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For Valentine’s Day this year, why not devote the day to yourself: work on the dissertation you love (or love to hate), alleviate stress, develop a concrete plan, and let us help you prepare for success.

This workshop is designed for graduate students actively developing and writing their dissertations (ie. drafting the proposal or chapters). Research and writing professionals from across the university, including librarians, writing consultants, graduate school administrators, psychologists and disciplinary specialists, will help you move forward in your writing process.

July 18th and 19th, 2012

The Writing Center, in conjunction with the USF Tampa Library and the USF Graduate School will be hosting a dissertation forum on July 18th and 19th, 2012. Please register and join us for two days of dedicated dissertation work. You’ll meet with librarians, IRB representatives and writing consultants and leave with some serious progress made on your work!

When we conduct research, we need to cite our work to show where we found information. This gives credit to the original writer of the text you are using to support your points. It also, however, shows your reader that you conducted research and know what information is out there about your topic. Demonstrating this gives you credibility with your reader and he or she will consider you more reliable. Your reader will be more likely to trust your analysis, opinions, and ideas.

Citations also give the reader an insight into the kind of research you are conducting, how prevalent an idea is, and sometimes even how recently a text was published. An APA in-text citation, for example, provides the reader with the year a work was published, letting the reader know the age of your research (it may be useful to be very current, you may be demonstrating long-term historical impacts, or comparing old and new texts). An MLA citation, may show how frequently in a work an idea is used. For example, you may directly quote similar ideas from ten different pages in a book, showing the reader each time how frequently that idea pops up in that work.

Another reason we cite is to share our research with each other. Many readers will peruse an article’s bibliography or reference list to see if there are any books, articles or website they want to read for their own writing. Doing this creates a community in your field as people share with each other what they’re reading.

Citations may seem labor-intensive, frustrating and overwhelming, but there is a purpose behind them. By making sure each citation follows the exact same format, readers can follow you better, understand your material and look the works up themselves. When you’re finalizing your paper and trying to make sense of all the citation rules, remember that there is more there than just not cheating. You are building a paper that you can be proud to share, that shows everyone how much effort you’ve dedicated to your writing process.

Marc Wathieu CC

Many upperclassmen and graduate students strive to take part in conferences and show others the work we’ve been doing. Conferences are a great opportunity to bounce ideas off other experts in your field and get ideas for developing your work. Applying for a conference, however, can be daunting work and many are quite competitive.

If you’ve never applied to speak at a conference before, here is how the process usually works:

• The conference will send out a “Call for Papers” (CFP) that tells everyone things like what kind of conference is being held, the conference’s theme, the requirements for proposals, and deadlines.
• You’ll write a proposal, which is usually an abstract ranging anywhere from 200-800 words and explains you topic.
• You send the conference folks your proposal by the deadline (miss the deadline and you’re out of luck).
• Many conferences will conduct a “blind review.” This means that 1-3 people will read your proposal without any identifying information on it. They’ll have no idea who wrote it. The reviewers will send the abstract back to the conference committee with their recommendations of whether or not your idea is one they’d like to hear at the conference.
• You’ll get a notice stating whether or not you were accepted.

Don’t get discouraged if you’re not accepted. Conferences can be very competitive, and many times the committees have to turn down great proposals because there simply isn’t enough space.

Check out this blog post from “The Professor Is In,” which details the things you should try to do when trying to prepare an abstract for a conference proposal.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers a list as well that you may find helpful during your writing process. http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/tutorials/writing_tips.html

Writing the doctoral dissertation: a systematic approach.

By Gordon B. Davis, Clyde A. Parker

USF Lib: LB2369.D357

Doing your dissertation in business and management: the reality of researching and writing.

By Reva Berman Brown

USF Lib: LB2369 .B73 2006

Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day: a guide to starting, revising, and finishing your doctoral thesis

By Joan Bolker

USF Lib:  LB2369 .B57 1998

Demystifying dissertation writing : a streamlined process from choice of topic to final text

By Peg Boyle Single ; foreword by Richard M. Reis.

USF Lib: LB2369 .S55 2009

How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences

By David R. Krathwohl and Nick L. Smith

USF Lib: LB2369 .K723 2005

The University of Texas at Austin provides sample proposals from a wide variety of disciplines. Search for the discipline and/or topic most closely linked to your own to see how other students in your position are putting dissertation proposals together.

https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/sample_diss.html

1. While proposals may be had to find online, dissertations are readily available. Review the table of contents in a variety of dissertations to get an idea of what you should expect to include in your work.
2. Talk to your advisor(s). He/She/They will know when you’re ready to write and provide insight into both the process and your own research.
3. Organizing your thesis around conference papers can help you maintain hard deadlines.
4. Keep your proposal between 20 and 80 pages, but check with your advisor and colleagues for the typical length.

Here is the link to the UMASS article: http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/~strohman/proposal-tips.html

Keep in mind that the guidelines listed here are specific to UMASS, but the general information may be quite useful to you.

Let the community of academics help you! Dissertations are readily available online, through inter-library loan and sometimes through a quick email to another library.