Dissertation proposal

After passing the comprehensive examination and identifying a dissertation topic, a dissertation committee is appointed and the student must pass a proposal defense. The dissertation committee will take the place of the advisory committee and the faculty adviser is superseded by the dissertation adviser. The dissertation committee must be approved by the Office of Graduate Studies using the Appointment of Doctoral Dissertation Committee form (GO-16D).

A doctoral student must be in Regular status in order to have a dissertation committee appointed. A University Conditional status will be automatically converted to Regular status upon the completion of 9 letter-graded graduate credits with a GPA of 3.00 or higher after admission. Department Conditional status can only be removed by the doctoral program via a DARS exception to the Office of Graduate Studies. See Admission statuses for detailed information about Regular, University Conditional, and Departmental Conditional statuses.

The dissertation committee must consist of four to six PSU faculty members: the dissertation adviser, a minimum of two and a maximum of four regular members, and the Graduate Office Representative. The chair of the dissertation committee and the Graduate Office Representative must be regular, full-time PSU instructional faculty, tenured or tenure-track, assistant professor or higher in rank; the other two to four committee members may include adjunct or fixed-term faculty and/or one member of the OHSU faculty. If it is necessary to go off-campus for one committee member with specific expertise not available among PSU faculty, a curriculum vitae (CV) for that proposed member must be presented with the GO-16D form. This off-campus member may substitute for one of the two to four regular committee members. All committee members must have doctoral degrees.

No proposal defense shall be valid without a dissertation committee approved by the Office of Graduate Studies. The GO-16D form should be submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies a minimum of six weeks in advance of the estimated date of the dissertation proposal meeting. The student must deliver a draft of the dissertation proposal to all members of the approved committee no fewer than 14 days before the proposal defense.

All appointed committee members, or alternates approved in advance by the Office of Graduate Studies, must be present for the proposal defense; one regular committee member (not the Chair or Graduate Office Representative) may participate via video or teleconference. The student must attend the proposal defense in person (i.e., not via video or teleconference). The proposal defense must be a formal meeting of the entire approved dissertation committee at which the student will make an oral presentation of the written proposal for discussion, evaluation, and suggested modification. The final proposal submitted to the committee for approval should be sufficiently detailed and clear to provide a blueprint for the study to follow. The proposal is expected to include the following:

1. General nature and present status of knowledge of the problem.
2. The theoretical and empirical framework within which the proposed problem exists.
3. The significance of the proposed research and its likely contributions.
4. The research methodology to be used.

The doctoral program recommends the student for advancement to candidacy once the dissertation proposal has been approved.