her doctoral dissertation

Higher Education

What jill biden’s dissertation reveals about her approach to higher education, by jeffrey r. young nov 20, 2020.

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It turns out that Jill Biden, the presumptive First Lady, has thought deeply about community colleges. In fact, she wrote her dissertation at the University of Delaware about how to improve retention at two-year colleges.

So what did she conclude? And what does it say about her thinking on higher education, as she prepares to move into the White House?

First, it’s safe to say that Jill Biden has closer ties to community colleges than any previous First Lady. She started her own higher education career at a community college—enrolling in Brandywine Junior College in Philadelphia before transferring to the University of Delaware. She has taught in community colleges for years, first in Delaware and more recently at Northern Virginia Community College just outside of Washington, DC. And she has said she plans to continue teaching even after her husband Joe becomes president. (While Donald Trump continues to dispute the election results, experts and a growing number of prominent Republican lawmakers say that it is unlikely that Trump’s legal challenges or political maneuvers will change the outcome of the Nov. 3 election.)

To go inside what college life was like this fall during the pandemic, check out our Pandemic Campus Diaries series on the EdSurge Podcast.

Joe Biden even gave a shout-out to college educators in his acceptance speech. “For American educators, this is a great day for you all. You’re going to have one of your own in the White House,” he said.

But back to the dissertation. Jill Biden’s focus area when pursuing her Doctor of Education degree was Educational Leadership. And she chose to present her research in the form of an “executive position paper,” which according to the program’s website “identifies a problem of significance to you and your organization, analyzes the problem thoroughly, and develops a feasible plan to solve the problem.”

The organization she chose to focus her paper on was Delaware Technical & Community College, where she was an English and writing instructor at the time of her graduate study. The title of her paper: “ Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students’ Needs .”

In addition to giving a review of the literature, she interviewed and surveyed students and faculty, as well as faculty advisors, about their experiences and the challenges they faced regarding retention.

“Several themes regarding students’ needs have emerged,” she wrote. Her recommendations boiled down to holistic approach that included:

A mandatory study skills course to help better prepare students for college-level work
Better academic advising
A student center or other central place to gather with other students.
A psychologist to “administer educational testing and offer counseling.”
And a wellness center.

“Delaware Tech has the capacity to be so much better than it is presently,” she wrote. “The key to student retention is a coordinated, cohesive effort by administration, faculty, staff, and students. A student retention plan requires diligence and effort—but most of all, leadership.”

As part of her literature review, Biden interviewed prominent experts in student retention. One of them was Vincent Tinto, now an emeritus professor of education at Syracuse University, who is a prominent expert on retention and author of “Completing College: Rethinking Institutional Action.”

Tinto says he knew little about the project at the time, but that he answered Biden’s questions by phone. “I had no idea what the dissertation was going to become,” he told EdSurge. “I get so many of these requests, and I never want to turn them down I talk to so many graduate students.”

Reading through the dissertation now, he says, his first reaction is “Amen.” He said that her paper gives a practical roadmap to solving key problems that had not yet been fully articulated at the time. “Most of the things she identified are the ones that need to and have now started to be addressed,” he said.

And he praised her focus on thinking deeply about the experience of students of all backgrounds and experience levels. “The first two pages of her dissertation, where she describes her classroom and students, speaks volumes about her commitment to diversity,” he said.

The passage he refers to reads:

“The community college classroom is unlike any other classroom in America. Diversity, rather than homogeneity, is the norm. In an average-sized class of twenty students at Delaware Tech, for example, most of the seats will be filled with young students who have just graduated from high school. The majority of these will be female. At least five seats will be filled with middle-aged men and women who have lost their jobs due to downsizing and/or outsourcing. One or two seats will be filled with students who have graduated from a GED program. Some seats will hold older women whose children have just entered college – now these women are taking the opportunity to earn college degrees themselves. Three quarters of the class will be Caucasian; one quarter of the class will be African American; one seat will hold a Latino; and the remaining seats will be filled with students of Asian descent or non-resident aliens. At least one quarter of the students will have children – most of them will be single mothers. Some will be the first in their families to attend college.”

It is clear that Jill Biden plans to advocate for community colleges as she enters the White House. Just this week, she spoke at a symposium led by the College Promise Career Institute, a nonprofit that has an effort called College Progress that aims to make community college free.

“Community colleges fuel our industries, and we need an educated skilled trained workforce to lead the world in a 21st century economy,” she said at the event. “This isn’t a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, it’s an American issue.”

Tinto, the Syracuse professor, said that he hopes that Biden continues to keep the issue of retention in mind as she furthers her advocacy. “I would personally hope that one of the things Dr. Biden would do is maybe establish a task force to look at what should we as a nation do to move the needle on retention,” he said.

Jeffrey R. Young ( @jryoung ) is the higher education editor at EdSurge and the producer and co-host of the EdSurge Podcast . He can be reached at jeff [at] edsurge [dot] com.

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Defending Your Dissertation: A Guide

A woman in front of a bookshelf speaking to a laptop

Written by Luke Wink-Moran | Photo by insta_photos

Dissertation defenses are daunting, and no wonder; it’s not a “dissertation discussion,” or a “dissertation dialogue.” The name alone implies that the dissertation you’ve spent the last x number of years working on is subject to attack. And if you don’t feel trepidation for semantic reasons, you might be nervous because you don’t know what to expect. Our imaginations are great at making The Unknown scarier than reality. The good news is that you’ll find in this newsletter article experts who can shed light on what dissertations defenses are really like, and what you can do to prepare for them.

The first thing you should know is that your defense has already begun. It started the minute you began working on your dissertation— maybe even in some of the classes you took beforehand that helped you formulate your ideas. This, according to Dr. Celeste Atkins, is why it’s so important to identify a good mentor early in graduate school.

“To me,” noted Dr. Atkins, who wrote her dissertation on how sociology faculty from traditionally marginalized backgrounds teach about privilege and inequality, “the most important part of the doctoral journey was finding an advisor who understood and supported what I wanted from my education and who was willing to challenge me and push me, while not delaying me. I would encourage future PhDs to really take the time to get to know the faculty before choosing an advisor and to make sure that the members of their committee work well together.”

Your advisor will be the one who helps you refine arguments and strengthen your work so that by the time it reaches your dissertation committee, it’s ready. Next comes the writing process, which many students have said was the hardest part of their PhD. I’ve included this section on the writing process because this is where you’ll create all the material you’ll present during your defense, so it’s important to navigate it successfully. The writing process is intellectually grueling, it eats time and energy, and it’s where many students find themselves paddling frantically to avoid languishing in the “All-But-Dissertation” doldrums. The writing process is also likely to encroach on other parts of your life. For instance, Dr. Cynthia Trejo wrote her dissertation on college preparation for Latin American students while caring for a twelve-year-old, two adult children, and her aging parents—in the middle of a pandemic. When I asked Dr. Trejo how she did this, she replied:

“I don’t take the privilege of education for granted. My son knew I got up at 4:00 a.m. every morning, even on weekends, even on holidays; and it’s a blessing that he’s seen that work ethic and that dedication and the end result.”

Importantly, Dr. Trejo also exercised regularly and joined several online writing groups at UArizona. She mobilized her support network— her partner, parents, and even friends from high school to help care for her son.

The challenges you face during the writing process can vary by discipline. Jessika Iwanski is an MD/PhD student who in 2022 defended her dissertation on genetic mutations in sarcomeric proteins that lead to severe, neonatal dilated cardiomyopathy. She described her writing experience as “an intricate process of balancing many things at once with a deadline (defense day) that seems to be creeping up faster and faster— finishing up experiments, drafting the dissertation, preparing your presentation, filling out all the necessary documents for your defense and also, for MD/PhD students, beginning to reintegrate into the clinical world (reviewing your clinical knowledge and skill sets)!”

But no matter what your unique challenges are, writing a dissertation can take a toll on your mental health. Almost every student I spoke with said they saw a therapist and found their sessions enormously helpful. They also looked to the people in their lives for support. Dr. Betsy Labiner, who wrote her dissertation on Interiority, Truth, and Violence in Early Modern Drama, recommended, “Keep your loved ones close! This is so hard – the dissertation lends itself to isolation, especially in the final stages. Plus, a huge number of your family and friends simply won’t understand what you’re going through. But they love you and want to help and are great for getting you out of your head and into a space where you can enjoy life even when you feel like your dissertation is a flaming heap of trash.”

While you might sometimes feel like your dissertation is a flaming heap of trash, remember: a) no it’s not, you brilliant scholar, and b) the best dissertations aren’t necessarily perfect dissertations. According to Dr. Trejo, “The best dissertation is a done dissertation.” So don’t get hung up on perfecting every detail of your work. Think of your dissertation as a long-form assignment that you need to finish in order to move onto the next stage of your career. Many students continue revising after graduation and submit their work for publication or other professional objectives.

When you do finish writing your dissertation, it’s time to schedule your defense and invite friends and family to the part of the exam that’s open to the public. When that moment comes, how do you prepare to present your work and field questions about it?

“I reread my dissertation in full in one sitting,” said Dr. Labiner. “During all my time writing it, I’d never read more than one complete chapter at a time! It was a huge confidence boost to read my work in full and realize that I had produced a compelling, engaging, original argument.”

There are many other ways to prepare: create presentation slides and practice presenting them to friends or alone; think of questions you might be asked and answer them; think about what you want to wear or where you might want to sit (if you’re presenting on Zoom) that might give you a confidence boost. Iwanksi practiced presenting with her mentor and reviewed current papers to anticipate what questions her committee might ask. If you want to really get in the zone, you can emulate Dr. Labiner and do a full dress rehearsal on Zoom the day before your defense.

But no matter what you do, you’ll still be nervous:

“I had a sense of the logistics, the timing, and so on, but I didn’t really have clear expectations outside of the structure. It was a sort of nebulous three hours in which I expected to be nauseatingly terrified,” recalled Dr. Labiner.

“I expected it to be terrifying, with lots of difficult questions and constructive criticism/comments given,” agreed Iwanski.

“I expected it to be very scary,” said Dr. Trejo.

“I expected it to be like I was on trial, and I’d have to defend myself and prove I deserved a PhD,” said Dr Atkins.

And, eventually, inexorably, it will be time to present.

“It was actually very enjoyable” said Iwanski. “It was more of a celebration of years of work put into this project—not only by me but by my mentor, colleagues, lab members and collaborators! I felt very supported by all my committee members and, rather than it being a rapid fire of questions, it was more of a scientific discussion amongst colleagues who are passionate about heart disease and muscle biology.”

“I was anxious right when I logged on to the Zoom call for it,” said Dr. Labiner, “but I was blown away by the number of family and friends that showed up to support me. I had invited a lot of people who I didn’t at all think would come, but every single person I invited was there! Having about 40 guests – many of them joining from different states and several from different countries! – made me feel so loved and celebrated that my nerves were steadied very quickly. It also helped me go into ‘teaching mode’ about my work, so it felt like getting to lead a seminar on my most favorite literature.”

“In reality, my dissertation defense was similar to presenting at an academic conference,” said Dr. Atkins. “I went over my research in a practiced and organized way, and I fielded questions from the audience.

“It was a celebration and an important benchmark for me,” said Dr. Trejo. “It was a pretty happy day. Like the punctuation at the end of your sentence: this sentence is done; this journey is done. You can start the next sentence.”

If you want to learn more about dissertations in your own discipline, don’t hesitate to reach out to graduates from your program and ask them about their experiences. If you’d like to avail yourself of some of the resources that helped students in this article while they wrote and defended their dissertations, check out these links:

The Graduate Writing Lab

https://thinktank.arizona.edu/writing-center/graduate-writing-lab

The Writing Skills Improvement Program

https://wsip.arizona.edu

Campus Health Counseling and Psych Services

https://caps.arizona.edu

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Dissertation

What Is a Dissertation? | Guide, Examples, & Template

A dissertation is a long-form piece of academic writing based on original research conducted by you. It is usually submitted as the final step in order to finish a PhD program.

Your dissertation is probably the longest piece of writing you’ve ever completed. It requires solid research, writing, and analysis skills, and it can be intimidating to know where to begin.

Your department likely has guidelines related to how your dissertation should be structured. When in doubt, consult with your supervisor.

You can also download our full dissertation template in the format of your choice below. The template includes a ready-made table of contents with notes on what to include in each chapter, easily adaptable to your department’s requirements.

Download Word template Download Google Docs template

In the US, a dissertation generally refers to the collection of research you conducted to obtain a PhD.
In other countries (such as the UK), a dissertation often refers to the research you conduct to obtain your bachelor’s or master’s degree.

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Dissertation committee and prospectus process, how to write and structure a dissertation, acknowledgements or preface, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review, methodology, reference list, proofreading and editing, defending your dissertation, free checklist and lecture slides.

When you’ve finished your coursework, as well as any comprehensive exams or other requirements, you advance to “ABD” (All But Dissertation) status. This means you’ve completed everything except your dissertation.

Prior to starting to write, you must form your committee and write your prospectus or proposal . Your committee comprises your adviser and a few other faculty members. They can be from your own department, or, if your work is more interdisciplinary, from other departments. Your committee will guide you through the dissertation process, and ultimately decide whether you pass your dissertation defense and receive your PhD.

Your prospectus is a formal document presented to your committee, usually orally in a defense, outlining your research aims and objectives and showing why your topic is relevant . After passing your prospectus defense, you’re ready to start your research and writing.

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The structure of your dissertation depends on a variety of factors, such as your discipline, topic, and approach. Dissertations in the humanities are often structured more like a long essay , building an overall argument to support a central thesis , with chapters organized around different themes or case studies.

However, hard science and social science dissertations typically include a review of existing works, a methodology section, an analysis of your original research, and a presentation of your results , presented in different chapters.

Dissertation examples

We’ve compiled a list of dissertation examples to help you get started.

Example dissertation #1: Heat, Wildfire and Energy Demand: An Examination of Residential Buildings and Community Equity (a dissertation by C. A. Antonopoulos about the impact of extreme heat and wildfire on residential buildings and occupant exposure risks).
Example dissertation #2: Exploring Income Volatility and Financial Health Among Middle-Income Households (a dissertation by M. Addo about income volatility and declining economic security among middle-income households).
Example dissertation #3: The Use of Mindfulness Meditation to Increase the Efficacy of Mirror Visual Feedback for Reducing Phantom Limb Pain in Amputees (a dissertation by N. S. Mills about the effect of mindfulness-based interventions on the relationship between mirror visual feedback and the pain level in amputees with phantom limb pain).

The very first page of your document contains your dissertation title, your name, department, institution, degree program, and submission date. Sometimes it also includes your student number, your supervisor’s name, and the university’s logo.

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Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

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The abstract is a short summary of your dissertation, usually about 150 to 300 words long. Though this may seem very short, it’s one of the most important parts of your dissertation, because it introduces your work to your audience.

Your abstract should:

State your main topic and the aims of your research
Describe your methods
Summarize your main results
State your conclusions

Theoretical framework

Your literature review can often form the basis for your theoretical framework. Here, you define and analyze the key theories, concepts, and models that frame your research.

Checklist: Dissertation

My title page includes all information required by my university.

I have included acknowledgements thanking those who helped me.

My abstract provides a concise summary of the dissertation, giving the reader a clear idea of my key results or arguments.

I have created a table of contents to help the reader navigate my dissertation. It includes all chapter titles, but excludes the title page, acknowledgements, and abstract.

My introduction leads into my topic in an engaging way and shows the relevance of my research.

My introduction clearly defines the focus of my research, stating my research questions and research objectives .

My introduction includes an overview of the dissertation’s structure (reading guide).

I have conducted a literature review in which I (1) critically engage with sources, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of existing research, (2) discuss patterns, themes, and debates in the literature, and (3) address a gap or show how my research contributes to existing research.

I have clearly outlined the theoretical framework of my research, explaining the theories and models that support my approach.

I have thoroughly described my methodology , explaining how I collected data and analyzed data.

I have concisely and objectively reported all relevant results .

I have (1) evaluated and interpreted the meaning of the results and (2) acknowledged any important limitations of the results in my discussion .

I have clearly stated the answer to my main research question in the conclusion .

I have clearly explained the implications of my conclusion, emphasizing what new insight my research has contributed.

I have provided relevant recommendations for further research or practice.

If relevant, I have included appendices with supplemental information.

I have included an in-text citation every time I use words, ideas, or information from a source.

I have listed every source in a reference list at the end of my dissertation.

I have consistently followed the rules of my chosen citation style .

I have followed all formatting guidelines provided by my university.

Congratulations!

The end is in sight—your dissertation is nearly ready to submit! Make sure it's perfectly polished with the help of a Scribbr editor.

If you’re an educator, feel free to download and adapt these slides to teach your students about structuring a dissertation.

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How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates
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CAREER COLUMN
30 March 2020

How to defend a PhD remotely

Alyssa Frederick 0

Alyssa Frederick is a postdoctoral scholar at the Bodega Marine Laboratory in Bodega Bay, California, part of the University of California, Davis.

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In November 2019, I conducted my PhD defence using the videoconferencing software Zoom.

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Dissertating Like a Distance Runner: Ten Tips for Finishing Your PhD

The above photo is of Sir Mo Farah running past Buckingham Palace into the home stretch of the London Marathon. I took the photo two days after my viva, in which I defended my PhD dissertation. Farah become a British hero when he and his training partner, Galen Rupp, won the gold and silver medals in the 10k at the London Olympic Games.

I had the honor of racing against Rupp at Nike’s Boarder Clash meet between the fastest high school distance runners in my home state of Washington and Rupp’s home state of Oregon. I’m happy to provide a link to the results and photos of our teenage selves since I beat Galen and Washington won the meet. (Note: In the results, ‘Owen’ is misspelled with the commonly added s , which I, as a fan of Jesse Owens, feel is an honor.) By the time we were running in college—Rupp for the University of Oregon and myself for the University of Washington—he was on an entirely different level. I never achieved anything close to the kind of running success Rupp has had. Yet, for most of us mortals, the real value in athletics is the character traits and principles that sports instill in us, and how those principles carry over to other aspects of life. Here I want to share ten principles that the sport of distance running teaches, which I found to be quite transferrable to writing my doctoral dissertation.

To provide some personal context, I began as a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham in 2014. At that time my grandparents, who helped my single father raise my sister and me, continued their ongoing struggle with my Grandfather’s Alzheimer’s. It was becoming increasingly apparent that they would benefit from having my wife and I nearby. So, in 2015 we moved to my hometown of Yakima, Washington. That fall I began a 2/2 teaching load at a small university on the Yakama Nation Reservation as I continued to write my dissertation. Since finishing my PhD four years ago, in 2018, I have published one book , five research articles , and two edited volume chapters related in various ways to my dissertation. As someone living in rural Eastern Washington, who is a first-gen college grad, I had to find ways to stay self-motivated and to keep chipping away at my academic work. I found the following principles that I learned through distance running very helpful.

(1) Establish community . There are various explanations, some of which border on superstitious, for why Kenyan distance runners have been so dominant. Yet one factor is certainly the running community great Kenyan distance runners benefit from at their elite training camps, as discussed in Train Hard, Win Easy: The Kenyan Way . Having a community that values distance running can compel each member of the community to pursue athletic excellence over a long period of time. The same can be said for academic work. Many doctoral researchers have built-in community in their university departments, but for various reasons this is not true for everyone. Thankfully, alternative ways to establish community have never been easier, predominantly due to technology.

Since my dissertation applied Aristotelian causation and neo-Thomistic hylomorphism to mental causation and neural correlates of consciousness, I found it immensely helpful to meet consistently with neuroscientist, Christof Koch, and philosopher of mind, Mihretu Guta. Mihretu does work on the philosophy of consciousness and Christof propelled the dawn of the neurobiology of consciousness with Francis Crick . Though Mihretu lives in Southern California, we met monthly through Skype, and I would drive over the Cascade Mountains once a month to meet with Christof in Seattle. As my dissertation examiner, Anna Marmodoro, once reminded me: the world is small—it’s easier than ever before to connect with other researchers.

It can also be helpful to keep in mind that your community can be large or small. As some athletes train in large camps consisting of many runners, others have small training groups, such as the three Ingebrigtsen brothers . Likewise, your community could be a whole philosophy department or several close friends. You can also mix it up. As an introvert, I enjoyed my relatively small consistent community, but I also benefitted from attending annual regional philosophy conferences where I could see the same folks each year. And I especially enjoyed developing relationships with other international researchers interested in Aristotelian philosophy of mind at a summer school hosted by the University of Oxford in Naples, which Marmodoro directed. For a brief period, we all stayed in a small villa and talked about hylomorphism all day, each day, while enjoying delicious Italian food.

Whatever your community looks like, whatever shape it takes, what matters is that you’re encouraged toward accomplishing your academic goal.

(2) Know your goal. Like writing a dissertation, becoming a good distance runner requires a lot of tedious and monotonous work. If you don’t have a clear goal of what you want to achieve, you won’t get up early, lace up your running shoes, and enter the frosty morning air as you take the first of many steps in your morning run. There are, after all, more enticing and perhaps even more pressing things to do. Similarly, if you don’t have a clear goal of when you want to finish your dissertation, it is easy to put off your daily writing for another day, which can easily become more distant into the future.

(3) Be realistic about your goal . While it is important to have a clear goal as a distance runner and as a doctoral researcher, it is important for your goal to be realistic. This means your goal should take into account the fact that you are human and therefore have both particular strengths and limitations. Everyone enters the sport of distance running with different strengths and weaknesses. When Diddy ran the city it would have been unrealistic for him to try to break the two-hour barrier in the marathon, as Eliud Kipchoge did . If Diddy made that his goal, he probably would have lost all hope in the first mile of the marathon and never finished. Because he set a more realistic goal of breaking four hours, not two hours, he paced himself accordingly and actually finished.

The parent of two young children who is teaching part-time can certainly finish a dissertation. But the parent will have a greater likelihood of doing so with a reasonable goal that fits that individual’s strengths and limitations. If the parent expects to finish on the same timescale as someone who is single with no children nor teaching responsibilities, this will likely lead to disappointment and less motivation in the middle of the process. Motivation will remain higher, and correspondingly so will productivity that is fueled by motivation, if one’s goal is realistic and achievable.

Another element of having a realistic goal is being willing to adapt the goal as your circumstances change. Sometimes a runner might enter a race expecting to place in the top five and midway through the race realize that she has a great chance of winning (consider, for example, Des Linden’s victory at the Boston Marathon ). At that point, it would be wise to revise one’s goal to be ‘win the race’ rather than simply placing in the top five. At other times, a runner might expect to win the race or be on the podium and midway realize that is no longer possible. Yet, if she is nevertheless within striking distance of placing in the top five, then she can make that her new goal, which is realistic given her current situation and will therefore sustain her motivation to the finish line. Sara Hall, who could have and wanted to crack the top three, held on for fifth at the World Championships marathon because she adjusted her goal midrace.

The PhD candidate who initially plans to finish her dissertation in three years but then finds herself in the midst of a pandemic or dealing with a medical issue or a family crisis may not need to give up on her goal of finishing her dissertation. Perhaps, she only needs to revise her goal so that it allows more time, so she finishes in five years rather than three. A PhD finished in five years is certainly more valuable than no PhD.

(4) Know why you want to achieve your goal . My high school cross-country coach, Mr. Steiner, once gave me a book about distance running entitled “Motivation is the Name of the Game.” It is one of those books you don’t really need to read because the main takeaway is in the title. Distance running requires much-delayed gratification—you must do many things that are not intrinsically enjoyable (such as running itself, ice baths, going to bed early, etc.) in order to achieve success. If you don’t have a solid reason for why you want to achieve your running goal, you won’t do the numerous things you do not want to do but must do to achieve your goal. The same is true for finishing a PhD. Therefore, it is important to know the reason(s) why you want to finish your dissertation and why you want a PhD.

As a side note, it can also be immensely helpful to choose a dissertation topic that you are personally very interested in, rather than a topic that will simply make you more employable. Of course, being employable is something many of us must consider. Yet, if you pick a topic that is so boring to you that you have significant difficulty finding the motivation to finish your dissertation, then picking an “employable dissertation topic” will be anything but employable.

(5) Prioritize your goal . “Be selfish” were the words of exhortation my college cross-country team heard from our coaches before we returned home for Christmas break. As someone who teaches ethics courses, I feel compelled to clarify that “be selfish” is not typically good advice. However, to be fair to my coaches, the realistic point they were trying to convey was that at home we would be surrounded by family and friends who may not fully understand our running goals and what it takes to accomplish them. For example, during my first Christmas break home from college, I was trying to run eighty miles per week. Because I was trying to fit these miles into my social schedule without much compromise, many of these miles were run in freezing temps, in the dark, on concrete sidewalks with streetlights, rather than dirt trails. After returning to campus following the holidays, I raced my first indoor track race with a terribly sore groin, which an MRI scan soon revealed was due to a stress fracture in my femur. I learned the hard way that I have limits to what I can do, which entails I must say “no thanks” to some invitations, even though that may appear selfish to some.

A PhD researcher writing a dissertation has a substantial goal before her. Yet, many people writing a dissertation have additional responsibilities, such as teaching, being a loving spouse, a faithful friend, or a present parent. As I was teaching while writing my dissertation, I often heard the mantra “put students first.” Yet, I knew if I prioritized my current students over and above finishing my dissertation, I would, like many, never finish my dissertation. However, I knew it would be best for my future students to be taught by an expert who has earned a PhD. So, I put my future students first by prioritizing finishing my PhD . This meant that I had to limit the teaching responsibilities I took on. Now, my current students are benefitting from my decision, as they are taught by an expert in my field.

While prioritizing your dissertation can mean putting it above some things in life, it also means putting it below other things. A friend once told me he would fail in a lot of areas in life before he fails as a father, which is often what it means to practically prioritize one goal above another. Prioritizing family and close friendships need not mean that you say ‘yes’ to every request, but that you intentionally build consistent time into your schedule to foster relationships with the people closest to you. For me, this practically meant not working past 6:00pm on weekdays and taking weekends off to hang out with family and friends. This relieved pressure, because I knew that if something went eschew with my plan to finish my PhD, I would still have the people in my life who I care most about. I could then work toward my goal without undue anxiety about the possibility of failing and the loss that would entail. I was positively motivated by the likely prospect that I would, in time, finish my PhD, and be able to celebrate it with others who supported me along the way.

(6) Just start writing . Yesterday morning, it was five degrees below freezing when I did my morning run. I wanted to skip my run and go straight to my heated office. So, I employed a veteran distance running trick to successfully finish my run. I went out the door and just started running. That is the hardest part, and once I do it, 99.9% of the time I finish my run.

You may not know what exactly you think about a specific topic in the chapter you need to write, nor what you are going to write each day. But perhaps the most simple and helpful dissertation advice I ever received was from David Horner, who earned his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He told me: “just start writing.” Sometimes PhD researchers think they must have all their ideas solidified in their mind before they start writing their dissertation. In fact, writing your dissertation can actually help clarify what you think. So “just start writing” is not only simple but also sage advice.

(7) Never write a dissertation . No great marathoner focuses on running 26.2 miles. Great distance runners are masters of breaking up major goals into smaller goals and then focusing on accomplishing one small goal at a time, until they have achieved the major goal. Philosophers can understand this easily, as we take small, calculated steps through minor premises that support major premises to arrive at an overall conclusion in an argument.

Contained within each chapter of a dissertation is a premise(s) in an overall argument and individual sections can contain sub-premises supporting the major premise of each chapter. When you first start out as a doctoral researcher working on your dissertation, you have to construct an outline of your dissertation that maps out the various chapters and how they will relate to your overall conclusion. Once you have that outline in place, keep it in the back of your mind. But do not focus on writing the whole, which would be overwhelming and discouraging. Rather, focus on writing whichever chapter you are working on. The fastest American marathoner, Ryan Hall, wrote a book that sums up the only way to run long distances in the title Run the Mile You’re In . And Galen Rupp discusses in this interview how he mentally breaks up a marathon into segments and focuses on just finishing one segment at a time. Whatever chapter you’re writing, make it your goal to write that chapter. Once you’ve accomplished that goal, set a new goal: write the next chapter. Repeat that process several times and you will be halfway through your dissertation. Repeat the process a few more times, and you will be done.

By the time you have finished a master’s degree, you have written many chapter-length papers. To finish a dissertation, you essentially write about eight interconnected papers, one at a time, just as you have done many times before. If you just write the chapter (which you could call a “paper” if that feels like a lighter load) you’re writing, before you know it, you will have written a dissertation.

(8) Harness the power of habits . Becoming a great distance runner requires running an inordinate number of miles, which no one has the willpower to do. The best marathoners in the world regularly run well over one hundred miles a week, in addition to stretching, lifting weights, taking ice baths, and eating healthy. Not even the most tough-minded distance runner has the gumption to make all the individual decisions that would be required in order to get out the door for every run and climb into every ice bath apart from the development of habits. The most reliable way around each distance runner’s weakness of will, or akrasia , is developing and employing habits. The same can be true for writing.

If you simply try to write a little bit each weekday around the same time, you will develop a habit of writing at that time each day. Once you have that habit, the decision to write each weekday at that time will require less and less willpower over time. Eventually, it will take some willpower to not write at that time. I have found it helpful to develop the routine of freewriting for a few minutes just before starting my daily writing session of thirty minutes during which I write new content, before working on editing or revising existing content for about thirty minutes. My routine helped me develop the daily habit of writing, which removes the daily decision to write, as I “just do it” (to use Nike’s famous line) each day.

I have also found it helpful to divide my days up according to routines. As a morning person, I do well writing and researching in the morning, doing teaching prep and teaching during the middle of the day, and then doing mundane tasks such as email at the end of the day.

(9) Write for today and for tomorrow . Successful distance runners train for two reasons. One reason—to win upcoming races—is obvious. However, in addition to training for upcoming races, the successful distance runner trains today for the training that they want to be capable of months and years ahead. You cannot simply jump into running eighty, ninety, or one-hundred-mile weeks. It takes time to condition your body to sustain the stress of running high mileage weeks. A runner must have a long-term perspective and plan ahead as she works toward her immediate goals on the way to achieving her long-term goals. Similarly, for the PhD researcher, writing a dissertation lays the groundwork for future success.

For one, if the PhD candidate develops healthy, sustainable, productive habits while writing a dissertation, these habits can be continued once they land an academic job. It is no secret that the initial years on the job market, or in a new academic position, can be just as (or more) challenging than finishing a PhD. Effective habits developed while writing a dissertation can be invaluable during such seasons, allowing one to continue researching and writing even with more responsibilities and less time.

It is also worth noting that there is a sense in which research writing becomes easier, as one becomes accustomed to the work. A distance runner who has been running for decades, logging thousands of miles throughout their career, can run relatively fast without much effort. For example, my college roommate, Travis Boyd, decided to set the world record for running a half marathon pushing a baby stroller nearly a decade after we ran for the University of Washington. His training was no longer what it once was during our collegiate days. Nevertheless, his past training made it much easier for him to set the record, even though his focus had shifted to his full-time business career and being a present husband and father of two. I once asked my doctoral supervisors, Nikk Effingham and Jussi Suikkanen, how they were able to publish so much. They basically said it gets easier, as the work you have done in the past contributes to your future publications. Granted, not everyone is going to finish their PhD and then become a research super human like Liz Jackson , who finished her PhD in 2019, and published four articles that same year, three the next, and six the following year. Nevertheless, writing and publishing does become easier as you gain years of experience.

(10) Go running . As Cal Newport discusses in Deep Work , having solid boundaries around the time we work is conducive for highly effective academic work. And there is nothing more refreshing while dissertating than an athletic hobby with cognitive benefits . So, perhaps the best way to dissertate like a distance runner is to stop writing and go for a run.

Acknowledgments : Thanks are due to Aryn Owen and Jaden Anderson for their constructive feedback on a prior draft of this post.

Matthew Owen

Matthew Owen (PhD, University of Birmingham) is a faculty member in the philosophy department at Yakima Valley College in Washington State. He is also an affiliate faculty member at the Center for Consciousness Science, University of Michigan. Matthew’s latest book is Measuring the Immeasurable Mind: Where Contemporary Neuroscience Meets the Aristotelian Tradition .

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Dissertation 101: Tips for researching and writing a doctoral dissertation

A student writes a doctoral dissertation

By Elizabeth Exline

When Rose Lorenzo got close to finishing her master’s degree at University of Phoenix (UOPX), she came to a crossroads. She could walk away with her degree and focus on building her company, Lorenzo Financial , or she could scratch the itch for more academic knowledge and pursue her doctorate.

Lorenzo chose the latter. (And still managed to build her company, lay the groundwork to launch a new school and eventually get accepted to law school.)

“Although I knew what I wanted to study, I wish I had known how to choose the right topic and how to narrow that topic down before I started,” Lorenzo recalls.

Lorenzo, of course, is talking about the dissertation , that book-length document that’s both the capstone of the doctoral degree and the driving force behind a doctoral program’s years of study and academic research.

But settling on a topic is just one part of a process that can intimidate even the most determined scholar. What’s exactly involved in a dissertation? And what’s the point of one anyway? Here, we take a deeper dive into the dissertation experience.

What is a dissertation?

A dissertation is an academic document prepared by a doctoral student that contains original research about a topic. The student identifies the topic, conducts the research, writes the dissertation and defends it in front of a committee led by a dissertation chair and other doctoral faculty who decide whether the research meets the doctoral level research standards. If it does, the student will successfully complete the doctoral program, have their dissertation published in ProQuest and earn a terminal degree , which means the highest education level that can be earned in a field.

The dissertation, in other words, is important. But why all the fuss in the first place? According to Rodney Luster, PhD, a dissertation can enhance society’s overall knowledge and understanding about an issue and ignite a person’s area of interest and expertise, as well as enhance that expertise .

Luster is the chair for the Center for Leadership Studies and Organizational Research within the College of Doctoral Studies at University of Phoenix , and he points to his own dissertation by way of example.

His research concerned what is currently known as vicarious trauma, a phenomenon he witnessed among his college students after the 9/11 attacks. His students hadn’t been anywhere near the attack, and yet he noticed they displayed classic signs of trauma. This piqued his interest.

“I was able to conduct what I understand was the first research study looking at vicarious trauma in the general population, and that has opened up a lot of doors,” Luster explains.

Now an expert on the concept, he has seen the phenomenon after subsequent events, such as Hurricane Katrina.

Lorenzo’s research was more tailored to her area of interest. She ultimately whittled down her topic from how leadership impacts entrepreneurial success or failure to how it impacts female entrepreneurs specifically.

Ready to start your degree? Explore our doctoral offerings.

Topics, in other words, offer the freedom for students to follow their curiosity and experience with the goal of potentially solving a problem or adding to a field’s body of knowledge .

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Dissertation vs. thesis — what's the difference.

Some people may confuse a dissertation with a thesis, but they’re not the same thing. While similar in nature in that they are both the capstone of an academic program, the biggest difference is where a dissertation and a thesis fit in the educational journey. As explained, a doctoral student completes a dissertation, while a thesis is a research paper for a master’s-level student or sometimes within a bachelor’s program.

There are other differences as well. One is the level of research involved. Often, a thesis is based on existing research. This means that an undergrad or graduate student will compile various research findings to defend a theory or idea in a thesis. A dissertation on the other hand requires doctoral students to conduct, present and defend their own research.

The two documents differ in length too. A thesis is often much shorter and can range from 40 to 60 pages for an undergraduate thesis and from 60 to upward of 100 pages for a master's thesis. A dissertation is 150 to 300 pages, or 80,000 to 100,000 words. As noted, whether it’s presented in front of a panel of faculty or academics as an oral defense is another key difference. This is often required for a dissertation, but oral defense of a thesis may depend on the program or institution.

How to write a dissertation

Figuring out a dissertation topic is a process as individualized as the students in a doctoral degree program. Luster usually encourages candidates to begin with a title .

“That’s going to be your selling point for everything, and it has to be understandable. It must be concise. It must have a theoretical construct in it. The title will take you a lot of places and will help lead you into the writing process.”

To this Lorenzo adds a less lofty but equally valid cross-check: She learned to really drill down any topic with the question, “ Who cares? ” If there are people who are invested in learning more about the topic (if there are, in other words, people who care), it may warrant further research.

These preliminary exercises lay a solid foundation for the dissertation process, but the actual research and writing can still feel intimidating. Luster, for example, had written a book before starting his dissertation, and points out that a dissertation “is not like any other writing that you’ve done.”

So, where do you start? At UOPX, you start in your first class.

Understanding ACCESS

The dissertation process at UOPX was revamped and rolled out in September 2019, notes Shawn C. Todd-Boone, EdD, the associate dean for ACCESS, research and residency at the College of Doctoral Studies.

Luster says the process was reimagined based on extensive feedback and on a desire to make the process more effective and efficient.

One of the first ways the dissertation process changed was with the development of ACCESS , an acronym for “ advancing community, critical thought, engagement, scholarship and success .”

This sequence is incorporated into the first three interdisciplinary courses of any doctoral program at UOPX with an eye toward introducing doctoral candidates to what Luster calls a “theoretical mindset.”

The ACCESS program attempts to nurture a culture of inquiry that helps retain doctoral candidates while inspiring them to innovate in their fields, Boone says.

ACCESS, in other words, sets the tone for the entire doctoral process, which is founded on innovation, research and critical thinking.

The five phases of the dissertation

Writing the dissertation occurs in what Luster describes as five phases over the course of different classes. These are:

Phase 1: Develop a prospectus , which is an outline of the research project.
Phase 2: Draft the first chapter of the dissertation, which is known as the précis .
Phase 3: Undergo a concept review and develop the second chapter.
Phase 4: Focus on the proposal , write the third chapter and review chapters one through three.
Phase 5: Obtain the approval of the Institutional Review Board , which evaluates research according to the University’s ethical standards.

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The uopx difference.

The five phases of the dissertation writing process aren’t ubiquitous. Doctoral students work on a dissertation while going through the program at UOPX — which was very much intentional, according to Boone.

“We have five phases in the dissertation process and a deliverable at the end of each phase to encourage students to finish and to complete on time if they commit to the process,” Boone explains.

This is a notable improvement, according to Lorenzo. “It is more effective to start your research on day one than wait, because it's easier to identify the gap in research and eliminate wasted research time on topics that are not relevant to your study, and [it] helps contribute to the literature review of the study,” she says.

But this process isn’t the only benefit UOPX students enjoy. The doctoral program has several other distinctive features:

Once upon a time, students interviewed potential research chairs to take on the oversight of their program. The result was stressful, with doctoral candidates often casting a wide net in the hope of securing a chair and then potentially ending up with someone who wasn’t quite the perfect fit. Today, UOPX takes the stress and potential mismatch out of the equation. “Students do not search for dissertation committee members ,” Boone says. “We assign them.”
Dissertations from UOPX tend to focus on functional application more so than just theory, Luster notes. This means topics have real-world applications, and communities and industries may benefit from the research. For example, one recent dissertation explored the integration of nurse graduates into hospital settings during COVID-19.
Doctoral candidates have access to diverse and extensive resources . In addition to comprehensive documentation about the dissertation process at UOPX, candidates can leverage one-on-one appointments with the University’s library staff, engage in workshops with research chairs and seek opportunities to work as research assistants.
Rather than what Luster calls a sink-or-swim approach, UOPX has invested in a mentor-driven approach . “I think that makes us largely different and successful with students, especially adult learners,” Luster says.

In the end, that sense of a safety net — both in terms of mentorship and the doctoral community itself — is one of the biggest reassurances doctoral candidates enjoy.

Lorenzo, for example, keeps in touch with a core group of colleagues she met through the program. “No one understands what you’re going through except for [your peers],” she notes.

Or, as Luster puts it: “You don’t have to worry, because you’ll acquire this information along the way, and you have a lot of good people to help you.”

How long is a doctoral dissertation?

Most are 100 to 300 pages and organized by chapters and/or sections and subsections. There are also often requirements for text size, page size and spacing that can depend on your doctoral program.

What are the parts of a dissertation?

A dissertation generally includes a Dissertation Acceptance Certificate, a title page, a copyright statement, an abstract (detailing the objective of the research, the methods and the outcome), a table of contents, the research itself and supplemental information (either as an appendix with charts and tables or as an uploaded file with digital information). Some dissertations include front and back matter, such as acknowledgments, a dedication, a glossary, a bibliography and related features.

Is a dissertation required for a doctorate?

Not always. While most doctoral and PhD degree programs require a dissertation, some don’t, and others require a capstone project.

What's the difference between a PhD and a doctorate?

Individuals who complete a PhD focus on producing new knowledge to contribute to a theory or body of research. Individuals who complete a practitioner doctorate , on the other hand, focuses on how to apply knowledge to a field or particular issue.

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing a Ph.D. Dissertation

An Independent Research Project for Ph.D. Candidates

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A dissertation, also known as a doctoral thesis , is the final required part of completing a student's doctoral study. Undertaken after a student completes coursework and passes a comprehensive examination , the dissertation is the final hurdle in completing a Ph.D. or other doctoral degree. The dissertation is expected to make a new and creative contribution to a field of study and to demonstrate the student's expertise. In social science and science programs, the dissertation usually requires conducting empirical research.

Elements of a Strong Dissertation

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, a strong medical dissertation relies heavily on the creation of a specific hypothesis that can be either disproven or supported by data collected by independent student research. Further, it must also contain several key elements starting with an introduction to the problem statement, conceptual framework and research question as well as references to literature on already published on the topic.

A dissertation must also be relevant (and proven to be such) as well as capable of being researched independently by the student. Though the required length of these dissertations varies by school, the governing body overseeing the practice of medicine in the United States standardizes this same protocol. Also included in the dissertation is the methodology for research and data collection as well as instrumentation and quality control. A stated section on population and sample size for the study is imperative to defending the thesis once it comes time to do so.

Like most scientific publications, the thesis must also contain a section of published results and an analysis of what this entails for the scientific or medical community. The discussion and conclusion sections let the review committee know that the student understands the full implications of his or her work as well as its real-world application to their field of study (and soon, professional work).

Approval Process

Although students are expected to conduct the bulk of their research and pen the entire dissertation on their own, most graduate medical programs provide an advisory and review committee to the student upon starting their studies. Through a series of weekly reviews over their course of schooling, the student and his or her advisor hone in on the hypothesis of the dissertation before they submit it to the review committee to begin work on writing the thesis.

From there, the student can take as long or as short of a time as they need to complete their dissertation, often resulting in students who have finished their entire courseload achieving ABD status ("all but dissertation"), just shy of receiving their full Ph.D. In this interim period, the student — with the occasional guidance of his or her advisor — is expected to research, test and write a dissertation that can be defended in a public forum.

Once the review committee accepts the finalized draft of the thesis, the doctoral candidate will then get the chance to publicly defend his or her statements. If they pass this test, the dissertation is submitted electronically to the school's academic journal or archive and the candidate's full doctoral degree is issued once the final paperwork has been submitted.

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Graduate School Papers and You
What is an Ed.D. Degree?
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What Is a Master of Social Work?
How to Earn a Doctorate Degree Online
Should I Earn a PhD in Business Administration?

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Jill Biden’s Doctorate Is Garbage Because Her Dissertation Is Garbage

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You can tell someone is smarting from an inferiority complex when he insists on being addressed as “Dr.” on the basis of holding an academic doctorate rather than being a physician. Ph.D. holders who have genuine accomplishments don’t make you call them “Doctor,” which is why you never hear about “Dr. Paul Krugman” and “Dr. George Will.” None of the professors I knew at Yale, even the ones who were eminent in their fields, insisted on the title, and I think most of them would have scoffed if someone had addressed them as “Dr.” The only reason you ever hear the phrase “Dr. Henry Kissinger” is that Kissy grew up in title-mad, airs-and-graces Germany, where people are awed rather than dismissive even if you insist on a triple-serving title (“Herr Professor Doktor”).

Insisting on being called “Doctor” when you don’t heal people is, among most holders of doctorates, seen as a gauche, silly, cringey ego trip. Consider “Dr.” Jill Biden , who doesn’t even hold a Ph.D. but rather a lesser Ed.D., something of a joke in the academic world. President-elect Joe Biden once explained that his wife sought the degree purely for status reasons: “She said, ‘I was so sick of the mail coming to Sen. and Mrs. Biden. I wanted to get mail addressed to Dr. and Sen. Biden.’ That’s the real reason she got her doctorate,” Joe Biden has said .

Mrs. Biden wanted the credential for its own sake. As for its quality, well. She got it from the University of Delaware, whose ties to her husband, its most illustrious alumnus if you don’t count Joe Flacco, run so deep that it has a school of public policy named after him. That the University of Delaware would have rejected her 2006 dissertation as sloppy, poorly written, non-academic, and barely fit for a middle-school Social Studies classroom (all of which it is) when her husband had been representing its state in the U.S. Senate for more than three decades was about as likely as Tom Hagen telling Vito Corleone that his wife is a fat sow on payday. The only risk to the University of Delaware was that it might strain its collective wrist in its rush to rubber-stamp her doctoral paper. Mrs. Biden could have turned in a quarter-a**ed excuse for a magazine article written at the level of Simple English Wikipedia and been heartily congratulated by the university for her towering mastery. Which is exactly what happened.

Jill Biden’s dissertation is not an addition to the sum total of human knowledge. It is not a demonstration of expertise in its specific topic or its broad field. It is a gasping, wheezing, frail little Disney forest creature that begs you to notice the effort it makes to be the thing it is imitating while failing so pathetically that any witnesses to its ineptitude must feel compelled, out of manners alone, to drag it to the nearest podium and give it a participation trophy. Which is more or less what an Ed.D. is. It’s a degree that only deeply unimpressive people feel confers the honorific of “Doctor.” People who are actually smart understand that being in possession of a credential is no proof of intelligence.

My friends, I have read this document in its entirety and it is so equally lacking in rhetorical force, boldness of conception, and original research that it amounts to a triple null set, a vacuum inside a blank inside an abyss. If Ingmar Bergman were alive and hired to make a film about this paper, he would say, “I can’t do it, there’s so much emptiness even I cannot grasp it,” and it would sound so much worse in Swedish that suicide hotlines would have to hire extra staff. Gene Simmons has a better claim to be a Doctor of Love than Jill Biden to be a Doctor of Education; after all, Simmons has spent a lifetime demonstrating mastery of his field. As for Biden, she has spent a lot of time teaching remedial English to slow learners in community colleges. Which is like being a rock musician who’s in a bar band. That plays covers. At mixers. Held in assisted-living facilities. Mrs. Biden’s dissertation emits so much noxious methane the EPA should regulate it, Greta Thunberg should denounce it, and Hollywood celebrities should hold a telethon to draw awareness to its dangers.

As Joe Biden has frankly noted, Mrs. Biden sought the Dr. honorific to rebuild her amour propre . Much of the press plays along, addressing Jill Biden as “Dr. Biden” even when actual medical doctors are referred to without the honorific if they are not currently practicing. Eminent pediatric neurosurgeon and HUD secretary Ben Carson is now “Mr. Carson” to the New York Times , but the same paper refers to Mrs. Biden as “Dr. Biden.” This practice appears to contradict the Times ’ style guide, which explains that the “Dr.” title is used for non-physicians “only if it is germane to the holder’s primary current occupation (academic, for example, or laboratory research).”

Mrs. Biden until recently taught English composition at NoVa, a small community college in Northern Virginia. To justify addressing her as “Dr.” would require a generous view of what constitutes an “academic,” and judging by the writing skills evinced by her students (“She very bad teacher and it is hard to pass class. I RECOMMEND NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR”), they emerged from her tutelage lacking mastery of even very basic grammar. As for the contents of the dissertation, which she cobbled together from a few secondary sources and some vapid interviews and questionnaires she sent around at the campus where she worked before her husband became vice president, Delaware Technical Community College, I’ll go over them in detail in my next column .

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Congratulations to Dr. Guidry-Grimes

Posted in Dissertation Defenses Graduate Program News PhD Placements

Laura Guidry-Grimes successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, “Mental Diversity and Meaningful Psychiatric Disabilities,” on April 18, 2017. Prof. Alisa Carse served as mentor of Dr. Guidry-Grimes’s dissertation, and Profs. Maggie Little and Madison Powers served as readers. Dr. Guidry-Grimes begins her new job as assistant professor in the Division of Medical Humanities at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences this summer. Congratulations to Laura!

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How one Ph.D. student made history in her dissertation defense

Benafsh Husain Sapra will soon become the first person to hold a Ph.D. in biomedical data science and informatics as part of a program jointly offered by Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina.

Sapra successfully defended her dissertation on April 8 in a meeting conducted entirely over Zoom, the video conferencing platform, so that she, the members of her committee and her supporters could practice social distancing to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The defense was memorable for multiple reasons. Not only did Sapra conclude six years of graduate study, but her success represented a major milestone for a growing graduate-degree program and showed that the dissertation defense, a hallmark of the Ph.D. experience, can continue online during the COVID-19 situation.

A week later, Sapra said it still felt weird to be done.

“I have adrenaline still pumping through my veins,” she said with a big smile. “I feel like I should be working. But I did take a 17-hour nap after my defense.”

Sapra started her graduate studies in computer science and shifted her focus in 2017 when Clemson and MUSC launched the biomedical data science and informatics program. It’s an interdisciplinary graduate-degree program that gives students access to Clemson’s strengths in computing, genomics, engineering and public health and MUSC’s expertise in biomedical sciences.

The idea is to prepare aspiring data engineers and scientists to manage and analyze the massive amounts of data that have begun to pour from a wide variety of sources, ranging from mobile sensors to imaging devices.

The program represents the future of higher education, said Alex Feltus, who is Sapra’s Ph.D. advisor and a professor of genetics and biochemistry at Clemson.

“I believe that this is exactly the kind of interdisciplinary-interinstitutional program that will propel higher education in the 21 st century,” he said. “It’s really important to bust out of the silos, and that’s at a departmental, college and university level. I’m really proud to be part of this. This is the way it needs to go to solve big problems like COVID-19 or cancer.”

A screenshot from Benafsh Husain Sapra's dissertation defense shows (clockwise, from upper left) Brian Dean, Alex Feltus, William Richardson, Sapra, Jamie Barth and Melissa Smith.

The diversity of the program’s expertise was reflected in Sapra’s committee. Members included: Feltus; Brian Dean, a professor of computer science at Clemson and a coordinator of the biomedical data science and informatics program; William Richardson, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Clemson; Melissa Smith, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and associate dean focused on inclusive excellence in Clemson’s College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; and Jamie Barth, an associate professor in the College of Medicine at MUSC.

When it was time to defend her dissertation, Sapra logged into Zoom from a bedroom in her California home, where she and her husband now live. Feltus sat a card table in the bedroom of his Clemson home, and Dean was in the study of his Clemson home. Others joined from elsewhere.

Participants found some advantages to holding a dissertation defense online instead of in person.

Dean used a feature on Zoom to send messages to colleagues without interrupting the presentation. Feltus took a few screenshots that Sapra is saving to remember her big day.

All or nearly all the students in the program attended Sapra’s defense as a show of support.

“Benafsh was the first Ph.D. to graduate from the program, so everyone was really psyched to see that milestone happening in real time,” Dean said. “At one point we had 20 people on the call.”

Sapra took about 40 minutes to give her presentation and then answered committee questions in a closed-door session for about three hours. Everyone has approved her dissertation, and all that’s left to make her Ph.D. official is a little administrative work, Feltus and Dean said.

Sapra will be quickly putting her degree to use with a new job as a bioinformatics engineer at Fulgent Genetics. It’s a step forward for her and the program.

“This is really good because every time we have students applying to the program they ask me where our graduates are ending up,” Dean said. “Now I can answer that question and relate some success stories. We think there is a lot of promise ahead of us.”

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Wolbach Library closed permanently on March 22, 2024. For library assistance, please email [email protected] . Project PHaEDRA will continue under the Harvard Plate Stacks and Smithsonian Transcription Center .

Education and Doctoral Thesis

Written by Peggy Wargelin, Wolbach Library, 2018.

Cecilia Payne was born into a moderately wealthy family that lived in the English countryside. The only girl with two brothers, Cecilia often found herself either exploring with them or alone in nature. In both cases, she was equally curious about her surroundings. She was tutored alongside her brothers, at an early age, in poetry, music, math, but not much science. Even when Cecilia went away to a girl’s boarding school, she was unsatisfied both with the available science labs and antiquated equipment, and also the inadequate staff to teach her about it all.

So she applied to enter Newnham College, Cambridge in 1919, and found herself in a dream world. She was now working in the same laboratories as, and sometimes under the tutelage of great names in physics and atomic science: Ernest Rutherford, J.J. Thompson, Niels Bohr, and Arthur Eddington, whom she considered “the greatest intellect [she] ever had the privilege to meet” (The Dyer’s Hand, 236) . She also found a certain degree of acceptance among the students active in politics: “we women, of course, had no votes, but that did not prevent us from conducting spirited debates…We declared almost unanimously for labor” ( The Dyer’s Hand , 112). The student body was less welcoming in other ways. As one of the few women in the sciences at the college, she repeatedly faced discredit and harassment from her peers, which was never admonished by her professors. The school failed to provide a supportive structure: in one class, an advanced physics course taught by Rutherford, she was required to sit in the front row, alone. Rutherford would often single her out, much to the chagrin of the boys in class.

In search of better opportunities to study astronomy at high university levels, she looked towards Cambridge, MA, and a graduate research position at the Harvard College Observatory. At the end of her degree at Newnham, she met the current Observatory director Harlow Shapley, visiting England as a lecturer. Ready to move forward on her career path, she asked Shapley if he should like a new and eager research assistant in America. Shapley responded that he would be delighted: “When Miss Cannon retires, you can succeed her!”

This answer presages the types of gender discrimination Cecilia would continue to face. While it was rarely as direct or obstructionary as in England, the climate in America still resisted her entry into the professional sciences. Shapely gave her an office in the same building as the Glass Plate collection and the Computer offices, but where no other (male) research astronomers worked. She found difficulty advancing in her professional life: Shapely provided insufficient wages (for projects which he measured in “girl hours”), and, after almost 30 years of dedicated work, Harvard still expressed reticence to recognize Cecilia’s work with a dignified title and position. In her autobiography, Cecilia laments that, in her youthful vigor, she had been “over optimistic” about America’s freedoms and equalities. But even in the face of this resistance, she remained adamant that no quality could prevent her from working with what she loved. On a questionnaire for the Radcliffe Alumni Association, in response to the questions “Can a woman successfully carry on a career and marriage simultaneously? Can she if she has children? What is the most important forward movement in which women can be of service?,” she answers: “??? Same as for men.”

Perhaps the most frustrating moment in Cecilia’s career came at the end of her graduate research at Harvard, when she was finishing her thesis. Written in a “six week ecstasy,” and later hailed as “the greatest PhD thesis even written in astronomy,” Stellar Atmospheres was published as the first in the series Harvard Observatory Monographs in 1925 (such grand praise comes from the eminent Otto Struve of Yerkes Observatory). It made an observation that hydrogen and helium are much more massively abundant in the universe than previously assumed. This ran contrary to the current paradigm: that all stellar objects were primarily iron at core, like Earth, the Moon, and the other nearby rocky bodies. The lead thinker in this school, Henry Norris Russell, a senior astronomer at Princeton and close colleague of Shapley, resisted her conclusions, encouraging her to be more conservative and cautious about the implications of her observations. In the end, Cecilia published in her thesis that “the outstanding discrepancies between the astrophysical and terrestrial abundances are displayed for hydrogen and helium. The enormous abundance derived for these elements in the stellar atmosphere is almost certainly not real.” ( Stellar Atmospheres , 188).

Of course, we know now that it is actually very real, and that her observations pointed towards a truth about the physical universe, that the stars are made of hydrogen and helium gases. In fact, Russell published a paper four years later (Russell 1929) in which he endorsed Cecilia’s observations, and extended the conclusion to the physical principles of the universe. What caused such an about-face? Some attribute it to misogyny and an initial distrust of Cecilia’s work until he could verify it himself; but others consider the dynamics of professional astronomy research at the time. David Devorkin argues that Russell was simply cautioning a young student from making brash jumps, about being skeptical of their methods, data, and about trusting the authorities above. Even after he had confirmed it through his own observation, it was Russell’s long-earned professional clout and central status in North American astronomy that gave him the voice to challenge the current paradigm.

The most salient elements of Payne's thesis are reproduced in the above image (Figs. 2-5). The first table (Fig. 3) shows the stellar temperature scale, derived using stellar spectra and their line intensities, combined with the most recent developments in quantum theory and physical chemistry ( Meghnad Saha's thermal ionization equation, and Edward Milne's and Ralph Fowler's equations of spectral intensities). In this list of elements, which maps their maximum representation in the classification scheme, as well as the temperature at which they emit this spectra, Payne moved closer to realizing a new pattern of abundances in the stars. Figure 4 shows that, after applying these equations and reducing the results in accordance with instrumental and human error, both Hydrogen and Helium (and ionized Helium) appear in "enormous abundance." As mentioned, she reluctantly backed away from this shocking claim in the face of institutional resistance, first from a notorious professor and then an advisor who invested heavily in the accepted paradigm. Four years later, however, the very man who discouraged her proved her correct -- with only minimum fanfare for the origins of the idea.

Confused at the detail and rigor with which Payne approach this topic? We were too, so we unpacked her subject and work processes to better understand the gravity of her discoveries!

** Much of this page was adapted from Wolbach Library's exhibit " ** Much of this page was adapted from Wolbach Library's exhibit " ," with permission from the author.

Image Sources

Payne, C. (1925). Stellar atmospheres; A contribution to the observational study of high temperature in the reversing layers of stars. (Doctoral dissertation), p. 1. Retrieved from SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. (1925PhDT.........1P)
Payne, C. (1925). Stellar atmospheres; A contribution to the observational study of high temperature in the reversing layers of stars. (Doctoral dissertation), p. 132. Retrieved from SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. (1925PhDT.........1P)
Adapted from Table XXVIII from Stellar atmospheres; A contribution to the observational study of high temperature in the reversing layers of stars. (Doctoral dissertation) by C. Payne, 1925, p. 184. Retrieved from SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. (1925PhDT.........1P)
Payne, C. (1925). Stellar atmospheres; A contribution to the observational study of high temperature in the reversing layers of stars. (Doctoral dissertation) , p. 188. Retrieved from SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. (1925PhDT.........1P)

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Inside the new world of online dissertation defenses

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For generations, dissertation defenses have been crowning moments for PhD candidates. Now, with the pandemic limiting activity on the MIT campus from mid-March onward, moving dissertation defenses to Zoom has been a necessary adjustment.

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Call it another MIT innovation. When PhD student Jesse Tordoff passed her dissertation defense this month, she learned about the outcome in a new way: Her professors sent a thumbs-up emoji on the Zoom screen they were all sharing.

Welcome to the new world of the online dissertation defense, one of many changes academia is making during the Covid-19 pandemic. For generations, dissertation defenses have been crowning moments for PhD candidates, something they spend years visualizing. At a defense, a student presents work and fields questions; the professors on the dissertation committee then confer privately, and render their verdict to the student.

Which, in Tordoff’s case, was delivered in good humor, via a familiar little symbol.

“That was my most 2020 moment, learning I passed my defense by Zoom emoji,” says Tordoff, a biological engineer specializing in self-assembling structures.

With the pandemic limiting activity on the MIT campus from mid-March onward, moving dissertation defenses to Zoom has been a necessary adjustment. MIT students who defended dissertations this spring say they have had a variety of reactions to the change: They appreciated that family members could suddenly watch their defenses online, and some felt more relaxed in the format. But students also felt it was more challenging to engage with their audiences on Zoom.

And, inevitably, social distancing meant students could not gather in person with advisors, friends, and family to rejoice, as per the usual MIT tradition.

“That feeling of celebration — it is not something you generate by yourself,” says André Snoeck, who in late March defended his dissertation on last-mile issues in supply chains, for MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics.

That moment when you learn you have passed your doctoral dissertation defense. Congratulations to @MITSloan 's Dr. Maarten Meeuwis! @MIT @MITGradStudents @MIT_alumni @MITSloanAlumni pic.twitter.com/U7wNdmBPx7 — MIT Sloan PhD (@MITSloanPhD) April 21, 2020

On Zoom, grandparents in the room

Dissertation defenses are typically quasipublic events, where an audience can attend the student’s presentation but then leaves before faculty tell a student if the defense was successful. Many MIT departments stage parties afterward.

A defense on Zoom means the circle of attendees is no longer restricted by geography — something students appreciated.

“My mom logged on in South Africa from her retirement village and watched online,” says Ian Ollis, from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, who in May defended his dissertation about public perceptions of mass transit in the Boston area. “She wouldn’t have been able to do that if it was done in person.”

Julia Zhao, a Department of Chemistry PhD student, says the defense was a unique opportunity for family and friends to watch her in a professional setting.

“It was nice to see all my friends, and my family could attend too,” Zhao says, whose research focuses on polymers that have both metal and organic components. “They were going to fly in for graduation but not attend my defense, so they got to sit in on that and listen to me talk about what I’ve been doing the last five years. So that was really cool.”

Tordoff also felt that on Zoom, she could focus more easily on her remarks.

“I was less nervous than if I had been standing up there in front of a group of people,” Tordoff says. “I was sitting on my couch.” One reason for that good feeling, Tordoff adds, is that when she logged on to Zoom before the defense, the only other people already there were her grandparents, watching from England.

“I was so happy,” Tordoff says. “That never would have happened in person.”

And in Snoeck’s case, his advisors did orchestrate a virtual toast after the defense, so they could celebrate simultaneously, if not in the same room.

Congratulations Dr. Julia Zhao ( @jouleszhao )!!! Today was her defense through zoom!!! We are so proud of how you finished your PhD through a pandemic in such an impressive fashion!!! @ChemistryMIT #PhDone #AcademicChatter pic.twitter.com/En5gCtDZjQ — The ~Remote~ Jeremiah Johnson Group (@johnsonchem) May 1, 2020

Kudos from strangers

At the same time, MIT students note, being on Zoom limited their interaction with the audience, compared with the nature of an in-person talk.

“You can’t read the room,” Ollis says, adding: “It’s different. You don’t have a complete perspective on the audience — you see squares of people’s faces, whereas if you do it live, you get a sense of who you’re talking to by seeing faces you recognize.”

The slightly mysterious nature of Ollis’ audience became apparent to him almost immediately after he wrapped up his online defense.

“There were quite a few people watching, who, well, I didn’t know who they were,” Ollis says. “I’ve been staying in the Ashdown grad dorm, and I was walking to the elevator after doing the defense, and somebody walked past who I didn’t recognize, and said, ‘Hey! Good job! I enjoyed that!’ I had no idea who the person was.”

Overall, Ollis says, “I thought it was a good experience. I got good feedback from people.” Even so, he adds, “I prefer being in a room with people.”

For his part, Snoeck, who has accepted a job with Amazon, felt his defense was somewhat “more like a series of Q&As, rather than a conversation” — simply due to the dynamics of the format, like the segmented nature of Zoom and its slight delays in audio transmission.

“It is weird to have a conversation with some lag in it,” notes Zhao, who will soon begin a job with a Boston-area startup, developing hydrophobic coatings. “But I made an effort to say, ‘If I interrupted, please continue.’ It is a little awkward.”

I am very happy, honored and thankful to announce I successfully defended my PhD at MIT last Monday! Special thanks to all mentors and colleagues for your guidance and support during the last five years. pic.twitter.com/bsn4RA2nbk — Felipe-Oviedo (@felipeoviedop) May 14, 2020

The blended defense

That said, for years now, academic faculty have sometimes been participating in dissertation defenses via Skype, Zoom, and other platforms. That typically happens when dissertation committee members are located at multiple universities, or when a professor is traveling for research or a conference. In Snoeck’s case, one of his committee members was already going to join remotely from the Netherlands anyway.

Zhao noticed a student in her department webcasting their defense last year, which seemed “a little out of the ordinary” in 2019, she recalls. But from 2020 onward, it may become standard.

“It’s kind of nice to have an extra component of people who aren’t in town but want to participate in the closing of your degree,” Zhao says. “It will definitely be more normalized, I think.”

Not all MIT PhD students defend dissertations. In MIT’s Department of Economics, the thesis consists of three papers that must be approved, and there is no formal defense, although finishing students do give fall-term presentations. Still, even for economics students, this year seems different.

“The biggest challenge has been a feeling of a lack of closure,” says Ryan Hill, a graduating MIT PhD in economics, who studies the dynamics of scientific research. “It’s been a long road.” In that vein, Hill adds, “I was really looking forward to commencement, and the doctoral hooding ceremony.” Those events will take place on May 29, online, with an in-person ceremony to be held at a later date.

To be sure, Hill is keeping matters in perspective. “In the grand scheme, it’s not bad,” says Hill, who will spend a year as a Northwestern University postdoc, and has accepted a tenure-track job at Brigham Young University.

For any new PhD, crossing that academic finish line is a huge achievement — and relief. Zhao, for instance, had to scramble to complete her lab research before MIT shuttered, and then finish writing the thesis, before the dissertation defense could occur.

“It’s been a pretty crazy two months,” Zhao reflects. “I’m just happy to be done with it.”

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Thesis and Dissertation: Getting Started

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The resources in this section are designed to provide guidance for the first steps of the thesis or dissertation writing process. They offer tools to support the planning and managing of your project, including writing out your weekly schedule, outlining your goals, and organzing the various working elements of your project.

Weekly Goals Sheet (a.k.a. Life Map) [Word Doc]

This editable handout provides a place for you to fill in available time blocks on a weekly chart that will help you visualize the amount of time you have available to write. By using this chart, you will be able to work your writing goals into your schedule and put these goals into perspective with your day-to-day plans and responsibilities each week. This handout also contains a formula to help you determine the minimum number of pages you would need to write per day in order to complete your writing on time.

Setting a Production Schedule (Word Doc)

This editable handout can help you make sense of the various steps involved in the production of your thesis or dissertation and determine how long each step might take. A large part of this process involves (1) seeking out the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding specific document formatting requirements, (2) understanding research protocol limitations, (3) making note of deadlines, and (4) understanding your personal writing habits.

Creating a Roadmap (PDF)

Part of organizing your writing involves having a clear sense of how the different working parts relate to one another. Creating a roadmap for your dissertation early on can help you determine what the final document will include and how all the pieces are connected. This resource offers guidance on several approaches to creating a roadmap, including creating lists, maps, nut-shells, visuals, and different methods for outlining. It is important to remember that you can create more than one roadmap (or more than one type of roadmap) depending on how the different approaches discussed here meet your needs.

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PhD/Doctorate

What is a dissertation?

October 31, 2019

A dissertation is a written document that summarizes research.

It is the final step of a PhD program, and the culmination of a studentâs doctoral studies.

âThe dissertation is a source of pride for doctoral students,â Dinah Manns, PhD, faculty chair at Capella University, says. âThe dissertation is often a compilation of academic and practical knowledge, and in many cases, it can be the studentâs first publication.â

Here, Manns explains the content and format of this important piece of scholarship.

From student to scholar

The major objective of any doctoral program is to assist a student in becoming an independent researcher, and a dissertation is a large part of that. âNot all doctoral programs require a dissertation, but all PhD programs do,â Manns notes. âDissertation work varies by program.â

Initial coursework helps narrow down the research topic and develop it into something that will add to the body of knowledge in the chosen field. Sometimes the research contributes something entirely new to the field, and other times it expands or deepens previous studies.

By the time the doctoral coursework is finished, the topic should be selected and ready for formal research. At this point the student develops a proposal, which encompasses the research plan and methodology as it pertains to the selected topic.

At Capella, once the proposal has been approved by the studentâs mentor, committee, and the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the research and analysis begin. The dissertation is largely an independent project that essentially turns the student into a scholar; theyâll dive more deeply into research and writing then they have done before.

âCapella PhD candidates will be prepared for this step through their coursework and residency,â says Manns, noting that they will have learned how to approach this critical phase as part of their pre-dissertation learning.

Format of the dissertation

The dissertation is a much deeper exploration of a research topic than a traditional essay would be. Itâs in the form of a book, with at least five chapters (some universities require a sixth chapter in the form of a recap of the previous chapters). Manns outlines the chapters this way:

Overview. This is a brief look at the research question, containing a preview of the subsequent chapters.
Literature review. The literature review is an extensive critique and synthesis of the current literature in the field.
Methodology. This section contains details of the procedures and methods used to collect and analyze data.
Analysis. The PhD candidate details how the data analysis applies to the collected data.
Findings. This section provides interpretation of the data and comparison to existing literature, as well as future research possibilities.

The order of the chapters follows a logical progression in which PhD candidates build on their theories and explain research choices in detail before coming to the final chapter that gives weight to the value of the study itself.

Manns recommends that pre-dissertation students review completed dissertations in the field and research various types of methodology and design in the field as well. âThat will help give them a feel for the depth of research and discussion, and see how the chapters work together,â Manns explains. âAnd rememberâsomeday, it may be your dissertation being read!â

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Surviving against the Odds

Village industry in indonesia.

a John Hope Franklin Center Book

More about this series

Author: S. Ann Dunham

Editor(s): Alice G. Dewey , Nancy I. Cooper

Contributor(s): Maya Soetoro-Ng , Alice G. Dewey , Robert W. Hefner , Nancy I. Cooper

Subjects Anthropology > Cultural Anthropology , Australia/New Zealand/Oceania

“[I]t is abundantly clear that Dunham was a remarkable listener, an astute social observer, and a synthetic thinker committed to social change from the bottom up. This is perhaps the closest we can get to an idea of what attitudes she might have imparted to her son.” — Tom Boellstorff, American Anthropologist

“ Surviving against the Odds . . . tells us a lot about Ann Dunham as an anthropologist who combined moral commitment to help the powerless with pragmatic policy solutions. . . . Ann Dunham used her anthropological knowledge as a practical weapon and a spiritual talisman, hoping that through it, and by imparting its values to her children, she could bring into being the changes she deeply wished to see in Indonesia and the world.” — Janet Hoskins, Anthropology Now

“ Surviving against the Odds is a testament to [Dunham’s] lifelong passion for working for the development of rural populations around the world.” — Dinesh Sharma, Asia Times

“[Dunham’s] dissertation reveals, in its study of a single village, the dense textures of culture inherent in any one place. To read it is to learn the history, beliefs, and skill of nearly every inhabitant of the village; its intricate and evolving social, religious, and class structures; its cultural formation through centuries of foreign and indigenous influence. . . . [O]ne cannot help admiring both the complexity of Kajar and the industry of Ann Dunham.” (page 86 of The Bridge ) — David Remnick editor of The New Yorker and author of The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

“[W]ould I recommend this book? Absolutely! . . . I am convinced we could learn much from Dunham and an earlier generation of economic anthropologists, who sought to interrogate macro-economic analyses from the perspective of the local.” — Wendy Mee, Anthropological Forum

“Alice Dewey, Ann Dunham’s thesis supervisor, and Nancy Cooper have done a skilful job of editing this dissertation into a focused, beautifully presented volume. . . . I had the good fortune to have known Ann Dunham as a feisty friend and tough-minded colleague. We shared many mutual interests, especially in Indonesia’s national program for the provision of rural credit (Kupedes). This book is a tribute to her spirit and dedication.” — James Fox, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

“For anthropologists who are neither Indonesianists nor narrowly focused on work, the study is nonetheless of more than passing interest. . . . Ann Dunham’s legacy in this reelaboration of her University of Hawaii doctoral dissertation is a landmark of anthropological holism. . . . The wealth of information, explanation, and interpretation will be useful for generations to come.” — Jim Weil, Anthropology of Work Review

“Indicating there is a great deal to be learned about Javanese life, Dunham’s substantial contribution offers an understanding of economic activity from the perspective of village-level metalworkers subject to government-sponsored development policies and programs. This intense, detailed description of economic and social village life is thick description culminating from 14 years of fieldwork. . . . [A] superior close-up ethnography. A must read for general audiences interested in a mother’s influence on her famous son’s life, and for specialists with a yearning for micro-studies of economic process in small-scale societies.” — S. Ferzacca, Choice

“This is real-world anthropology: it is authoritative, extraordinarily well documented and detailed, informed by concern for the human issues that are involved, and deeply intelligent. . . . Dunham’s book is authoritative and thoughtful, a profound analysis of social realities informed by serious research, long personal experience and great empathy. It stands on its own as a major contribution. . . .” — Merle C. Ricklefs, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

“We are lucky that political tides and the perduring affection of Dunham’s family, friends, and colleagues have brought this carefully wrought study of Indonesian village industry into print. . . . Dunham’s painstaking and passionately engaged research offers enduring lessons for those of us who wish to leave a legacy as pragmatic and compassionate problem-solvers, be it in a village, a government office, an NGO, or a museum.” — Kenneth M. George, Museum Anthropology Review

“[T]he editors and Duke University Press did a wonderful job with this book. It is lovingly put together, and it will become the definitive source for anyone wanting to understand the ethical and intellectual make-up of Dunham, as well as blacksmithing and more generally village crafts in Indonesia. . . . This book—an estimable ethnography in its own right—is of unique interest precisely for . . . for the light it sheds on how Dr. Dunham’s work may have shaped her son and, thereby, his presidency.” — Michael Dove, Anthropological Quarterly

“[T]his book is a fascinating and important scholarly piece of work. It’s a good reminder that Ann not only had a sharp intellect, but was a perfectionist as well, and a hard-working one at that. Her work is extremely well-documented, with hard statistical data making her book extremely detailed and well informed. At the same time, Ann’s book—like her—is deeply empathetic. Full of evocative descriptions of the lives of the villagers she worked with, the book is a testament of her commitment to the development of the lives of rural and marginalized peoples all around the world. Ann was an internationalist with a global outlook, but it was Indonesia and its people that became the love of her life, and her passion also comes through in her book, something all too rare in academic writing.” — Julia Suryakusuma, Jakarta Post

“To write a biography without mentioning the subject’s name in the title is unusual, just as irregular, in fact, as publishing a serious work of anthropology, entitled Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia , with a portrait of the author splashed on the cover. But then the author of that academic book, the late Stanley Ann Dunham, an expert on the economics of Indonesian crafts, bore a startling resemblance to President Obama—the same long chin, the slight quizzical tilt of the head, the prominent eyebrows. Which is not surprising, since she was his mother. The scholarly book based on her Ph.D. thesis, which contains much excellent firsthand description of life in remote Javanese villages, is of great interest to specialists, and would probably have been picked up by a university press anyway.” — Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books

“ Surviving against the Odds is a work of very fine scholarship grounded in a deep understanding of Indonesia. Reading it, I learned a great deal about economic anthropology, blacksmithing (across a range of dimensions, from the supernatural to metallurgy), local life and labor in the Javanese village of Kajar, and the remarkable welter of development schemes and projects in play during the long period of S. Ann Dunham’s research. Dunham knew the arcane world of development very well and her account of it is fascinating and important.” — Donald Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz, past president of the American Anthropological Association

“S. Ann Dunham’s Surviving against the Odds bears witness to her knowledge of and affection for the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia. The book also speaks legions about Dunham’s integrity as a cultural anthropologist. . . . By the mid-1980s Dunham had begun to see the audience for her work as made up of not just academics but Indonesians, aid workers, and foreign analysts whose findings affect the lives of ordinary Indonesians. Rather than go with the academic flow, Dunham stayed true to a research program requiring varied and rigorous methodologies, all in an effort to speak truth to power and policy making.” — Robert W. Hefner, Boston University, president of the Association for Asian Studies, from the afterword

“The greetings that the village women exchanged with Mom conveyed an intimacy that made clear they had fully taken each other’s measure. Their connection had been established to a sufficient degree for laughter to be easy. Mom had come to a real understanding with them, it seemed, and not just the women; she was welcomed and trusted by all. This made me proud, I remember, for many of the same reasons my pride swells at the sight of my brother, our president; Mom too moved with such ease through every world, and people opened up at the sight of her smile.” — Maya Soetoro-Ng, daughter of S. Ann Dunham and sister of President Barack Obama, from the foreword

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Author/Editor Bios
Table of Contents
Additional Information

S. Ann Dunham (1942–1995), mother of President Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro-Ng, earned her undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees, all in anthropology, from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Dunham spent years working on rural development, microfinance, and women’s welfare through organizations including USAID, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the Indonesian Federation of Labor Unions, and Bank Rakyat Indonesia. Alice G. Dewey, an Indonesianist, is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i. Nancy I. Cooper is Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i. Maya Soetoro-Ng has a doctorate in international comparative education from the University of Hawai‘i and teaches high-school history in Honolulu. Robert W. Hefner is Professor of Anthropology and Associate Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. He is President of the Association for Asian Studies.

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New York Times op-ed on S. Ann Dunham
The Daily Telegraph (UK) article on S. Ann Dunham
The Independent (UK) article on S. Ann Dunham
Information on the BBC documentary about S. Ann Dunham
The Jakarta Times discusses the importance of Ann Dunham to Indonesia
read Julia Suryakusuma's essay on Ann Dunham's legacy in the Jakarta Times
Listen to the podcast of Maya Soetoro-Ng on Weekend All Things Considered (5 Dec 2009)
Visit C-Span to view the Presidential Panel at the 2009 American Anthropological Assoc. devoted to S. Ann Dunham
article from Asia Times online
The London Times on-line visits the village of Kajar
from The Chronicle of Higher Education
from Publisher's Weekly
Listen to the podcast of Maya Soetoro-Ng on the Diane Rehm Show
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Congratulations to Dr. Sarah Hubbel!

Congratulations to Sarah Hubbel, who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, entitled "Predicate constituent order variation in the Andes: A comparative analysis of Andean Spanish and bilingual Cusco Quechua" on March 27, 2024.

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Department of History

Doctoral dissertation.

Ph.D. Program

The capstone, and most critical, project of the Ph.D. program is the doctoral dissertation.

The series of courses within the department dealing with professional development concludes with the dissertation prospectus seminar, which students take in the sixth semester, if they have passed their examinations.

Prospectus Seminar

The dissertation prospectus seminar provides a shared structure for the process of identifying viable dissertation projects, selecting a dissertation committee, articulating a project in the form of a prospectus, and, where appropriate, developing grant proposals based on the prospectus.

Dissertation Committee

The dissertation committee, the selection of which is a requirement of the course, consists of a director and two additional members.

Director of Graduate Studies

The Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) will verify that the thesis director, who will normally also have been the supervisor of the student's major field examination, accepts the role of the student's major professor and dissertation advisor.

At the same time the DGS will nominate, with their written approval, two other professors who have been agreed upon between the dissertation director and student. In case of disagreement, the choice will be made by the department. With the consent of the dissertation director and DGS, the dissertation committee may include a person from outside the Department. This committee will be responsible for evaluating the student's detailed written proposal, to be presented no later than the end of the sixth semester, and for approving the final version of the student's dissertation.

A dissertation prospectus should be divided into the following four sections:

historiography -- setting the proposed study in the context of the relevant historical literature
methodology -- outlining the approach the student proposes to take
types of sources to be examined
significance -- the historical importance of the work and why we need such a study.

In addition, there should also be a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. If deemed unsatisfactory, the proposal may be referred back for resubmission by the end of the summer following the sixth semester. Students who have not presented their thesis proposal to their dissertation committee by the end of the summer following the sixth semester shall be considered not in good standing and may be ineligible for further financial aid from the department.

Postponement

Students must petition the department in writing for any postponement of the submission of their thesis proposal beyond the end of the sixth semester. Petitions must be accompanied by a recommendation of the student's dissertation advisor. Grounds for such an extension include protracted illness, teaching duties beyond those normally expected of second year and fifth semester students, or the discovery of unexpected difficulties with his/her thesis topic (e.g. a recently completed dissertation or book on the same subject).

Preparation and Examination

After passing the preliminary examination and obtaining approval of his/her dissertation proposal by the dissertation committee, doctoral candidates are encouraged to proceed with this research with speed and efficiency. As the research progresses, if unexpected discoveries about the nature of the sources or other unforeseen developments occur, the student and thesis director should confer in case redefinition of the topic seems necessary. During the research and writing of the thesis, it is the student's responsibility regularly to provide the thesis director with evidence of satisfactory progress towards completion. Such evidence will normally be provided in informal consultations between student and thesis director; if the student is absent from the campus, it should be provided by letter at least once each semester.

Presentation

All students will normally be expected to give a presentation before the History Workshop (or other similar group) of all or part of the dissertation (or other research).

The doctoral dissertation should be completed within four years after the student passes the preliminary examination. Exceptions to this rule will be granted only upon a written petition by the student to the Department.

A faculty member has the right to refuse to direct a thesis without stating specific reasons. However, once he or she has agreed in writing to direct a thesis, the directorship may not be relinquished unless both the student and the Department are informed of the reasons in writing. A student may ask the Department to appoint a new thesis director at any time.

If the Director Leaves

A thesis director leaving the University should state in writing whether he or she wishes to continue to direct doctoral theses already in progress. Even after leaving the University, faculty member is ordinarily expected to continue directing theses until their completion. But if the departing faculty member declines to continue the thesis direction, the student will be given every assistance in finding a new director.

Penultimate Draft

The student shall present a penultimate draft of the thesis to the Graduate Advisor no later than the fifteenth day of March in the year the student intends to graduate. The Graduate Advisor shall then distribute the thesis draft to the members of the dissertation committee, who shall have one month to prepare their evaluations. If all members of the committee agree that the thesis is acceptable, the student will then prepare a final copy and arrange for a thesis defense.

Revised Thesis

If one or more members of the committee judge the thesis to be unacceptable, the student will be asked to rewrite the thesis so as to satisfy the objections of the disapproving reader(s). If all members of the committee are then agreed that the revised thesis is acceptable, the student will then prepare a final copy and arrange for a thesis defense.

If the revised thesis is deemed unacceptable by a majority of the entire committee, it is considered rejected. If the revised thesis is deemed unsatisfactory by a minority of the committee, then the Department may decide either to overrule the objection and recommend approval of the thesis, or it may appoint a fourth reader. If the fourth reader rejects the thesis, then it is considered rejected.

In the case of rejection, the Department may decide either to permit the student to undertake a new thesis, or it may terminate the candidacy of the student.

The Final Defense (optional)

The Department expects each student to have a Final Defense with the approval of the graduate advisor, although in exceptional circumstances the director of the thesis may waive the defense. The defense will normally be conducted by the dissertation director, the readers of the dissertation, and the Dean of the Graduate School or his/her representatives. If the candidate so wishes, other graduate students may attend and participate in the discussion.

The defense will focus on the problems and potentialities of the thesis. Its purpose is to provide a forum not for approving the thesis (which has already been done) but for a general discussion of the thesis as a contribution to knowledge for the benefit of the candidate.

Dissertation Defense Information Form

Complete and submit to Julissa Bautista by March 15, or no less than 1 month in advance of your planned defense date.

Dissertation Defense Information Form (PDF)

Additional Dissertation Information

Grievance procedures and appeals, brown graduate school dissertation guidelines, additional ph.d. information, fields of study, funding and financial aid.

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Faculty Spotlights

Manhattanville University's Dr. Susan Iverson Receives Distinguished Alumnx Award

Doctoral Program | Faculty Spotlights

We are delighted to share an article from the University of Maine highlighting the remarkable achievements of Dr. Susan Iverson, a distinguished professor of higher education leadership and Director of the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at Manhattanville University.

UMaine higher education program honors Susan Iverson with distinguished alumnx award

Susan Iverson, a professor of higher education leadership at Manhattanville University in Purchase, New York, is the recipient of the 2024 Dr. Sue Estler Distinguished Alumnx Award from the University of Maine’s graduate programs in higher education.

The award is presented annually to a higher education alumnus whose accomplishments embody the spirit and legacy of Estler, who served as a faculty member in higher education at UMaine from 1997 to 2009, as well as the university’s director of equal opportunity from 1986 through 1997. She passed away in 2019 of pancreatic cancer.

“Sue Estler’s professional experience, as director of equal opportunity and with Title IX, provided inspiration for the ways I approached professional and scholarly work related to women’s advancement, sexual violence prevention and policy, and other gender-equity matters,” says Iverson , who earned her Ph.D. in higher education from UMaine in 2005. “Her modeling of advocacy and activism, coupled with her good humor, warmth and integrity, has been fuel for my own raised consciousness about and commitment to social justice.”

Iverson was a student in courses taught by Estler, who also served on Iverson’s dissertation committee. Iverson says Estler pushed her to understand the historical underpinnings and context surrounding complex theoretical concepts and ideas. She says her entire doctoral program was transformative for her career.

“I’d been a long-time higher education administrator and assumed I would stay on that trajectory when I entered the program. However, the opportunity to teach graduate courses, the mentoring I received in research and the advising that pushed me to deepen my thinking from various theoretical lenses led me to take a professional fork in the road and pursue faculty rather than administrative positions,” Iverson says.

Today, Iverson serves as a mentor and inspiration to her students through her teaching, research and commitment to equity for all. In her research, she uses a historical lens to document or analyze contributions of women and other minoritized groups to higher education.

She has co-edited two defining books, “Feminist Community Engagement: Achieving Praxis” and “Reconstructing Policy Analysis in Higher Education: Feminist Poststructural Perspectives.” UMaine professor of higher education Elizabeth Allan was a co-editor of the latter volume as well.

During her career, Iverson has received numerous awards that speak to her accomplishments, including a 2011 Research and Scholarship Award for commitment to women’s issues from the American College Personnel Association, Standing Committee for Women; a 2010 Cultural Diversity Award, presented by the Ohio College Personnel Association; a 2009 Professional of the Year award from the American College Personnel Association, MultiRacial Network; and a 2006 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Educational Research Association, Division J (postsecondary education).

“Through her career Dr. Iverson has championed the work of applying policy discourse analysis to inform theory and practice to support women and historically marginalized populations in the diaspora of higher education,” says Aaron Tolbert , who nominated Iverson for the award.

Tolbert, who earned his Ph.D. from UMaine in 2017 and currently serves as assistant vice president for academic affairs at Hartwick College, also notes that Iverson’s career includes 10 years of student affairs administrative work in Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as tenured faculty roles at Kent State University and Manhattanville University. He says that her success aligns directly with the award criteria of enhancing positive campus climates for minoritized populations.

“I served with Dr. Iverson on a dissertation committee and can attest that her dedication, focus and leadership continue today with the same rigor and value that have marked her celebrated career,” says Tolbert. “Indeed, Susan embodies the qualities that all students of Dr. Estler, including myself, have come to respect: her trenchant vision, her defined standards and her sincere care for her students’ growth.”

As a teacher and role model, Estler changed the course of many students’ lives for the better. She was a tireless advocate for equity and inclusion of minoritized individuals and served as a leader for LGBTQ+ rights initiatives throughout Maine and beyond. In the higher education program, Estler was fond of teaching Higher Education and the Law, History of Higher Education, Higher Education Policy and Politics, and Organizational Theory for Higher Education. A college athlete and sports fan, Estler’s book with Laurie Nelson, “Who Calls the Shots: Sports and University Leadership and Decision-Making” explored structural, legal, cultural and market forces that impact university decision-making relative to athletics.

Contact: Eunice Opare, Graduate Assistant in Higher Education, [email protected]

University of Maine

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Elevate your leadership skills, deepen your understanding of critical and contemporary education issues, and learn to help solve the current challenges in P-20 education.

Learn to Inspire Change

The Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership from Manhattanville, offered in partnership with Putnam Northern Westchester BOCES, utilizes a forward-thinking approach to educational leadership that is ideal for practicing and aspiring leaders in any educational context. It is designed to support the goals of educational professionals who seek to develop their leadership skills for career advancement or current job enhancement. 

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About manhattanville, we are valiant.

Since 1841, Manhattanville University has provided a transformative educational experience. As a private liberal arts institution, Manhattanville roots its education in a rich history of academic excellence and innovative programs. With more than 55 undergraduate programs, 70 graduate programs, and a doctoral program, we empower every student to cultivate their intellectual curiosity, sharpen their critical thinking skills, and strive for a more just world.

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Our History and Legacy

Since its origins as a Catholic boarding school to its present day as a non-denominational, co-ed private university, Manhattanville University has evolved to meet the needs of students who seek a more just world. A haven for independent thinking and socially conscious values, our interdisciplinary education is rooted in the liberal arts and experiential learning.

Founded in 1841 in New York City as a boarding school and parochial school for women, Manhattanville University has consistently strived to expand higher education to all sectors of society. Under the visionary leadership of President Grace Dammann, R.S.C.J., Manhattanville University voted to admit African-American students in 1938 and we have continuously worked to create a more inclusive student body. Today, over a third of our students identify as first-generation, and even more consider themselves BIPOC. We are also a designated Hispanic Serving Institution, a reflection of our increasingly diverse community.

We have also grown in other ways. When Manhattanville University officially took over the former estate of diplomat Whitelaw Reid in Westchester in 1952, we cemented our role in the educational development of the region. The U.S. News and World Report named us as the #1 private college for social mobility in New York. Students volunteer over 30,000 hours of community service through the Clark Center for Social Justice. The School of Education offers the highest number of programs and additional support through the Changing Suburbs Institute’s network of Professional Development Schools. Nursing candidates complete clinic hours in local organizations, providing patient-centered care to the area.

We are proof of how academic excellence, a commitment to social justice, and a global outlook can transform students and, by extension, society.

Explore Mville History

Manhattanville University benefits from both the peaceful beauty of Westchester County and the vibrant, non-stop energy of New York City. The 100-acre campus provides a safe and comfortable environment where every student’s intellectual life can blossom with the unparalleled professional opportunities of a world-class city, only 30 miles away.

Reid Castle, a 19th-century architectural gem, anchors the campus and houses the Welcome Center, Admissions, Financial Aid, and several event spaces. Designed by famed Central Park architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the picturesque green quad hosts our academic buildings and centers, the university library, four performance facilities, and fifteen new or renovated science and nursing labs.

The campus also boasts two historic chapels. The architect Maya Lin restored one, Lady Chapel, to include a glass roof, located near the new Ohnell Environmental Center, a non-invasive structure that reflects Manhattanville University’s commitment to sustainability. Our newest building, the Richard A. Berman Student Center, received a LEED gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.

In addition to our four residence halls and dining hall, students enjoy amenities like a campus market and store and comprehensive athletic facilities, including a fitness center, tennis courts, an ice rink, a baseball and softball field, and an indoor turf facility.

We are a short car, train, or bus ride from New York and the city’s main airports. We are also easily accessible by car from anywhere in the TriState area and can also be reached via the Metro-North Railroad from NYC Grand Central Terminal or Westchester’s Bee-Line bus.

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Successful Final Dissertation Defense - Congratulations to Juliet L. Gevargis-Mizimakoski!

Congratulations to Juliet Gevargis-Mizimakoski on a compelling final defense of her dissertation: HIGH...

Rosa Amendola Successfully Defends Her Dissertation Proposal

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Successful Final Dissertation Defense - Congratulations to Sheri Delena Warren!

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Bill Ackman's celebrity academic wife Neri Oxman's dissertation is marred by plagiarism

Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, resigned after conservative activists revealed she had plagiarized.
The hedge fund manager and prominent Harvard donor Bill Ackman helped lead the charge against Gay.
BI analyzed Ackman's wife's doctoral dissertation and found numerous instances of plagiarism.

The billionaire hedge fund manager and major Harvard donor Bill Ackman seized on revelations that Harvard's president, Claudine Gay , had plagiarized some passages in her academic work to underscore his calls for her removal following what he perceived as her mishandling of large protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza on Harvard's campus.

An analysis by Business Insider found a similar pattern of plagiarism by Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman , who became a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017.

Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.

Her husband, Ackman, has taken a hardline stance on plagiarism. On Wednesday, responding to news that Gay is set to remain a part of Harvard's faculty after she resigned as president, he wrote on X that Gay should be fired completely due to "serious plagiarism issues."

"Students are forced to withdraw for much less," Ackman continued. "Rewarding her with a highly paid faculty position sets a very bad precedent for academic integrity at Harvard."

An architect and artist who experiments with new ways to synthesize materials found in nature, Oxman has been the subject of profiles in major outlets such as The New York Times and Elle . She has collaborated with Björk, exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art , and had paparazzi stake her out after Brad Pitt visited her lab at MIT in 2018.

In 2019, emails uncovered by the Boston Globe showed Ackman pressured MIT to keep Oxman's name out of a brewing scandal over an original sculpture she gave to Jeffrey Epstein in thanks for a $125,000 donation to her lab.

While MIT and Pershing Square Foundation continue to describe her as a professor in online biographies, a spokesperson for Pershing Square Capital Management said she left MIT in 2020 "after she got married, became a mother, and moved to New York City." After this article was published, MIT responded to a prior request for comment, writing that Oxman left MIT in June 2021.

Her husband, meanwhile, has been vocal about wanting to see MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth , fired since Kornbluth testified on December 5 in front of a congressional panel examining how university presidents handled student protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Kornbluth said in her opening statement that she didn't support "speech codes" that would restrict what students say during protests.

Ackman attacked Kornbluth's testimony, as well as that of Gay and the University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill , as tantamount to supporting antisemitism. He also criticized the presidents' stated goals of improving campus diversity, equity, and inclusion as "violations of basic American principles."

"To the @MIT governing boards: Let's make a deal. If you promptly terminate President Kornbluth, I promise I won't write you a letter," Ackman posted on X on December 10, referring to an open letter he sent to Harvard's governing board criticizing Gay's leadership.

Multiple instances of plagiarism from a 2010 dissertation

In Oxman's dissertation, completed at MIT, she plagiarized a 1998 paper by two Israeli scholars, Steve Weiner and H. Daniel Wagner, a 2006 article published in the journal Nature by the New York University historian Peder Anker, and a 1995 paper published in the proceedings of the Royal Society of London. She also lifted from a book published in 1998 by the German physicist Claus Mattheck and, in a more classical mode of plagiarism, copied one paragraph from Mattheck without any quotation or attribution.

"The basic building block of the bone family of materials is the mineralized collagen fibril," Weiner and Wagner wrote in their paper. "It is composed of the fibrous protein collagen in a structural form that is also present in skin, tendon, and a variety of other soft tissues. The collagen constitutes the main component of a three-dimensional matrix into which, and in some cases onto which, the mineral forms."

That passage was included in its entirety in Oxman's dissertation. She cited Weiner and Wagner but did not include the passage in quotation marks, a violation of MIT's academic-integrity handbook , both as it is currently written and as it was at the time.

Similarly, in most of the other instances that BI identified in which Oxman lifted passages from other works, she cited the author but did not put quotation marks around the plagiarized material.

MIT's academic-integrity handbook notes that authors must either "use quotation marks around the words and cite the source," or "paraphrase or summarize acceptably and cite the source." Oxman published her thesis in 2010; identical language appeared in MIT's handbook at least as far back as 2007 .

Oxman also took a passage from Mattheck's book without attribution and inaccurately attributed a passage she lifted from the Royal Society of London paper to two different sources.

She also recycled phrasing she used in her dissertation in subsequent papers. The opening paragraph of her dissertation, for instance, appears almost word-for-word in an article she published in 2013. While re-using material isn't a formal violation of MIT's academic-integrity code, a guide to "ethical writing" recommended by the university to its scholars and students warns against it.

Ackman said Harvard president's plagiarism made her unfit to work

Like Oxman, Gay was found to have lifted passages from other academics' work without using quotation marks while citing the authors.

Gay's plagiarism was seen by some academics, including many of those she plagiarized, as relatively inconsequential.

George Reid Andrews, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the people Gay plagiarized, told the New York Post that what Gay did "happens fairly often in academic writing and for me does not rise to the level of plagiarism."

"I am glad she read my work, learned from it, and recommended it to her readers," Andrews continued.

But for Bill Ackman, the plagiarism wasn't only cause for Gay's immediate ouster as Harvard's president — it also warranted her total removal from its faculty. In the weeks leading up to her resignation as president, he posted more than a dozen times about her plagiarism on X.

Ackman, a Harvard graduate worth roughly $4 billion , has been a prolific donor to the school. His most substantial donation, of $25 million in 2014, supported the expansion of the economics department and the endowment of three professorships. He also made a smaller contribution to the rowing crew, a team he was part of as an undergraduate.

Ackman and Oxman married in 2019 and their first child was born the same year. In 2015, Ackman purchased a luxury apartment in New York's swanky One57 building , which Oxman also lists as an address, according to public records. The couple are listed as trustees for the Pershing Square Foundation, a charitable organization.

Ackman began campaigning for Gay's removal in the wake of widespread protests on Harvard's campus related to Israel's invasion of Gaza in October. Ackman decried the protests as antisemitic and accused Gay of not doing enough to protect either Jewish students or "academic freedom."

"President Gay catalyzed an explosion of antisemitism and hate on campus that is unprecedented in Harvard's history," he wrote last month on X.

Ackman also intimated that he had inside information that Gay had only been offered the job as Harvard's president because she is a Black woman. Gay became the school's first Black president and the second woman president in July.

On X, he wrote that he had been informed that Harvard would not choose a president "who did not meet the DEI office's criteria." Gay, he implied, would most likely "not have obtained" the role of president "were it not for a fat finger on the scale."

Gay's plagiarism was surfaced by the right-wing activist Christopher Rufo, who was forthright about his plans to "smuggle" the news of the plagiarism "into the media apparatus" to lend credence to those calling for Gay's resignation.

Harvard's governing body, the Harvard Corporation, initially stood by Gay's handling of the on-campus protests and her plagiarism. In recent weeks, though, pressure on Gay to resign has mounted, spearheaded in no small part by Ackman.

Gay resigned as Harvard's president on Tuesday. In a letter to the Harvard community, Gay wrote that she was stepping down in part due to "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."

But Ackman remains on the hunt for one more head. Of the three university presidents who testified in front of Congress in a disastrous early December session , two of them — Gay and Magill — are no longer in their posts. One remains: Kornbluth, the president of MIT, where Oxman wrote her thesis and worked from 2010 to 2020.

When a user on X asked Ackman why he wasn't going after Kornbluth, Ackman's response was to the point.

"Stay tuned @MIT," Ackman replied.

Watch: Rachel Maddow released portions of Trump's 2005 tax return — here's what it reveals

Main content

Neri Oxman admits to plagiarizing in her doctoral dissertation after BI report

Neri Oxman, a former tenured professor at MIT, apologized for parts of her dissertation.
Business Insider found that Oxman, the wife of Bill Ackman, had multiple instances of plagiarism.
"I regret and apologize for these errors," she wrote on X, and said she would update her work.

Neri Oxman , the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman , admitted to failing to properly credit sources in portions of her doctoral dissertation after Business Insider published an article finding that Oxman engaged in a pattern of plagiarism similar to that of former Harvard president Claudine Gay .

BI identified four instances in Oxman's dissertation in which she lifted paragraphs from other scholars' work without including them in quotation marks. In those instances, Oxman wrote in a post on X , using quotation marks would have been "the proper approach for crediting the work. I regret and apologize for these errors."

Ackman has been on a crusade to force Gay to resign , which she did this week. Revelations that she had plagiarized portions of academic articles, publicized by far-right activist Christopher Rufo, added fuel to his calls for Gay to step down after protests against Israel's war in Gaza rocked Harvard's campus.

Ackman said Gay had mishandled the student protests and created a culture of antisemitism at the elite Cambridge institution. Gay's plagiarism underscored her lack of fitness to lead the institution, or even to teach at Harvard, Ackman wrote on X, calling Gay's plagiarism "very serious."

Oxman, an architect and artist, received her Ph.D. from MIT in 2010 and became a tenured professor there in 2017 before leaving the university in June 2021, an MIT spokesperson said. Her failure to use quotation marks to identify passages of text from other sources meets the definition of plagiarism as spelled out in MIT's academic integrity handbook.

Oxman wrote on X that after she has reviewed the original sources, she plans to "request that MIT make any necessary corrections."

"As I have dedicated my career to advancing science and innovation, I have always recognized the profound importance of the contributions of my peers and those who came before me. I hope that my work is helpful to the generations to come," she wrote.

Oxman now leads an eponymous company, Oxman , focused on "innovation in product, architectural, and urban design," she wrote on X. "OXMAN has been in stealth mode. I look forward to sharing more about OXMAN later this year."

Her husband, Ackman, lauded her transparency in his own post on X following the publication of Business Insider's article.

"Part of what makes her human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate," he wrote .

Neri Oxman admits to plagiarizing in her doctoral dissertation after BI report

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Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication Ph.D. student, Raquel Taylor, will be presenting her dissertation defense, "Stories of Motivation and Values of Small-Scale Farmers in Jamaica and the United States".

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