Thesis Planning Meeting

This is an essential step in your thesis (or project) process. In these group meetings, you will view slides relating to the process and get advice about your topic.

Review Thesis Deadlines

It is imperative that you know of all the thesis deadlines, the "at risk" deadlines, the timing window for defending (presenting) your thesis and publishing your thesis.

Establish Thesis Committee

Appoint three faculty to guide you in your thesis writing to your Thesis Committee (submit form online or use paper form). One member will be the chairperson and must be a tenured faculty member or Director (Dr. Larson). Another faculty should be an expert in your subject matter. And the final member should be from outside the Homeland Security department to provide breadth.

Thesis Prospectus

You propose your thesis idea in a Thesis Prospectus. Your committee chair must approve the prospectus before you embark on the main thesis writing. You need to do some research to get to the point where you can write a cohesive prospectus, but usually not more than a month to gather a list of references and clearly define your problem statement.

Enroll in Thesis Course

This course placeholder is intended for the semester in which you write your thesis. Traditional thesis writers should enroll in HSEC 799A. Those students with an unpublished thesis project should enroll in HSEC 790. If you need more time to write your thesis, you would enroll in HSEC 799B

Write Your Thesis

There are a number of strict policies governing Thesis writing. Make sure you understand all of them so that you don't waste time. It is best to concentrate on writing and wait to do the formatting of your thesis until almost the end of the process. Consult these Thesis Writing Tips from Dr. Ornatowski.

Thesis Formatting

University requirements dictate that your thesis must be formatted in a very particular way with strict rules. You can do this process yourself or hire a former graduate student to do the process on your behalf.

• see Thesis Formatting Instructions
• see Thesis Template
• see Freelance Formatters

Thesis Defense

This is your official presentation of your thesis to your committee and it is typically open to the public. In other departments (and particularly in the European style), this is a full-throat defense of your work and your committee members (or members of the public) will challenge your research and attempt to find flaws in your work, in the hope of producing a more polished final thesis. Revisions of your work are typically requested and you would make additional defenses.

Traditionally in our program, your committee will not allow you to schedule your thesis defense unless they think you are at the stage where you are ready. Additionally, the defense is really more of a presentation of your work, and your committee will not typically ask you to make revisions at this point.

Thesis Review

Once approved by your thesis committee, you would submit your work along with the signature page to Montezuma Publishing for final publishing.

Apply to Graduate

Don't forget to officially apply to graduate before the deadline on the second week of classes. Students are encouraged to apply the semester prior to their anticipated graduation date just to be safe.