You already know about your dissertation (Part 7). But there are several steps leading up to the completion of your dissertation and when you have to present your work in front of your committee.
Recall, your dissertation is five chapters: 1) Introduction, 2) Literature Review, 3) Methodology, 4) Results, 5) Discussion. By the end of your dissertation, you’ll have these five chapters which you’ll present to your committee.
Your committee
Your committee most likely will consist of five professors that you will have to recruit. Three of them will have to be from your department, one specifically must be from the outside of your department. My committee consisted of three math education professors and two education research professors.
I recruited my committee members by simply sending them an email with a brief description of my research topic. All of them I had known from taking a course or multiple courses. In your first few semesters of coursework, it would be good to keep a mental note of professors who might make good committee members. You want professors who have expertise, but are also timely in their responses and seem to have their shit together. Do they respond thoughtfully to emails or discussion posts quickly? Is the course well organized?There are going to be a lot of moving parts with your committee and you want five individuals who are reliable, thoughtful, and responsive.
When you step back, is your committee composed of those with varying viewpoints or life experiences? Is there a diversity of identity on your committee and to what extent should you prioritize that?
Being a part of a doctoral committee is relatively low on many professors’ list of priorities. They won’t reach out for updates unless you prompt them. They won’t look over your work until the requisite checkpoints (quals, prelims, and defense).
Your advisor, on the other hand, who will likely be the chair of your committee should have your dissertation be a priority. You should be emailing or talking with relative frequency for ideas, updates, and to help you navigate your doctoral path. Speaking of your path, let’s look at these checkpoints.
Your preliminary exam
Your preliminary exam (aka “prelims”) – if it’s like mine – will consist of your first two chapters (Introduction and Literature Review) to be reviewed by your committee chair and one or two other members of your committee, most likely those within your department. It’s the lowest stakes of all these checkpoints. They’ll give you feedback, suggest other literature to look over, and provide some next steps.
These checkpoints serve as guardrails. If there’s a serious problem with your research or your writing, you and your committee need to know early on so you can course-correct. For your prelims, you need to demonstrate you have the skills and ability to provide coherent writing and read peer-reviewed literature critically and synthesize the information.
Your committee members will pass you, with feedback and you can work towards the next checkpoint.
Your qualifying exam
Your qualifying exam will consist of your first three chapters: a revised Introduction and Literature review based on your prelim feedback and Chapter 3 – your methodology. You will present this to your entire committee. Working with your advisor you will send these three chapters to your committee to give them plenty of time to read and provide critical feedback.
Most likely, special attention and potential concerns will be paid to your new chapter: your methodology. In this chapter and in your presentation you need to showcase that you are ready to begin the research. You’ll provide the tools and instruments you’ll use to collect and analyze the data. You’ll discuss how you will recruit research participants and how you will ensure their information is secure. If you’re conducting interviews, you’ll give examples of interview questions along with how many interviews you’ll conduct and over what medium. If you’re doing a quantitative study you’ll provide things like the statistical test you’ll apply to the data to determine if there was a significant change in the research sample.
You want this to be as airtight as possible. It doesn’t have to be (and it won’t be) perfect. But your committee is going to determine if you’re ready to do research and begin the IRB approval process.
IRB approval
Before you can begin your research, you need permission to do so according to your university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). This is a volunteer committee within your university in which they review applications to conduct research. The 20th Century is littered with problematic research in which countless harms were done to research participants. In the latter half of the century, standards and practices were developed to ensure that researchers were conducting research in a humane manner. T
The IRB reviews applications to ensure that your research methods are sound and that participants are being properly recruited and their data is being managed in a sound manner.
The IRB approval process varies significantly from university to university. I’ve heard of IRB approval taking a few days to literally months. The time frame also will differ significantly depending on whether you are conducting research on minors (i.e. K12 students) or not (i.e. teachers). If you’re doing research on adults, it’s possible you can get expedited IRB approval.
You should talk to your advisor to get a heads up on this process. Why is this so important?
A word about research and the academic calendar
My research project involved providing professional development with teachers before the school year started. I was also conducting research on minors, using their work. Because my project involved collecting student data throughout the school year, it was critical I had permission to begin research before the school year started. I also wanted to give students a pre- and post- survey, documenting their mathematical attitudes before the school year and after the school year (o as well as at the semester mark). So I made sure to start the process early.
I completed my Chapter 3 (Methodology) in February. After looking over it several times and getting feedback from my advisor, a few weeks later I was ready to schedule a meeting with my committee who would then let me pass my qualifying exam which would then allow me to get IRB approval.
Securing time for five committee members, plus yourself, I learned, is an impossible task. Between regular teaching loads, conferences, random obligations, and the relatively lowliness of the priority of your work, it was months before I could find a time to meet with all of my committee members at the same time.
And despite submittine my IRB application the same day that my committee passed me along, I did not get IRB approval before the start of the school year. That meant I could not administer the survey at the beginning of the year. I couldn’t even begin to obtain consent forms from teachers, students, students’ parents, and administrators before the year started.
I also wasn’t sure if I could put off my research for another academic year because the district I was working with had already agreed to the aforementioned professional development and it wasn’t a guarantee they’d want to do it a year later. So I had to press on without – what I thought at the time – was a critical part of my research project.
If you’re researching educational practices it is possible that your research will be beholden to the cycle of the academic calendar. If that’s the case, consider this tale a warning. It’s possible you’ll have better luck with scheduling your qualifying exam with your committee. You might have an IRB that is faster (to be fair, I’ve heard they can be approved in as quick as a week). My tale – that of thinking I was ready for the following school year in February – is cautionary, but not prescriptive.
Your defense
You get IRB approval, you conduct your research, you analyze the date, you write up your findings, and now it’s time to schedule your defense. All five chapters are ready to go, your advisor has looked over it and you’ve taken their feedback.
Now – as with your qualifying exam – you need a window in everyone’s schedule for presenting your doctoral research. This window, however, needs to be at least two hours. You will present your research, you will be asked and will answer questions, the committee will confer outside of your earshot, and they will pass you. Your advisor wouldn’t have let you get to this point without confidence you would pass. Your committee will offer a few potential tweaks to your dissertation, which you will consider before you upload it to ProQuest – the thesis/dissertation repository everyone uses.
Finding a time for your qualifying exam for all five professors and yourself was difficult. Finding a 2+ hour window is a task akin to moving mountains. You also need to give your committee a good month to read your dissertation (it is quite long, after all).
Zooming out, one of the biggest culture shocks I experienced with academia is just how long everything takes. In K12 education, if you don’t respond to an email by the end of the day I assume you’re dead or in a coma. In the private sector, you are on Slack or something and get a response within seconds. At Universities things move at a glacial pace. You might get a response to an email within a week, or maybe not at all. You’re also putting things on professor’s plates months ahead of time and they will assuredly forget about it.
BUT! you are now done and you can start thinking about your next steps – whether it’s applying for positions, publishing or presenting original research. In Part 9, we reach our conclusion and ponder: what comes next? What are we going to be when we grow up?
Takeaways
- Consider the composition of your committee
- Get clear on preliminary exams, qualifying exams, IRB approval, and your defense
- Know that things can move slowly in academia. You may be waiting longer for responses than you think. This is especially important if your research is tied to the academic calendar.
- Communicate with your advisor relatively frequently
All posts in this series:
Part 1: Why (not) to get your PhD in Mathematics Education
Part 2: Finding the right program
Part 3: What a Math Education Doctoral Degree is (and what it isn’t)
Part 4: Do you like to write? You better.
Part 5: Classes, Coursework, and You
Part 7: Let’s Talk About Your Dissertation: the thing that people just don’t want to do
Part 8: Your defense committee: Prelims, Quals, and the moving of mountains
Part 9: What comes next (for me and for you)?
Appendix A: Slow cooker meals
emergent math 