How to: Master's Thesis Defense

Your committee:

Decide (with your advisor) who will be your second committee member (your committee consists of your advisor plus one more faculty member for your MS thesis defense), and reach out to them to make sure they can serve on your committee. You may already have a rough idea for when you plan on defending your thesis (at least an idea of which academic quarter), it is good to make sure that your committee members will be available and not too busy or away that quarter.

Planning the thesis defense

• Schedule your thesis defense date at least 2 months in advance. Coordinate with your committee members on a date/time that works for them. Reserve a room on campus to have your thesis defense presentation in.

• Send a clean draft of your thesis to your committee members at least 2 weeks prior to your defense. They will discuss comments with you during the second half of the defense.
  • Reach out to your committee to confirm with them what format they prefer: ideally you send them something like a google doc or sharepoint doc so that they can see each other's comments (helps avoid conflicting edits)

• Fill out a course list and get it signed by your advisor.

• Contact the CEE front office to let them know you're graduating this quarter. Send an email to CEE grad advisors with your: defense date, the room you will be using, your committee members, and the course list signed by your advisor as proof that you're ready to graduate.

• Submit a degree request through MyGrad
  • Log in to MyGrad and go to Request Degree > Master
  • Select “MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CIVIL ENGINEERING - Civil Engineering, Major/Pathway: CIV E 0”
• Get your Master's Supervisory Committee Approval Form and print it out. Bring it with you to your thesis defense. Your committee will need to sign it once you've passed your defense!

Submitting your “Electronic Thesis/Dissertation”

• Thesis formatting guidelines
  • Alternatively, use my formatted thesis word document as a template
• This “ProQuest ETD Administrator” website is where you upload your thesis document (it requires that you make an account, different than your UWNetID ?)
• What copywrite option do I choose?
  • Pick one that you don't have to pay for. I chose the “Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC BY)”
• If you plan on publishing your work in a peer-reviewed journal later, make sure that your thesis title is different from the title of the peer-reviewed paper you will publish. You can also choose to delay the posting of your thesis online by a year if you would rather a peer-reviewed publication come out first. These things can help make sure that others will more easily find your peer-reviewed work (such as through Google Scholar) rather than your thesis (most likely you will prefer that they cite your peer-reviewed paper instead of your thesis).

Make sure that you get your pay raise the following quarter.