The following notes are for intended advisees and for those on whose dissertation committee I serve.

It is a work in progress.

It is not intended for others to adopt; I reserve the right to add requirements that others may find excessive.

Criteria and Standards

General

  • Spellcheck all documents before sending them to me for review.
  • Use active voice. The "doer" in the sentence should be clear.
  • Omit needless words; excessive verbage clutters.

Thesis Proposal (Document)

  • A thesis proposal must propose a thesis. (Not a piece of software, not a paper, etc.) A thesis should be:
    • Arguable / Falsifiable: The statement can be doubted, or experiments could be designed to show that it is false. Great if the reader is likely to believe it to be false.
    • Clear / Precise: Each word in the thesis statement should have a clear definition. What you mean by "efficient" or "high-performance" should be in the text (not necessarily in the statement itself, but nearby).
    • Unified / One Sentence: Explain the central idea using just one sentence; if that sentence is too hard to craft, there are too many distinct ideas.
    • Narrow / Tractable: The scope of the thesis shouldn't be too large for you to address. If there are aspects of the problem you will not address, narrow the problem to what you're covering.
    • Original: Your work; someone else didn't have the same thesis statement.
    This formulation from Maner, quoted by Wright State, with the exception of "Predictive" (that the thesis should act as an outline), which seems a requirement too far. Click through for more description.
  • Use my intro outline template if you're stuck.
  • Chronological ordering is not likely a good one: put important stuff first.
  • Covering all your publications is not necessary. (The committee may discuss progress writing papers independent of the thesis.)
  • At least one (preferably two) high-quality published paper(s) should act as an anchor, to convince that the final third of the work is all that remains. (Papers need not be published, but must be of that quality.)

Thesis Proposal (Presentation)

The thesis proposal presentation must include the following:
  • The problem
  • The thesis
  • Your contributions
  • How your work fits in the context of related work.
I am sure you'll have the technical meat anyway. And must not include the following:
  • Invisible graph lines. Gnuplot green on a white background is a typical offender.
  • Text or figures not described. A big and detailed picture recycled from another talk, from which a small piece is useful, often causes such confusion.
  • Outline slides, if the outline is a close variant of the classic: problem / hypothesis / procedure / results / conclusion.

Dissertation (Document)

Follow the guidelines for the thesis proposal.
  • I don't care what the official style guidelines are. For me, prepare a version single spaced 10pt with 1.25'' margins.

Dissertation Defense (Presentation)

No laser pointers.

Students

Great students (not necessarily mine) I've worked with at Maryland: