Ph.D. Committees and the Thesis Proposal
Ph.D. Committees
Purpose
The role of Ph.D. committees is to provide frequent feedback
and advice to the Ph.D. candidate. Those who serve on a
Ph.D. committee share in the responsibility of guiding the research
to successful completion. They should not be viewed by the
Ph.D. candidate as obstacles, but rather as additional mentors and
possible promoters of the thesis research. As a Ph.D. student
applies for jobs, committee members are often the first choice for
seeking recommendation letters. Therefore, each committee member
should be chosen wisely to help advance the research and promote the
career of the candidate. It is expected that the Ph.D. Advisor works
closely with the Ph.D. candidate in determining the most appropriate
committees.
Technicalities
In the semester that the Qualifying Exam is passed, the candidate is expected to form a Ph.D. committee. Committee members, however, may easily be added or removed during the time from the Qualifying Exam to the Final Defense.
For the initial Ph.D. committee, a minimum of three members is required, two of whom must belong to the faculty of the Department of Computer Science. The Ph.D. advisor is included on this committee.
Once the Thesis Proposal (Preliminary Exam) stage is reached,
the committee must be changed to satisfy requirements imposed by
the Graduate College and the Department of Computer Science: 1)
there must be at least four voting members (normally, all are
designated as such); 2) at least three and no less than half of the
voting members must be members of the UIUC Graduate Faculty; 3) at
least two of the voting members must be tenured; 4) at least three
members must be members of the extended faculty in the Department
of Computer Science (Extended faculty of the DCS includes the
regular faculty, as well as people with non-visiting
(assistant/associate) professor appointments in DCS that carry one
(or more) of the following modifiers: adjunct, affiliate, research
or emeritus.), two of whom must be full-time Computer Science
department members (non-affiliate); 5) at least one member must be
from outside of UIUC. (The outside member is required only for students who have passed the Ph.D. Qualifying Exam in Spring 2006 or later. It is nevertheless highly recommended for all students.)
The outside member must have a Ph.D., but need not be university faculty. He or she may, for example, belong to an industrial or government research lab. Teleconferencing technology may even be used, if necessary, for the Thesis Proposal presentation. Note: For approval of the outside member, the Computer Science Department and the Graduate College require their CV (resume) and a brief statement of why they were chosen.
The five requirements above are also imposed for the Ph.D. committee for the Final Defense (although the committees may be different).
If it can be argued that an alternative committee composition
is preferable for the intellectual development of the
Ph.D. candidate and the quality of the thesis research, then a
petition may be submitted to waive some of the requirements.
Advice
Keep in mind that committee members may be changed over the duration of Ph.D. candidacy. They are only officially recorded by the Graduate College at the times of the Thesis Proposal and the Final Defense. Students are therefore encouraged to involve additional researchers in their efforts as early as possible, with the understanding that they are not locked into particular committee choices. In some sense, the Ph.D. committee is just a formal mechanism to stimulate interaction between faculty (or other researchers) and Ph.D. students.
It is generally recommended to have at least one committee member who is not a specialist in the general area of research pursued in the thesis. The ability to explain and justify research to outsiders is crucial to the success of a researcher.
It is also fairly common to have more committee members than the minimum. This helps to further enhance the quality and visibility of the work. Furthermore, it may be easier to satisfy the five requirements on Ph.D. committees by having more members.
The Thesis Proposal
Purpose
Writing good proposals is an important part of being a
successful researcher. The Thesis Proposal is viewed as an important
milestone that helps to develop this skill. The Ph.D. candidate writes
a proposal that is submitted to the Ph.D. committee prior to the
Thesis Proposal presentation. (This is called the Preliminary Exam by the Graduate College.) The Thesis Proposal presentation gives the Ph.D. committee a formal opportunity to evaluate the research progress and goals of the Ph.D. candidate. Thus, the two main purposes of the Thesis Proposal are to develop proposal-writing skills and to obtain feedback from the Ph.D. committee.
Technicalities
The Thesis Proposal presentation is expected within a year or two of passing the Qualifying Exam. It may be taken no later than five semesters after passing the Qualifying exam.
All Ph.D. candidates whose native language is not English, regardless of US citizenship, must also pass the Test of Spoken English (TSE) or the Speak exam, administered by the university, prior to attempting the Prelim.
The Thesis Proposal must be submitted to the Ph.D. committee at least three weeks prior to the presentation. This gives the committee sufficient time to carefully read the proposal and evaluate the ideas. Failure to submit the proposal on time may result in rescheduling the Thesis Proposal presentation.
The Ph.D. committee for the Thesis Proposal presentation must
satisfy the five criteria given in Section 1.
Advice
It is a challenging task to write a good proposal. A balance must be struck between satisfying severe space limitations while providing the most critical details. Note that the proposal is not a binding agreement between the candidate and the Ph.D. committee on the precise tasks that must be accomplished. Through frequent interactions with Ph.D. committee members, the candidate can adapt the specific thesis accomplishments as necessary.
The Thesis Proposal should be between 15 and 25 pages (when in single-column, single-spaced format). Bibliographic references are not included in this page count (having more references is encouraged). There are no explicit page limits or formatting requirements; therefore, there is no need to play games with fonts and margins. However, if proposals are much shorter or longer than the norm, the Ph.D. committee will question the reasons for this. If the proposal is much too long, the committee may recommend rescheduling the exam after the proposal is rewritten.
Three main criteria are usually applied in evaluating a
proposal (The first two are similar to the National Science Foundation's guidelines for evaluating research proposals):
- Intellectual merit: What is the importance of the activity to advancing knowledge or understanding?
- Expected impact: What impact can be expected in terms of particular research communities and on society in general?
- Feasibility: How likely are the stated goals to be achieved
by the candidate?
Based on these criteria, the Thesis Proposal should
contain:
- An overview of the state-of-the-art, which helps to show that the candidate has a good grasp of the relevant research fields.
- A brief summary of research results obtained so far by the candidate. This includes citing prior publications and current submissions produced by the Ph.D. candidate.
- A cleardescription of the proposed remaining problems and goals.
- Some details of the proposed technical approach.
- Clear arguments as to why the work is interesting in terms of intellectual merit and expected impact.
- An explanation of how the goals can be accomplished
within the expected amount of time.
The Thesis Proposal should not be:
- A preliminary draft of the thesis.
- Particular chapters or parts of the thesis.
- A survey of the candidate's research field.
- An existing publication or technical report.
--
Last Modified June 30 2006 10:44:39.
