Doctoral Dissertation Committee
As soon as possible
after passing the qualifying examination, each student must establish a
doctoral dissertation committee. The committee will consist of at least
five members, who will serve as the examining committee at the
student's oral defense of the dissertation. Four members of the
committee must be members of the graduate program in integrative
neuroscience. With approval from the program faculty, the committee may
include faculty members from other Rutgers or
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) units. At least one
member of the committee should come from outside Rutgers and UMDNJ and be a recognized
expert in the candidate's research field.
In the early stages
of forming a dissertation committee, the candidate, acting with
approval of his or her dissertation adviser, should choose one member
of the panel to serve as a coordinator. The coordinator, who should be
someone other than the dissertation adviser, facilitates the closed
sessions, introduces the candidate to the committee, and moderates the
question-and-answer period of the proposal and the defense sessions.
Role of the Committee. All
members of the committee must be present when the student makes the
dissertation proposal. Following approval of the proposal, the student
should meet with individual members of the committee as the research
proceeds to discuss his or her work and to solicit their advice. At the
conclusion of the data-gathering phase, the entire committee will meet
to determine if the candidate has completed sufficient work on the
project. If geographic restrictions make it difficult for the external
member to attend this session, the other committee members should
transmit written comments and questions to this member. The committee's
decision on data gathering will determine whether the student is ready
to begin the final analysis and writing phase of the research.
At least three months before the student is to defend his or her work,
he or she should submit a draft of the manuscript to the committee.
Although this document should be as complete as possible, the committee
will allow the student a certain degree of latitude at this point. For
example, the bibliography may not be complete or some of the figures in
the document may not be in final form. With the possible exception of
the external member, the entire committee meets again to ensure that
work on the thesis is progressing satisfactorily and to make
suggestions to the candidate. When the candidate makes his or her final
defense, all committee members, including the external member, must be
present.
Doctoral Dissertation Proposal
Time Frame. The
candidate must prepare and present a dissertation proposal after
passing the qualifying examination and no later than one year before
the date of the dissertation defense. This time frame is designed to
ensure that the student gets a proposal ready and has full benefit of
advice and guidance from the dissertation committee. For this reason,
candidates should form their dissertation committees well in advance of
the time they make their proposal presentations.
Written Proposal. The
written dissertation proposal must be a scholarly writing that
describes the experiments that have been completed for the dissertation
and further experiments that are proposed. The proposal introduction
gives the candidate a first chance to write a scholarly synthesis of
the scientific literature related to the dissertation proposal. This
introduction should be more comprehensive than the introduction to a
single scientific experiment or publication.
The written
proposal is not expected to describe a large number of completed
dissertation experiments. Instead, the document should stress
preliminary data that would illustrate the feasibility of the research
direction of the proposal. In addition, the written proposal should
demonstrate the appropriateness and feasibility of the experimental
methods that will be used, and it should show that the candidate has
the requisite working knowledge of these methods to proceed. In the
case of proposed experiments, the paper should outline the expected
results and their relationship to hypotheses and alternative hypotheses
that are set forth in the introduction.
Oral Presentation and Examination. The
oral presentation, which is open to the university community, is not
expected to contain a large number of completed dissertation
experiments. As with the written proposal, it should emphasize
preliminary data that support the feasibility of the research direction
the candidate plans to pursue. In addition to demonstrating the
appropriateness and feasibility of the experimental methods that will
be used, the candidate should show that he or she has a sufficient
working knowledge of these methods to proceed with the research.
In the case of proposed experiments, which likely will constitute the
majority of the seminar, the presentation should emphasize the
rationale, hypotheses to be tested, methods to be used, and the
expected results and their interpretation in relation to the
hypothesis.
Thus, the presentation should include the salient
aspects of the written dissertation proposal, but in an appropriate
seminar style complete with visual aids. Slides are highly recommended.
The seminar presentation is followed by a question-and-answer period at
which the candidate takes questions from the university community.
The dissertation committee then will meet with the candidate in closed
session to conduct a more detailed examination of the proposal and to
determine the candidate's grasp of its scientific content. At this
point, the panel may ask the candidate to revise any aspect of the
proposal. The goal of an accepted dissertation proposal is for the
candidate and the committee to reach consensus on the expected
scientific content of the doctoral dissertation.
