The Successful Dissertation Defense

What makes for a successful dissertation defense? Am sure you have found other sites where students or professors tell you what makes a defense successful. I hope this will add to what you already know.

The defense is the oral examination of your doctoral dissertation (or thesis). It is the 1:30-2:00 hours you spend in conversation with your dissertation committees, in the presence of other 'witnesses' who may include friends, family and the campus community, demonstrating your expertise in your study topic.

Depending on institutional guidelines, your defense 'audience' may or may not be allowed to participate by making comments or asking questions. In most cases, whether the audience participates or simply watches the interchange, the only people who determine whether you have passed are the members of you committee.

Generally, your committee should not let you get to the defense unless they are sure that you are well prepared and can pass. However, institutional cultures are different, and committees are different too. Personally, I will not let my candidates sit in a defense unless am confident in their preparation and have essentially, ensured that they will pass. But that's me. I would not want the humiliation of seeing my candidate fail at that all important juncture.

So how should you as the candidate prepare for this 'examination'?

You should be in agreement with your chair and the rest of your committee that your dissertation is 'defensible', it is ready for this process. That does not necessarily mean every t has been crossed and every i dotted...though, it should not be a draft either. Rather, it means that your introduction, literature review, and methods (which in most institutions would have been approved at the proposal stage) are in tip top shape, the tenses have been changed to past, and everything there is good to go. Similarly, your chapter 4 (results) and 5 (discussion, interpretation, implications) are in excellent shape, they have been reviewed by your chair and essentially, approved as ready for defense by the entire committee. You should not schedule a defense if any one of your committee members is saying otherwise.

Prepare to present your research in about 30 minutes (check with your chair and dissertation handbook on any instructions for the presentation).

Prepare a presentation that is logically organized, beginning with purpose statement and ending with implications for future research. In most cases, you do not need to spend a lot of time talking through the last three chapters since your committee already approved those in the proposal defense. However, you do want to highlight any changes to your protocol even as you reiterate the purpose statement and theoretical framework.

Focus the bulk of your presentation on chapters 4-5 (I am speaking here of a traditional 5-chapter dissertation; if yours is not in this format, use the 5 chapters mentioned here as a guide on what you would be preparing). Ensure you discuss how your work extends theory, and informs practice, even as you point ahead to recommendations for future research.

Expect your committee to ask questions and make comments, interacting with you in a dialogue for at least an hour, sometimes longer. If you are well prepared, and they have been involved in your process closely having approved your dissertation for the defense, its possible that their questions and comments will focus not on what you did but on:

a. What you would do differently given ideal conditions
b. How you will use the dissertation, how it fits into your career goals
c. Your plans for publications

You would hope that the defense is not the place for the committee to get into an ego-war (I've heard that happens). Well, the best advise I would give on that will come in a different post, on how to select your dissertation committee members.

In the next few weeks, I will post on how to turn your dissertation into publications, and how to use it to enhance your career. If you are interested in reading my dissertation, you only need but Google me, it is freely available on ohiolink etd (Electronic Thesis and Dissertations). A link is also included here.

http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/Ngunjiri%20Faith%20Wambura.pdf?acc_num=bgsu1143220309

All the best at your defense. If you need further advise, do not hesitate to contact me.

Portraits of the Spirited Leadership of African Women

Today I was reminded to blog and indicate that I managed to get the book manuscript completed on time (+3 days) and actually submitted to the publisher. When I put all the documents into that flat rate USPS box, I felt like I had birthed something. The feeling of relief after so many days of editing, re-writing, cutting, and re-writing some more was like the joy that I have seen on mothers faces when them babies finally pop out...well, almost like that. The joy that makes the pain forgetable and worth every moment. A few months down the road, I will be able to post a cover of the book...there will actually be a book out there with my name on the cover.

Now that the book is done, there are a gazillion other projects to get through. The one that is making me sweat (me and two of my colleagues) is a research grant proposal for NSF. None of us has ever done anything this big before, the learning curve is very steep. But if we succeed, it will be a very exciting project, focusing on a mixed methods multiphase study of minority women in academic leadership.

I am also working on a statistics primer for our PhD students most of whom come unprepared to engage in research methods courses. Its been interesting re-learning and refreshing my statistics training and working towards creating a primer that is intuitive for students whose concentrations are Business, Non Profit and Education leadership. Am a geek if this is making my blood pump harder...a self-confessed and happy geek!

Am I a spirited professor? Do I teach in search a way as to facilitate the personal, professional, intellectual and spiritual growth of my students? Do I care deeply for and about my students? For me, being a professor is a spiritual quest. I was reading today a little about Nel Noddings thoughts on spirituality and education. She describes herself as a spiritual agnostic, who believes that children should be taught about religion and spirituality in public schools, so they can learn enough to make thier own choices about what to believe, as well as to grow as spiritual beings. I like that, alot. Since am openly Christian and hopefully, profoundly spiritual, I believe that professors should, if they can, facilitate learning where students can be allowed to be spiritual beings. I hope am doing that for my students. My professors, well, one of my professors who is still a mentor today did that for me, allowing me to express my spiritual identity even through my research.