Ph.D. Research Proposal and Dissertation Defense

Policy and Procedural Update as of October 2009

Each Ph.D. student shall, after consultation with his or her dissertation advisor, ask at least two additional people to be members of the dissertation committee. The committee should be constituted no later than the beginning of the fourth year of study. The departmental form listing the committee members, with their signatures, must be filed in the Department office by this time. The composition of the committee may be changed at any time if the student or faculty so choose; however, it must always include the student's dissertation advisor and at least two of the committee members must be regular faculty members from the Department of Statistics, and any such change must be filed as a resubmitted and newly completed and signed form with the Department office. The chair of the committee must be a member of the Department but need not be the dissertation advisor.

2. Proposal Presentation and Admission to Candidacy

A proposal presentation for Ph.D. research (also known as the fourth-year presentation) should be made no later than the end of November in the student's fourth year of study. The presentation will consist of a 30-minute talk to an audience of the student's dissertation committee and other interested faculty and students, followed by a closed question-and-answer session limited to the committee members and the student. The talk must be advertised at least one week in advance. In the presentation, the student should make a strong case for the importance and novelty of the proposed research and should demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the relevant literature. Acceptance of the proposal by the Dissertation Committee is a formal requirement of the Department's Ph.D. program. After a successful proposal presentation, the student will be formally admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree. By University rules the dissertation defense cannot occur earlier than 6 months after admission to candidacy, and the student should keep this in mind when scheduling both the proposal presentation and the defense.

3. Dissertation Defense and Submission

The Ph.D. degree will be awarded following a successful defense and the electronic submission of the final version of the dissertation to the University's Dissertation Office. In this process, a number of University and Department deadlines have to be obeyed. Listed in reverse order, the steps are:

a) Submission of Final Version of Dissertation:
The deadline is set by the University and is generally on a Wednesday in the 7th or 8th week of the quarter when the degree will be awarded. See:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/phd/
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/phd/deadlines.html
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/phd/etdqanda.html
for this deadline as well as guidelines for the formatting of dissertations.

b) Dissertation Defense:
The dissertation defense consists of a presentation to the student's dissertation committee, the department faculty and interested students, and a closed question-and-answer session limited to the committee, the department's faculty, and the defending student. This session typically takes place the day following the presentation. The session opens with the student giving a brief summary of the most important contributions of his or her work. The defense is to be scheduled at least two weeks before the University deadline indicated in point (a). A final draft of the dissertation must be made available to the entire faculty 8 days before the dissertation presentation.

c) Committee Approval of Scheduled Defense:
A draft of the dissertation should be distributed to the members of the dissertation committee no later than five weeks before the dissertation defense. At least four weeks before the defense, the student must file a departmental form in the Department office, signed by all members of the dissertation committee, indicating that the student can reasonably expect to defend the thesis within four weeks.

These rules delineate the minimum level of involvement of the dissertation committee. We strongly recommend that students set up their committees early and that they interact regularly with the members of their committees once they are established. In particular, we strongly recommend that those students wishing to complete the degree before September schedule their defense before the Summer Quarter, else unanticipated committee requirements may lead to the degree being delayed to the Winter Quarter.