Dissertation and Dissertation Committee

Working under faculty direction, each candidate for the doctorate will pursue an original investigation of a problem or problems within his or her area of concentration and present the results of this investigation in a dissertation. The dissertation topic must be approved by a faculty committee of at least four members, who are appointed by the graduate program director. The committee chair, who supervises the investigation, must be a member of the graduate faculty and must have been approved for supervising doctoral research. One committee member should be from outside the student's degree program.

The student works with the advice of the dissertation director to develop preliminary guidelines for a dissertation. Once this is done, the committee should meet to discuss the student's dissertation proposal. If possible, this meeting should include the outside committee member. As work on the dissertation progresses, the student is advised to consult regularly with members of his or her committee.

The candidate is expected to keep the committee informed of progress in his or her work and to allow the panel to assist in developing the dissertation. The committee agrees to give ample and early warning of any reservations it might have about the student's progress and must specify in writing the changes that it requires to accept the dissertation.

The final draft of the dissertation should be prepared in strict accordance with the dissertation format instructions provided on the Graduate School-Newark website at https://www.gsn.newark.rutgers.edu. After the committee has accepted the dissertation, the student must upload the dissertation online no later than the announced deadlines for completion of degree requirements.

With the dissertation, the candidate is required to submit an abstract, not exceeding 350 words, which describes the principal finding of his or her research. As with the dissertation, the professor in charge of the work for the dissertation also must approve the abstract, and other members of the student's committee must accept it.