Advising Thesis and Dissertation Students
Faculty advisers, committee members, and program directors all play key roles in providing the guidance and support that students need to complete a thesis or dissertation successfully.
Thesis and Dissertation Office
The College of Graduate Studies (CGS) Thesis and Dissertation Office sets semester deadlines, recommends policy updates, manages the Graduate Faculty appointment process, committee submission, as well as the review and submission process for all graduate theses and dissertations.
Only manuscripts that meet all university requirements and pass the CGS format review will be accepted for degree completion and added to UCF’s institutional repository, STARS.
Resources and Contact Information
Students should become familiar with the thesis and dissertation webpage which contains resources related to the full thesis and dissertation process. Faculty and staff can join the “How to Help Grad Students: Thesis and Dissertation” Webcourse to learn more about the thesis/dissertation process in order to better help graduate students. Faculty, staff, and students should become familiar with thesis and dissertation deadlines listed in the UCF Academic Calendar.
The Thesis and Dissertation Office can be reached by email at the following addresses:
General thesis/dissertation questions: editor@ucf.edu
Thesis/Dissertation committee questions: gradcommittee@ucf.edu
Graduate Faculty questions: gradfac@ucf.edu
Thesis/Dissertation Graduation Requirements
The following are the general steps a student will complete in their final semester; for more comprehensive information, please refer to the resources above.
- Review committee information at myUCF Student Center > Graduate Students section > Thesis and Dissertation Status page (submit committee revision if needed)
- Submit a bookmarked thesis/dissertation PDF file for Format Review by the semester Format Review deadline
- Submit the Thesis/Dissertation Release Option eForm in myUCF Student Center by the semester Format Review deadline
- Receive Format Review approval and permission to do Final Submission from the Graduate College editor
- Announce the defense at least two weeks prior to the defense date
- Defend successfully by the semester Defense deadline
- Complete Final Submission of ETD and deliver a signed Thesis/Dissertation Approval Form to the Graduate College editor by the semester Final Submission deadline
Thesis and Dissertation Stages
This guide defines the following six stages of thesis and dissertation work and provides guidance and best practices for each stage.
Stage 1. Before Thesis/Dissertation Enrollment
Stage 2. Initiating Thesis/Dissertation Work
Stage 3. Research Phase
Stage 4. Thesis and Dissertation Review
Stage 5. Defense
Stage 6. Thesis and Dissertation Final Submission
FAQs related to the thesis and dissertation process
Policies Related to Thesis/Dissertation
Please see the Graduate Catalog Polices for details on the following:
- Graduate Faculty and Graduate Faculty Scholar
- Dissemination (Release) of Theses and Dissertations
- Enrollment
- Thesis Requirements
- Dissertation Requirements
- Human Subjects Research
- Patent and Invention Policy
- Proprietary and Confidential Information
- Review of Theses and Dissertations for Original Work
Best Practices for Thesis and Dissertation
- Be aware of important thesis/dissertation deadlines including format review, defense, and final submission dates in the UCF Academic Calendar.
- All potential thesis/dissertation committee members have the proper appointment as Graduate Faculty; check this information on the Graduate Faculty website before submission of the committee.
- Ensure that the thesis/dissertation advisory committee information is submitted by the proper deadline in the semester before anticipated thesis/dissertation enrollment. Use Doctoral and Thesis Advisory Committee Form to submit the committee by the deadline listed on the Academic Calendar.
- The thesis/dissertation advisory committee must be on file with CGS before the submission of candidacy through eform by the program (see Academic Calendar for candidacy deadline).
- Students are expected to familiarize themselves with the resources located on the CGS Thesis and Dissertation webpage and in the Thesis and Dissertation Webcourse (linked on the webpage).
- Have the student file an Intent to Graduate Form at the beginning of the semester they plan to defend their thesis/dissertation.
- Be sure that the degree audit is clean and the student has met all degree requirements other than the thesis or dissertation requirement; master’s students must have clean audits in the semester before they graduate since no petitions or exceptions to university policies will be approved in the semester of graduation.
- All thesis and dissertations must pass format review by the College of Graduate Studies TD office in order to receive permission to upload their final document by the final deadline.
- Students should submit their work for format review as early as possible BEFORE the format review deadline in the graduation semester, as they will not be able to complete all other requirements without format approval. Students will need to continue to submit their document for review until they receive format approval.
- Several weeks before the defense, have the student provide their defense announcement to you with the current committee listed. It is important to check the committee early enough to allow time for any needed corrections. If the committee is incorrect, submit a correction to CGS.
- All defenses must be publicly announced two weeks in advance and all defenses must be held by the defense deadline listed on the Academic Calendar in the planned graduation semester.
- Students are responsible for collecting the appropriate committee and college signatures on the Thesis and Dissertation Approval Form. The student or a designated representative must email the completed form to editor@ucf.edu by the final semester deadline. Departmental approval pages will not be accepted. Extra copies of this form will not be accepted for signature.
- All theses and dissertations at UCF are electronic. No paper copies are ever required.
- Barring any embargoes (publishing restrictions), all final TD submissions are available through the STARS Theses and Dissertations page.
Stage 1. Before Thesis/Dissertation Enrollment
Setting the Groundwork: Program Handbook
Having a detailed Program Handbook can help students know what to expect at all stages of their graduate study in your program, including the thesis and dissertation stage. Here are some essential elements:
- It is strongly recommended that all proposal, candidacy, publishing requirements, and any other preliminary requirements be outlined in your program handbook.
- Have your graduate program committee specify guidelines for acceptable and exceptional theses and dissertations and scholarly work in your program handbook.
- For all official exams, explain the intent of the exam, schedule when the exam will be offered, number of attempts allowed, what constitutes success, how to prepare and defend, how the defense will be evaluated, and attendance procedures.
- Include a blank annual evaluation form in your program handbook.
Process and Policies
- Complete the Program of Study such that the student has time to complete all required coursework in a timely fashion.
- Have your program staff run a degree audit for your student and ensure that it is up to date and shows that all coursework requirements are met and that courses that are not completed are registered for. If the audit is not up to date, this can cause delays while the college updates the audit.
- All transfer work, course substitutions, traveling scholar, and all exceptions to university requirements must be completed be completed before thesis/dissertation enrollment. Assess program of study completion. Review preliminary degree audit.
- Doctoral students must have less than six credit hours of regular coursework remaining before being advances to candidacy.
- Advise doctoral student to attend ethics/responsible conduct of research workshops. These workshops are offered every fall, summer, and spring semester and are required before students can enter candidacy.
- Advise student to review university Polices in the Graduate Catalog for thesis and dissertation. Have student review the program handbook with special attention to expectations and requirements for the proposal.
Committee Formation
- Help your student choose the advisory committee. It is important that together you choose people who will have an interest in the subject, expertise in the subject, who have no conflict of interest either in the student (such as employment off campus) or in the research (paying for the project directly), and who are not related to the student.
- It is important that the advisory committee members fully intend to attend the advisory committee meetings yearly and at the final defense.
- The advisory committee members are there to guide the student and the research; they are not solely final readers of the research.
- Advise student to use the Graduate Faculty website to review Graduate Faculty and determine committee eligibility
- If desired committee members do not have the status to serve, submit an appointment to Graduate Faculty through your college representative; Graduate Faculty Scholars can be submitted through using the Nomination and Appointment to Graduate Faculty Scholars form.
- Submit all thesis/dissertation committees (including initial submission and any subsequent updates as needed) to CGS using the Doctoral and Thesis Advisory Committee Form.
- The advisory committee must be submitted by the initial advisory committee submission deadline in the semester prior to the anticipated thesis/dissertation enrollment semester.
- Advisory committee information must also be on file prior to the submission of the doctoral candidacy information.
Doctoral Dissertation Committee Requirements
- At least 3 internal members (must be from the student’s program)
- At least 1 external member, who can be:
- A UCF Graduate Faculty member from another program or college
- A Graduate Faculty Scholar from the same program/track
- An outside expert (must be nominated as a Graduate Faculty Scholar)
Master’s Thesis Committee Requirements
- At least 3 members from the student’s program
- An external member is optional but can be added as a 4th member
Candidacy Exam
- Schedule the candidacy exam for your doctoral student. If the candidacy exam is an oral exam of the dissertation prospectus, be sure to provide copies of the prospectus to the advisory committee; advance notice of two weeks is minimally acceptable. Your department or college may have other requirements.
- Ensure that the doctoral candidacy examination is completed early enough so the candidacy information can be submitted by the proper deadline in the semester BEFORE anticipated thesis/dissertation enrollment
- The candidacy completion must be submitted (through eform) by candidacy submission deadline listed on the Academic Calendar. Remember, the advisory committee must be submitted BEFORE the candidacy is submitted.
- Have student review the program handbook with special attention to expectations and requirements for candidacy.
Forms
Doctoral and Thesis Advisory Committee Form
Nomination and Appointment to Graduate Faculty Scholars
Stage 2. Initiating Thesis/Dissertation Work
Research and Scholarly Work
- Outline a project proposal that can be realistically completed. Identify potential journals for publication of research, so your student can become familiar with the types of work published and the formatting guidelines.
- Agree on a schedule for when the advisory committee can regularly evaluate the student on progress and record these evaluations in your student files. Plan for the advisory committee to meet at least once per year
- Review proper use of citations and advise student about good practices in scholarly writing in your discipline.
- Ensure that students use citations from authoritative sources, follow an acceptable citation style, and have complete citations.
- Recommend that the student attend a citation management workshop offered by the UCF Libraries and consider using a citation management software. Share how you manage your own research work and what tools you have found helpful.
Stage 3. Research Phase
| Research and Scholarly Work | Process and Policy | Feedback and Evaluation |
| Lay out the basic thesis/dissertation structure. Set a schedule for research and thesis/dissertation completion. Work on writing skills and proper use of citations. Have student assist in a review of publications. Review chapters as drafts are available. | Discuss intellectual property handling with the student. | Maintain student progress: Meet regularly and review the completion schedule. Assign appropriate S/U grades. |
Best Practices
The biggest problem during this period will be to ensure that the student is making timely progress on the thesis/dissertation. Good practice says to meet regularly with your student. Meeting once a week is recommended, although this will vary by subject matter and expectations.
Please refer back to the schedule that you developed with the student about chapter delivery at your regular meetings with the student to ensure that the schedule is being maintained. If not, then either redo the schedule or have a frank discussion with the student about your expectations for progress. If necessary, please document in writing the progress to date at certain points.
Research and Scholarly Work
Lay out the thesis or dissertation with the student, so they can see the chapters that must be written, and provide assignment deadlines for the chapters that are realistic. This will help students with procrastination and motivation issues and keep everyone on track. The deadlines can be flexible as the research warrants.
Process and Policy
- Have a discussion with your student about intellectual property and the necessity, if it exists, for holding the dissertation pending copyright or patent. Both you and the student need to understand and agree on how the dissertation will be handled, once approved.
- Review the following policies with the student:
- Review the choices that UCF allows for ETD dissemination (release) and advise the student on the option that is best for their research. This decision does not have to be made until the beginning of the student’s last semester of thesis or dissertation.
Feedback and Evaluation
- Please do not continue to give S (Satisfactory) grades on research hours if students are not making adequate degree progress.
- If a student’s performance becomes unacceptable at any point, please familiarize yourself with the requirements found in the Assistantships section of the Graduate Guide regarding the “Resignation Process” and “Early Termination Before End of Appointment” for assistantship students.
Stage 4. Thesis/Dissertation Review
| Research and Scholarly Work | Process and Policy |
| Advise student about good practices in scholarly writing in your discipline. Review the final draft in its entirety with the student. | Advise student to file Intent to Graduate form. Review degree audit. Check committee composition. Advise student to ask formatting questions and request formatting help. Advise student to submit for Format Review approval by the semester deadline. Discuss whether an embargo is necessary and have the student submit the Thesis and Dissertation Release Option Form in the myUCF Student Center.Have student provide the Approval Form to you and check it for accuracy.
Submit the draft document to the advisory committee at least two weeks prior to defense and ask for feedback before scheduling the defense. |
Best Practices
Research and Scholarly Work
- Review the final draft in its entirety with the student. Please be sure that this is done in a timely manner. If the thesis/dissertation still needs editing, then please do not schedule the defense, even if the student wants to graduate. Please take the time to edit the thesis/dissertation, ensure the citations are accurate, appropriate, and complete, and be sure that the student has done the research envisioned in the research prospectus.
- Once the final draft is ready, please send a copy to each of the Advisory Committee members and ensure that they have a minimum of two weeks to review it. Please ask Advisory Committee members to tell you if they have major concerns with the research prior to scheduling the defense and give them a date by which you need to know when it is good to proceed with the defense.
- Your department may have a requirement that the program director be provided a copy of the thesis/dissertation prior to scheduling the defense and if that is the case, please be sure to send the program director a copy.
Process and Policy
- Have the student file an Intent to Graduate Form at the beginning of the semester they plan to defend their thesis/dissertation. Be sure that the degree audit is clean and the student has met all degree requirements other than the thesis or dissertation requirement. Master’s students must have clean audits in the semester before they graduate since no petitions or exceptions to university policies will be approved in the semester of graduation.
- For a thesis/dissertation student planning to graduate in the semester, the Graduate College requires that the student:
- File an intent to graduate
- Discuss embargo options with their advisor, then submit the Thesis/Dissertation Release Option eForm in myUCF Student Center by the deadline listed in the Academic Calendar
- Submit the bookmarked thesis/dissertation PDF file for Format Review by the semester Format Review deadline
- Receive Format Review approval and permission to do Final Submission from the Graduate College editor
- Announce the defense at least two weeks prior to the defense date
- Defend successfully by the semester Defense deadline
- Complete Final Submission of thesis/dissertation and deliver a signed Thesis/Dissertation Approval Form to the Graduate College editor by the semester Final Submission deadline
- Several weeks before the defense, have the student provide the defense announcement to you. If the committee listed is incorrect, have your graduate program office submit a correction to the Graduate College.
- Check the dissemination (release) option the student chose; if it is not acceptable, have the student re-submit the TD Release Option eForm in their myUCF Student Center to correct it.
- Refer the student to the Thesis and Dissertation Webcourse for UCF formatting requirements for thesis and dissertation.
- The UCF thesis/dissertation formatting requirements override discipline preferences. Questions about formatting should be submitted to etdhelp@ucf.edu.
Feedback and Evaluation
- Help your students in learning good practices for scholarly writing in your discipline. Now is the time to ensure that our students have the skills they will need for their professional careers.
- If students lack the appropriate writing skills, please send them to the UCF Writing Center.
Stage 5. Defense
| Research and Scholarly Work | Process and Policy | Feedback and Evaluation |
| Prepare the student for what to expect at the defense and conduct at least one practice session. Encourage the student to attend other defenses in your program. | Schedule the defense with your graduate program office and the advisory committee. Announce the defense. Review and sign the Thesis and Dissertation Approval Form | Review structure of the exam. Review the Review for Original Work results with the advisory committee at the defense |
Best Practices
Process and Policy
- As mentioned in Stage 4, do not schedule the defense unless the student’s thesis or dissertation is ready for this evaluation.
- Schedule the defense and issue the invitation widely. It is recommended that a staff person in your unit be charged with distributing thesis and dissertation announcements via listservs. Individual departments will have rules to follow with regard to how much notice is required for the defense announcement, but two weeks is minimal. No defense should be held without the prior public announcement of the type appropriate to the program. If this condition is not met, the defense should be rescheduled and re-announced.
- Before the defense, have the student provide the defense announcement to you and check it for accuracy.
- Updates to committee composition must be made PRIOR to the defense; the defense should not be held until the proper committee is listed in the student’s records.
- Note that the committee chair’s signature on the Approval Form indicates that the Review for Original Work requirement has been met. The student’s work must be submitted through iThenticate.com and the results reviewed and approved by the committee chair and discussed with the advisory committee at the defense.
- Hold the defense. It is common to hold a general presentation of the research and allow the audience to ask questions, and then to dismiss general members of the audience, and have the advisory committee review the research, ask questions, and finally evaluate the research. Share with the advisory committee the results of the Review for Original Work. Review the Thesis and Dissertation Approval Form in advance of the defense and have it ready to be signed by the committee members at the defense. If minor changes are required, then most committee members will sign at the defense. If major changes are required, then signatures may have to be obtained later. If deadlines are looming, it is important that you know how to contact each of the advisory committee members before the end of the semester to get signatures.
- All thesis/dissertation defenses should be held when scheduled unless there are truly extraordinary circumstances. If there are extraordinary circumstances and the thesis/dissertation defense cannot be held at the time scheduled, then please cancel the defense, and then reschedule and re-announce it.
Stage 6. Thesis/Dissertation Final Submission
| Research and Scholarly Work | Process and Policy |
| Have student make required changes. | Student must complete Final Submission to the Graduate College by the semester deadline in order to graduate. |
Best Practices
Process and Policy
- Students complete the final submission in UCF’s institutional repository, STARS. Students are not provided access to make their final submission until they receive format approval.
- Once final submission is approved for a student, no changes may be made to the student’s dissemination (release) option for the TD.
- The student must complete format review, defense, and final submission by the university thesis/dissertation deadlines. Otherwise, the student’s graduation will be delayed to the next term.
- If a student’s graduation is delayed to the next semester, the student will need to file a new Intent to Graduate for the next semester. After that, the student will need to submit a new Thesis and Dissertation Release Option eForm in myUCF.
Review for Original Work
The University requires all students submitting a thesis or dissertation as part of their graduate degree requirements to first submit their electronic documents through iThenticate for advisement purposes and for review of originality. The thesis or dissertation chair is responsible for scheduling this submission to iThenticate and for reviewing the results from iThenticate with the student’s advisory committee. The advisory committee uses the results appropriately to assist the student in the preparation of their thesis or dissertation.
Before the student may be approved for final submission to the university, the thesis or dissertation chair must indicate completion of the Review for Original Work requirement by signing the student’s Thesis and Dissertation Approval Form.
Fostering Academic Integrity
The Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning has posted guidance regarding Promoting Academic Integrity for university faculty.
Requesting Access to iThenticate.com
For information about iThenticate at UCF, please see the iThenticate section on the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) website. For iThenticate’s login (set-up) actions and/or system-related questions, thesis and dissertation chairs should contact RCR at rcr-ucf@ucf.edu for guidance.
Request for iThenticate Report
The best practice is for committee chairs to continue to run the iThenticate report themselves and complete the review before scheduling the student’s defense. However, for those who need assistance, the College of Graduate Studies will be available to run the standard Similarity Report for the full text of the document and will send the html file (a portable file that offers limited interactivity) to the chair. The College of Graduate Studies will not review or interpret the report.
To request a report:
- Send all requests to editor@ucf.edu
- Requests should come from the chair of the thesis or dissertation committee with the Word or PDF file attached
- If a program staff or student sends the email, the chair must be copied, to confirm the file is ready for iThenticate review
- Following the best practice mentioned above, please send requests for iThenticate reports prior to scheduling the defense and no later than two weeks prior to the defense
Faculty are encouraged to run the iThenticate report and take advantage of the site’s features, as there are distinct advantages to faculty running the reports, including the ability to:
- Select different modes of viewing the data
- Exclude quotes and the bibliography
- Exclude small sources (select word count or percentage)
- Exclude small matches (select word count)