The Spencer Research Training Grant Program
Colloquium Series 1998-1999 on

The Practice of Educational Research

 "DOING A DISSERTATION PROPOSAL THAT WORKS:THOUGHTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DISSERTATION IDEA FROM PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN THERE AND LIVED TO TALK ABOUT IT"

Thursday, November 12, 1998
12:00 to 1:30   Room 252 Erickson Hall

 Feel free to bring your lunch.
Light refreshments will be served.

This colloquium will be a panel discussion of the single issue that perhaps most plagues doctoral students -- writing a workable dissertation proposal. The participants are five current and former doctoral students, who will compare notes about the often traumatic and circuitous process of developing an idea for a dissertation and rendering this idea in the form of an acceptable proposal. All of the panelists have passed the proposal stage and are now at some point farther along -- collecting and analyzing data, writing and revising the text of the dissertation, or working on publishing

dissertation material after graduation. They will share some of their own experiences about the process of planning a dissertation and provide some thoughts about this process from the other side of the Great Proposal Barrier:

• How did they come up with their idea for a dissertation?
• How did they develop this idea into a dissertation proposal
• What did they learn from this experience?
• How would they do things differently if they had it to do over again?
• How has their subsequent experience in actually doing the dissertation shaped their perspoctive on the process of developing the dissertation proposal?