Dissertation Proposal Defense

There are several steps towards successfully defending your proposal. Depending on your program and start date, the steps may vary. It is recommended that you consult your manual to determine the steps: Handbooks. Here we outline the steps for our particular cases.

Computer Science (PhD)

There are two main components towards the Proposal Defense goal:

• Comprehensive Exam
• Oral Defense

The comprehensive exam itself has two components. A written component and an oral component. There are two options for the comprehensive exam:

1. The committee is provided with a syllabus and they are given two weeks to prepare questions based on the syllabus. The student then prepares written responses to the questions.
2. The committee is provided the syllabus and given the option to add or remove items in the syllabus. Once the syllabus is approved the written part of the comprehensive exam is considered complete. The student is then expected to arrange an oral session where they answer questions based on the syllabus.

Once the written and oral part of the comprehensive exam are complete, the committee must sign this form

Before the oral defense of the proposal the student is expected to complete the following pre-requisites:

• Dissertation Prospectus: A document under 20 pages highlighting a discussion towards the proposal topic and future direction.
• Comprehensive Exam (written + oral)

After the defense, your committee members must sign this form.