constructively. So practice working elsewhere, and at other times. Being away from your favorite fountain pen is not an excuse not to write! Graduate students sometimes report that they feel bogged down by departmental requirements, graduate school regulations, and other bits of bureaucracy.
Here are a few tips to keep you sane:. Some sources of graduate student stress are not external—instead, they come from within.
Competition is rampant among graduate students. Departments often hold meetings in which graduate students are ranked in order to determine who should be given funding or teaching appointments.
This competition can lead to a cut-throat atmosphere that encourages hostility and fears of inadequacy and also inhibits much-needed personal support. But what can you do if you feel that competition within your department is hindering your ability to get work done? Remember that you are not in competition with the students in your department. Your only competition is more than likely with the graduate students at other universities who will be applying for jobs in your field at the same time you are.
After all, if two people are writing dissertations on political theory in the civil rights movement, they may be in initial competition for jobs, but once they get jobs, they will be far more likely to work in a collegial way. If you are having problems with competition in your department, you can try to transform the sense of competition into one of cooperation. Try working on some collaborative projects with students in your department like co-authoring a conference paper with a student doing similar research.
Or form a writing and support group—the Writing Center can help you do that. Many graduate students report feeling like a fraud at some time during or through most of! It may be helpful to find a person who is AHEAD of you in the process maybe a friend who has defended to serve as support and to urge you to keep moving.
Gathering wisdom from those who have gone before and passing it along to those who are coming up can foster a marvelous spirit of collegiality in a department and help everyone get more and better work done. Come by to see your advisor. Stay in close contact with your committee. Meet bright, generous people in other departments. Let the Writing Center help you start an interdisciplinary writing group. Go to conferences and meet interesting supportive people on other campuses who will e-mail with you and share your joys, rather than trampling on them.
People procrastinate for a lot of reasons, some of which you already know. The key to beating procrastination, though, seems to be figuring out why you are procrastinating, so that you can develop strategies for stopping it. The University Counseling and Wellness Services sometimes sponsors a dissertation support group, for example, that allows students to meet with a counselor in groups to work through dissertation problems.
Not a word is coming to you. Many people use rewards, feedback, and punishments as motivators in the dissertation process. Here are some examples:. One of the most important parts of becoming a scholar is feeling like one. The transition from student to scholar is a huge mental step toward completion. Here are a few tips that can help:. The dissertation is a marathon, not a sprint, and it will take endurance, determination, and perseverance. Developing and sustaining the will to complete a complicated, long-term project is a habit that will serve you well in other areas of life.
Take time to laugh at the process and at yourself. Figure out who would play whom in the movie version of your dissertation or of your dissertation defense! We consulted these works while writing this handout.
This Guide includes everything you need to know about what should be included in your final document, samples of specific sections, formatting guidelines, and a. D Be sure you have read and reviewed the information in this Thesis and Dissertation Guide prior to finalizing your document and preparing it for submission.
This Guide includes everything you need to know about what should be included in your final document, samples of specific sections, formatting guidelines, and a checklist for submitting your work. This link directs you to the ProQuest ETD Administrator site where you will set up an account and submit your completed electronic thesis or dissertation to The Graduate School. These guidelines and advice will be helpful as you consider your thesis or dissertation from preparation through final submission. Although you won't submit your thesis or dissertation until your final semester of graduate study, it is recommended that you begin thinking about many aspects of your thesis or dissertation much sooner. When do I need to submit my thesis or dissertation to The Graduate School?
This handout will not only answer this question, but also give you good, practical advice on starting, drafting, and completing your dissertation.
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Thesis and Dissertation
Employees are being encouraged to telework, where possible. For guidance, forms and procedures, visit Resources for Employees at www. The Graduate College is responsible for ensuring that theses and dissertations written by our graduates adhere to consistent formatting and quality guidelines. Please refer to the Academic Calendar for the deadline to apply for graduation. The key steps are also described in this one-page handout. The Graduate College will verify that all committee members have graduate faculty status, as required by the University policy.
Manuals and Templates
Individual program credit hour requirements are established by the student's academic program and must be satisfied. Doctoral students are required to complete a minimum program residence credit of four full semesters, either by full-time registration, or by part-time registration over several semesters. At least two of the required four semesters of residence must be earned in contiguous registration of no fewer than six credit hours at UNC-Chapel Hill. While summer session registration is not required to maintain consecutive registration, any credits of three to six hours per session will be computed on the usual basis as part of the required two-semester contiguity. Please refer to the general guidelines for Transferring Course Credit and Doctoral degree guidelines. Course requirements in the major field must be fulfilled as specified by the student's academic program. The student is expected to complete a program of courses that will provide mastery of the field. Major courses must also include a minimum of six credit hours of dissertation registration. With the approval of the major and minor programs, a student may elect to declare a formal minor in any program that offers a graduate degree.
Please read this Thesis and Dissertation Guide Guide carefully before preparing your thesis or dissertation.
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